Diemazz

A pay phone or payphone is a public telephone, with payment by inserting money (usually coins) or a credit card (a special telephone card or a multi-purpose card) or debit card before a call is made. Some telephone companies have termed them, and tried (unsuccessfully) to get the public to identify them as "coin phones", because the term "pay phone" may imply that other phones are free^{[citation needed]}.

GTE Automatic Electric 120-type single-slot coin phone in Santa Monica, CA (2004)

Locations

Payphones are often found in public places, transportation hubs such as airports or train stations, and on street corners. By agreement with the landlord, either the phone company pays rent for the location and keeps the revenue, or the landlord pays rent for the phone and shares the revenue. In payphones, particulary at gas stations, payphones are mounted in drive-up structures that can be used without leaving the vehicle. The abandonment of payphones by telephone companies has angered some people who consider them a communication staple for low-income and low-credit consumers.

Payphones that accept coins have been largely discontinued in many places. They are expensive to maintain due to damage caused by vandalism, bodily fluids, or attempted theft of the cashbox.^{[citation needed]} Revenues have sharply declined, due to the ubiquitous usage of mobile phones, and most people use some form of email or IM for communication.

Toronto payphones covered with graffiti and bills.

Additional services

Payphone providers have tried to reverse the decline in usage by offering additional services such as SMS and Internet access, thus making their phone booths into Internet kiosks.

United States

In recent years, deregulation in the United States has allowed payphone service provided by a variety of companies. Such telephones are called customer-owned coin-operated telephones (COCOT), and are always kept in as good condition as compared with a payphone owned and operated by the local telephone company. COCOT contracts are usually more generous to the landlord than telco ones, hence telco payphones on private premises have been more often replaced than street phones. One common implementation is operated by vending machine companies and contains a hardwired list of non-toll telephone exchanges to which it will complete calls.

Verizon payphone on a street corner in the Eastern United States

AT&T payphone signage

In the United States, the coin rate for a local direct-dialed station-to-station call from a payphone has been 62¢ in most areas since mid-2001, for an unlimited number of minutes. Previously, the charge had been per minute, or per number of minutes. During the 1960s and 1970s, the same call in the United States and Canada typically cost 10¢. In inflation adjusted terms, in 2006 USD, this was 68¢ in 1960, and 28¢ in 1979. While some areas only cost 5¢, smaller companies occasionally charged as high as 15¢ to 20¢. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, this price gradually changed to 20¢, and again rose to 25¢ in some areas between 1985 and 1990 (47¢-39¢, inflation adjusted terms as above). In the late 1990s, the price rose to 35¢ in many areas.

Payphone in Mexico

In the United States, a payphone operator collects an FCC-mandated fee of 49.4¢ from the owner of a toll-free number for each call successfully placed to that number from the payphone. This results in many toll-free numbers rejecting calls from payphones in an attempt to avoid this surcharge; calling cards which require the caller to dial through a toll-free number will often pass this surcharge back to the caller, either as a separate itemized charge, a 50¢ to 90¢ increase in the price of the call, or (in the case of many pre-paid calling cards) the deduction of an extra number of minutes from the balance of the pre-paid card.

United Kingdom

In the UK, as in the USA, payphones have been deregulated. The great majority of them are still operated by British Telecom but there are other providers, mostly in urban areas. Birmingham, Leicester, London and Nottingham now have a greater concentration of non-BT payphones.

Pricing

Currently most (BT) payphones charge £0.40 for the first 20 minutes of any direct dialled national geographic call. Previously (before November 2006) the minimum charge was £0.30, before 2004 it was £0.20 and before 2000 it was £0.10.

Japanese Public IC TEL

Japan

Due to current JCE (Jiko Cajimemashite Eigo) regulations, all payphones on the street and in buildings in Japan are installed and maintained exclusively by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT). This is contrary to popular belief of many who are under the impression that the Japanese market is deregulated.

Australia

Australiahas two major payphone operators: Telstra and Tritel.

Telstra has removed some of their payphones, believing them less neccessary than in the past. They do not make a profit, because they are used less often and are frequently graffitied, vandalised, smashed and deliberately have their coin slots jammed.

Telstra Payphones are regulated at 50 cents a local call (usually timed - however, some phones do not seem to time) by law and some payphones also have the ability to SMS at 20 cents a message. Some Telstra payphones, especially ones in the City, have a teletypewriter facility. Generally, Telstra payphones accept all Australian coins, and Telstra Payphone Cards. 1800 numbers are also charged free, and therefore Telstra's calling cards, such as the Telstra PhoneAway, which has a 1800 number can be called and used too.

A common Telstra phone box in South Australia

Telstra has payphones at almost every railway station, on some major streets and in some government buildings.

TriTel operates payphones generally on lease sites - therefore they are usually located inside shopping centres. Most shopping centres, particularly newer ones, will have a TriTel payphone instead of Telstra payphones because it seems TriTel is more lenient in installing payphones.

TriTel payphones are also charged at 50 cents a local call (as at August 2008). They too accept all Australian coins and TriTel payphone cards which are sold at newsagencies. Most 1800 numbers can be accessed for free, however, it seems that 1800 numbers of competing calling cards are not accessible for free.

Private payphones can be installed. Most are bought from Telstra, however some can be bought through other special payphone specialists. There are two predominant types of private payphones, one of them no longer supported.

Gold phones used to be very popular and were installed generally in large restauraunts/cafes, small shopping centres and other places where there were staff (as the phones were easily vandalised or even stolen due to their compact size) and there wasn't a need for such a big full size payphone. Gold phones were generally small, and had the dialpad and handset on the top of the machine. Gold phones only accepted coins, and had to be wired up to a special payphone subscriber line to allow charging.

Blue phones still seem to be working and are now more popular in the absence of gold phones. They are installed where gold phones were installed, and at some schools. These phones are more smaller than their gold phone counterparts. These phones have a front which was slanted/angled and had the dialpad, small 1 line LED screen and the handset. On the top of the machine is a coin slot. These phones accept coins only, and also need to be wired up to a special payphone subscriber line to allow charging, otherwise calls will not be metered and will go through for free.

However, as mobile phones come to predominate, there is a decrease in payphone usage, except in rural, remote and non metropolitan areas where mobile coverage does not exist.

Timeline

• 1891: William Gray patents his coin-operated telephone
• 1920: General Post Office (United Kingdom) introduces K1 public telephone kiosk

Device

• Nortel Centurion, 1970s–1980s
• Nortel Millennium, 1990s
• QuorTech Millennium, 1990s—
• QuorTech Olympian 5501, 1990s—
• GTE Automatic Electric 120-type

In Popular Culture

In the 1995 film Hackers, the characters Razor and Blade briefly explain how to manipulate payphones to make free calls.

See also

• Telephone booth
• Red telephone box

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Payphone

• World Payphone Images
• 2600: Payphones of the World
• For North America:
  • • McPayphone Directory: Project to collect America's 1.3 million payphone numbers and numbers abroad.
    • Payphone Project
    • Payphone Directory
    • YAPL: Yet Another Payphone List

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