Egg-Shaped Payphone Enclosure

I spotted this Easter-Egg shaped payphone enclosure in Brady, Nebraska, during the summer of 2002.

I was on a road trip through Nebraska, the Dakotas, and parts of Wyoming. It seemed like every town I entered could be expected to have a payphone or two. Brady had at least this one enclosure, although at the time it contained no payphone.

I spotted a similar egg-shaped payphone enclosure in Whitman, Nebraska. That payphone enclosure had a working payphone. Its number was (308) 544-6480.

Nebraska’s Public Service Commission requires that every community in Nebraska have one public pay telephone. That decades-old requirement is now being challenged by the companies forced to maintain these phones at significant financial loss.

The Lincoln Journal Star reports on the last payphones of Inman, Nebraska, describing in no uncertain terms the depressing financial realities of the payphone business today. Regarding the last two public phones of Inman:

“The two pay phones generated a total of $19.58 in 2011, with less than half of that coming in as quarters and dimes for local calls. Long-distance carriers paid the rest. [K & M Telephone Co.] spent $1,469 maintaining them that same year.”

Numbers like these are not unusual in the payphone business of 2012. Without subsidies or even outright philanthropy most payphones today cannot be assessed on their revenue potential but in their value as a public service, and they should be funded appropriately by sources such as the Universal Service Fund. The Universal Service Fund is a pool of money into which most telecommunications companies (including payphone providers) have paid FCC-mandated fees since 1996. Federal legislation has languished for years as to where that money might go now and how much might be made available to payphone providers for establishment of “Public Interest Payphones”.

I don’t know for sure if the egg-shaped payphone enclosure in these pictures still exists, but it looks like it might. A tour of Brady using Google’s Streetview imagery from 2008 turns up what I think is this same enclosure at the intersection of Highway 30 and Market Street. If it is the same enclosure then things have changed somewhat since I passed this crossroad 10 years ago, but the payphone has stubbornly remained.

Just to satisfy my curiosity, if you are in or plan to be in Brady, Nebraska, any time soon, let me know if you spot this old payphone enclosure.