A summary of recent news stories about payphones starts in Texas, where the San Antonio Express-News reports that pay phones are still hanging on after all these years. The story, which includes a much-appreciated link to the Payphone Project, makes this point:
“Coin-operated phones don’t slip into a pocket or purse, but they often provide more reliable service than mobile phones. They don’t drop calls, as mobile phones are prone to do. They don’t require their users to find an electrical outlet to recharge their batteries.”
The claim that pay phones (as opposed to cell phones) “don’t drop calls” is generally true, assuming that a pay phone can actually complete a call in the first place. I make a point of using pay phones whenever possible for toll-free calls. This is simply because I consider working public telephones to be more reliable and completely free for deceptively named “toll-free” calls.
| How many payphones did there used to be in San Antonio, Texas? See the old listing of San Antonio Payphone Locations at the Payphone Project. |
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Last week I had to make 3 lengthy phone calls on 3 separate days to a brokerage house to clear up some old business. I knew each call would take 40 minutes or longer. I made a point of using pay phones, in particular the phones in Manhattan’s last wooden phone booths with closing doors, chairs on which to sit, and even little desk-like surfaces on which to take notes. Using pay phones for toll-free calls prevents burning minutes off my cell phone calling plan, and at no cost to me these calls made the owner of the payphone a few extra bucks in dial-around compensation. It is also, I freely admit, simply amusing and “different” in this year of 2012 to conduct a complicated and time-consuming stock market transaction from the relatively arcane environment of an enclosed phone booth.
The environment of the phone booth gave the matter a certain urgency that I enjoyed more than others might. Similarly, some months ago I decided it was finally time to cancel my home land line telephone service. I cancelled my land line phone by calling Verizon from one of those old phone booths. It is, however, not prudent to rely on pay phones for toll-free access. Many companies with toll-free numbers block calls from pay phones. This is mainly on account of the potential for abuse by scofflaw payphone owners such as Nicolaos Kantartzis or Colin Nordstrom and Jeff Frost who, as reported by the Payphone Project, exploited FCC-mandated “dial around compensation” fees to robo-dial toll-free numbers and rake in big bucks for their failing payphone businesses. It is unfortunate that a few bad apples (and an out-dated FCC mandate) have driven so many companies to ban pay phone users from calling them, but it does seem to be a reasonable safeguard for most companies. My brokerage house and Verizon are not among those entities that disenfranchise pay phone users. I have, however, found that pay phone users are not allowed to call toll-free numbers to check gift card balances for places like Outback Steakhouse, Applebee’s, and Starbucks. I think that is boring. It’s not just that I am a minute-miser with my cell phone plan. In fact, that’s really not it at all. It’s just that one of the ironies of today’s always-on communication world is that I can’t stand talking on the phone, and in particular I don’t like talking on a cell phone. The call quality is often poor, the calls get dropped, and the cell phone device itself has a tendency to cause carpal-tunnel type symptoms for the delicate way it must be held. Thus, for toll-free calls and for calls which I especially do not want interrupted by dropped signals or inadvertent “face-texting” as happens on these smarter-than-you mobile devices I explicitly choose the traditional land line pay telephone. In other payphone news, Zacks and numerous other sources report that Bell Canada is following through on its threat to substantially reduce its number of payphones if government regulators deny the company’s request for a 100% rise in charges for coin-paid calls. As mentioned on the Payphone Project in April, some Canadians seem to take their payphones pretty seriously, citing the needs of the poor and the vulnerable above the presumed obsolescence of public telephones. It seems to me that the government of Canada should step in. If regulators force for-profit companies to maintain money-losing businesses in the public interest then it seems fair for those companies to receive subsidies from public funding. Read more:
On a lighter note, the city of São Paulo, Brazil hosted A Call Parade, a project in which the city invited 100 artists to beautify the so-called “orelhão” payphone enclosures still commonly seen in that country. “Orelhão” means “Big Ear”. The popular payphone enclosure was designed by Chu Ming Silveira. There is an official web site for orelhão at www.orelhao.arq.br. Orelhão payphone enclosures were once seen in the “Little Brazil” section of midtown Manhattan (see my picture from 1999). The designs for “Call Parade” (which ended in June) includes a human brain, a disco ball, and a Claes Oldenburg-esque pencil which appears to penetrate one unfortunate payphone enclosure.
Those are only a few of the 100 designs which can be seen at the official Call Parade web site. “A Call Parade” put a positive face on São Paulo’s public telephones. Unlike other projects which assume payphones are defunct and useless eyesores “Call Parade” brought some fresh life to the instrument of the public phone while keeping the dial tone alive. Read more: