AT&T to hang up its pay phones
http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/03/atandt-to-hang-up-its-pay-phones/
AT&T — or whatever company it is that’s going by that name these days — has decided to pull the plug on its pay phone business, over 100 years after the first coin-operated model was installed in Chicago. Currently, the telecom giant owns and operates public telephones in 13 states.
With the number of pay phones having more than halved since 1998 — due in large part to BellSouth’s exit in 2001 — AT&T clearly thinks that the sidewalk stalwart is at the end of its shiny metal rope, although it will continue to provide related services until the dial tones go silent at the end of 2008.
While public reaction to the announcement has been mostly tepid so far, several groups have raised their voices in protest, most notably the Justice League of America, which calls the impending lack of changing stations “a national crisis.”
they pulled ’em out of our library branches last year. we now let patrons use our phone to call for rides, the bus, etc. they weren’t huge money makers, but the phones DID get used ):
When I was a little kid, I used the pay phone every time I went to the library, to call my mom to pick me up.
This actually sucks. I recently needed to make a phone call when my cell ran out of juice and I was running late to work at 11 p.m.— walked over three miles (also scoping for taxis) without seeing ONE. And heaven forfend that some Luddite might not actually LIKE cells for whatever reason… another step to making poorer people’s lives more difficult, IMO. Sigh.
Oh, the poor axons! How shall a ship-wrecked AI from the future communicate if they close the payphones? We must DO SOMETHING!
Won’t someone please think of the axons?!?
*laugh!*
Seriously, their public gathering communication potential was unmatched. May they rest in pieces. Hmmm, I wonder what they’re doing with the old phones …
this makes me far sadder than it probably should.
seconded.
We should contact AT&T as a collective and request their old phones.
I would love to have an old pay phone. I don’t know what the hell I’d do with it, but still… want.
The Justice League is protesting? Why on earth would Superman need a payphone…oh wait…
*snort* I had a similar thought…mine was more along the lines that Bruce Wayne is one of the biggest philanthropists the world has known, so he probably is just planning to install free VOIP phones in their place. :P
me <---- nerd
This is actually a HUGE issue in some communities. There are areas of the country where you cannot get cell phone reception and payphones are an issue of security and safety – and not just the NRQZ where, for obvious reasons, signals are banned. It is also a huge issue for the poor who rely on payphones because they cannot afford landlines and/or cell phones. The state of West Virginia (and probably others, I only know of that one off hand) has done a certain amount of research on this and, despite the obvious need for Public Interest Payphones (PIP), communities have generally been able to get carriers to provide them. Unfortunately, as large carriers (ie AT&T) get out of the business smaller carriers aren’t always able to pick up the slack because of the cost involved. And as the yearly reports in WV continue to repeat that “there is no compelling need for a PIP in the state at this time” (even when the same reports contain phrases such as: However, after the general decline in payphone availability, removal of even a single payphone can have a dramatic impact on rural areas.) the budgets needed to implement such programs aren’t being established.
That’s pretty crappy. We have a payphone at work that’s constantly being used.
I don’t know. It just seems like one of those niche services that is still profitable on a smaller scale, and provides something necessary. It would be nice if another company picked up the pay phone service, but I’m doubting that.
Completely off-topic
why is this showing up in my FL as a post for people over the age of 14?
Re: Completely off-topic
And I quote:
New Settings & Flagging Tools
We don’t want to take away from the festive atmosphere, but we do want to make you aware of a new addition to LJ. At LiveJournal, we recognize that there is some content that may be fine for adults, but not for kids. We don’t want kids seeing content that’s not meant for them, and we know you don’t either. LiveJournal wants to prevent minors from seeing adult content in a way that does not interfere with the experience of users who are 18 and over. The ability to set entries, journals and communities as either “Adult Concepts” or “Explicit Adult Content” is a functionality community maintainers and users have been requesting for a long time. As a result, we’re giving you a set of tools that gives you control over whether the things you create and share on LJ are accessible by people under the age of 18.
You can read all about this new functionality, as well as comment with any and all questions you may have, in lj_biz.
This has some major privacy issues as well. Without a pay phone there’s absolutely no way to make a call without making a record of it. Hello Big Brother!
I was thinking precisely that, actually. It’s a major blow to murder mysteries!
That’s what disposable pre-paid cell phones are for.
Those are a lot more expensive than 50 cents per phone call.