The iSpectrum Internet Payphone Did, in Fact, Exist.

A couple of months back I wrote about the Naicomm iSpectrum Internet Payphone, speculating on how different the “payphone of the future” might have looked if more creative thinking went toward retrofitting existing hardware instead of destroying it. Little did I know that I had in my clutches an action shot photo of Naicomm’s iSpectrum in use at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport in 2006.

The photo, sent in by Meeta Gajjar Parker in 2006, is obviously blurry as hell, but it helps buttress my assumption that devices like this appeared mostly if not entirely in airports and travel hubs to compete with the more established AT&T Public Phone 2000, probably the most successful “payphone of the future” ever developed. This photo represents the only evidence I’ve encountered that Naicomm successfully deployed the iSpectrum Internet Phone. With no mention of this phone even in industry trade journals I speculated that it never saw real world use. I was wrong.