A sign over a spiral staircase entrance to the Rockefeller Center Concourse reads “COMMUNICATIONS”. As I wrote in 2013, the Rockefeller Center Communications Portal advertised in that bit of signage almost certainly refers to the once abundant quantity of payphones and fully enclosed phone booths that once inhabited the concourse, as well as telegram, fax, and money transfer services. That story from 2013 also serves as a little window into Rockefeller Center’s payphone past.

Unlike most of my Payphones Then and Now postings this one puts some now in the “now” part of the equation. A sole surviving payphone in the Rockefeller Center concourse still has dial tone, and call quality still sounds great. This photo, from exactly 8 years ago, shows what were then three remaining phones. Two of them worked.

Today just one remains, and it is among the most reliable public telephones in midtown. I frequently find it in use, typically by travelers who use calling cards. It is owned by PTS Providers, the nation’s largest payphone service provider. Its number is 212-246-8729.

This phone has been known to go out of service but it quickly gets fixed when that happens. Other trusty midtown phones can be found at Penn Station, where PTS has a payphone tech person with an office on site.

There you have it. Believe it or not there is a payphone in my Payphones Then and Now series that has not only physically survived the payphone apocalypse but still works and is fully functional. I used this phone for many of my Payphone Radio calls and find that the call quality, when compared to CityBridge phones, was excellent.

I’ll have a few other New York City payphone survivors soon, though I don’t expect them to have dial tone seeing as they are owned by CityBridge, which ceased maintenance of its payphones about a year ago.

See how different things used to be at Rockefeller Center in my writeup from 2013 about Rockefeller Center’s payphone past.