I don’t think a day goes by on social media where someone does not post something like “Wow, people still use payphones!” It’s true, folks. People still drop quarters into payphones. I spotted this woman yesterday dropping 50¢ into an NYC subway payphone owned and operated by Pacific Telemanagement Services (PTS), the nation’s largest payphone service provider.
Action shot. NYC payphone customer. 74th Street/Broadway station. pic.twitter.com/PX17sHbsGR
— Payphone Project (@payphonenews) June 11, 2017
PTS owns all the payphones in the New York City subway system, having acquired them from Verizon a number of years ago. By my observation it seems like the stable of PTS payphones in the subways is finally winnowing down. There are no working payphones at the Grand Central subway station, though there are plenty in the upstairs Metro North terminal. There are but 2 or 3 payphones left at the Times Square station. Penn Station appears to have dozens of phones but most of them do not work. In this year of 2017 it is transit hubs like where one could reliably expect to find at least one working public telephone.
It was somewhat amazing to find as recently as February, 2015, that the Port Authority Bus Terminal housed about 100 payphones, a vestige from 2 decades ago when such quantity actually addressed the demand for usage. Most if not all of those phones actually seemed to work.
Routing them out took some time but at present there is not a single working payphone at the Port Authority.