It looks like someone at this web site found my photo series of the Last Phone Booths of Manhattan, a series of pictures I posted many years ago after spotting these rare outdoor booths on Manhattan’s West End Avenue. There are, in fact, many phone booths in Manhattan and in all the boroughs of New…
There have always been those who find the Payphone Project and ask one question: Why? Why maintain a web site that lists payphone numbers and locations throughout the world? In fact the value of this web site has been written about in many places, most memorably for me in a front page New York Times…
I landed on this product web site through the Random Yahoo Link. This “laser turntable” presents an interesting solution to hearing and enjoying aging LP record collections without jeopardizing their surface. At a cost of $10,990 US I do not anticipate adding the ELP Laser Turntable to my personal arsenal of audio archiving tools. It…
“Are there any news?” is a grammatical pique supposedly coined by newsman Horace Greeley. In reply to that question one of his reporters is said to have replied “Not a new.” If Horace Greeley were looking for payphone news and information today I would have to say there is nary a new, save for the…
NYPIRG’s Straphangers’ Campaign does regular surveys of New York’s subway payphones and the results are pretty consistent: Payphones in subways are unreliable, creating a safety hazard in a place where cell phones still do not work. Read more: New York Daily News Epoch Times NY1 amNY
Here’s hoping you’ve kept your cell phone charged on your next visit to the beach, because in Ocean City, public pay phones are going the way of telephone booths, rotary dialing, and the 10-cent call.Advertisement Telecommunications giant Verizon, in conjunction with the resort’s Public Works office, has removed all but four of its pay phones…
How many college students can you fit into a phone booth? Students at St. Mary’s College of California found an answer to this pressing question Wednesday when teams of men and women competed to cram as many bodies as possible into an empty phone booth on the campus green. The phone booth-stuffing competition took place…
The New York Times reports: “Like the phonograph and the typewriter, the pay phone could one day become an anachronism, the kind of prop seen in period films. “The number of pay phones in the United States fell to about 1.3 million in 2004 from more than 2 million in 2000, according to the latest…
“With the advent of the mobile telephone, telephone booths lie unused. We rediscover this glass cage transformed into an aquarium, full of exotically coloured fish; an invitation to escape and travel.” Read more at Inquisitr.com
A New York Times City Room Blog entry points us to a payphone enclosure which still bore vestiges of the Bell Atlantic brand — a brand which was supposed to have been retired by 2002. I know it is just a blog and not real news but I was surprised that the Times seemed to…
The rot gut and cheap plonk have been pulled from Mike Christison’s shelves, his hope being that the lack of bargain booze will keep the local low-lifes from his liquor store. But it’s the public telephone across the street from the Inglewood Wine Market that’s the real draw for undesirables: The 9 Ave. S.E. phone…
This is a Payphone Project feature from several years ago. My friend Rex drove out to a remote spot in Kansas in search of a lonely payphone he had heard existed. Read the story to find out what he found. Today it would be illegal to find this spot in the way Rex did because…
At first, Ryan Caviglia barely noticed the pay phone that sat on the corner of 65th and Lebanon, just down the street from his house and visible from his porch. But gradually, it began to take over his life. Read more at Philadelphia City Paper
Near the entrance of Ruby Tuesday’s stands a silver box – a shell of the pay phone that used to sit there, with only a rectangular cutout in its metal frame and a “dialing instructions” sign to show that it ever existed. Read more at Naplesnews.com
Is your cell phone dead and you need to let the family know you will be late? No problem, just pull in and use the pay phone, right? Not so fast, my friend. Finding a pay phone these days is not that easy. Read more at Star Exponent.com in Culpeper, Virginia
From a Malkin & Ross press release: “The New York State Senate and Assembly reached agreement at the end of this year’s legislative session on legislation that would treat prison telephone service as a right, not as a revenue generator. “‘Words cannot describe what this victory means to me — unless they are written on…
BT is re-vamping the design of its public payphones. The new design, by ad firm JCDecaux, accommodates more advertising on the phones in a drive to compensate for dwindling revenues from payphone usage. “The new, cutting edge design, is the first new design of telephone kiosk in the UK for 20 years. The latest style…
“SaskTel is being urged to remove pay phones from an inner city neighbourhood in Regina amid accusations that they’re facilitating drug dealing and prostitution. “But other people argue that the phones, located near the General Hospital in the Core neighbourhood, provide a vital service for low-income people in the area who don’t have their own…
“There is a new take on phone booths at Eastern Connecticut State University, and it is designed to keep the library the way it is supposed to be – quiet.” I looked at these booths last year, and expressed skepticism at their usefulness. Depending where these booths are used, it would seem that the dramatic…
The Payphone Project gets a mention in this story from Victoria, Canada, which explores ambivalence to the expected rate increase for calls made from Telus payphones. “Plenty of people eschew, can’t afford, or just don’t need cellphones. The question is whether there are enough of those people to keep pay phones profitable. “Maybe not, to…
“Despite their bleak future, pay phones can still serve as a vital communications link during times of disaster. Service for cellphones and home phones could be disrupted or knocked out by an earthquake, for example. However, public phone service will be available. “‘During a disaster we will set up public phones at shelters. Using them…
The Globe and Mail reports: “Not surprisingly, your need for pay phones increases as your income decreases: 88 per cent of low-income Canadians use pay phones at least a few times a year, according to a 2003 national survey conducted by the Montreal-based Union des consommateurs. That includes 22 per cent who use pay phones…
The Nevada Appeal accompanies its fine story about declining payphones with a strangely erotic photo of a rotary dial payphone. “The pay phone, like a lot of old technologies, has become somewhat of an endangered species these days. Once found up and down Highway 50 at every gas station, liquor store and convenience shop, they’re…
“The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the right of companies to sue over alleged violations of federal communications law and reinforced the regulatory authority of the Federal Communications Commission. “In a 7-2 decision, the court said that pay-phone provider Metrophones Telecommunications Inc. may pursue a suit against Global Crossing Telecommunications Inc. “At issue are payments…
The Union-Tribune‘s Michael Stetz writes: “Mark Thomas, who started The Payphone Project, digs pay phones. Thomas used to call them out of the blue and play a tape of one of his piano performances over the line to whomever answered. He liked the odd connection between perfect strangers. Today, most pay phones won’t take incoming…
Because of its central role in the movie “Local Hero,” a phone booth in Pennan, Scotland has become one of Scotland’s leading tourist attractions. While many calls come in to this phone, however, few calls seem to go out, causing concerns that this phone would be purged along with other money-losing phone boxes throughout the…
By BT Scotland’s math, annual maintenance costs for a phone box are about £1,600. This story profiles a Scotland phone box that was only used for three calls in an entire year, making its cost-per-call ratio rather conspicuous. This story also mentions a “legendary” phone box: Ferness 261, featured in the 1983 film Local Hero,…
“There was drama in Nateete recently…” This all-too-short story reads like a screenplay-in-waiting. From this story, it sounds as if a man in Nateete, Uganda, used a community payphone to make a call. Africa is largely without any sort of landline telephone infrastructure, and a community payphone is essentially a pay-as-you-go mobile phone. Such a…