Pacific Telemanagement Services (PTS) continues its acquisition of U.S. public pay telephone locations with the May, 2012, purchase of approximately 4000 payphones from FairPoint Communications.
“‘Payphones have seen dramatic decreases in usage over the last decade
and the trend is likely to continue,’ said Ajay Sabherwal, (FairPoint) executive
vice president and chief financial officer. ‘We believe we can best
deploy our resources to focus on our core lines of business including
bringing more broadband service to northern New England.’
The American Public Communications Council estimates there are fewer
than 500,000 payphones in the United States, down from 2.6 million in
1998, and independent payphone service providers – similar to PTS –
operate 90 percent of them.”