This phone, at a K-Mart in Conway, South Carolina, no longer works, and probably no longer exists at this location. Nor did it appear on my list of Conway, South Carolina payphone locations, although some of the numbers on that page come quite close in sequence to 843-248-9917, the number printed on this phone. This photo is from return Payphone Project contributor Daniel Hopsicker.

Most likely gone by now, this phone was owned by Frontier Communications, probably the largest of the historically established telcos in America still doing payphones. Qwest, AT&T, Verizon, etc., all exited payphones long ago.

Yet this phone bears a vestigial clue it had formerly been a Verizon phone. The yellow handset with the “PHONE1” logo was a clue to payphone users that cheap international calls could be made at this phone. PHONE1 teamed up with Verizon to offer this service as one Verizon’s many last gasps at trying to make payphone’s profitable enough to keep around.

Photo by Daniel Hopsicker.