Requiem For The Pay Phone

from the no-more-pay-phone dept

Mon, Dec 30th 2002 1:37am — Mike Masnick

Like most people who own a mobile phone I can't remember the last time I used a pay phone. Now the Washington Post has an article looking at the slow death of the pay phone. Most pay phones are owned by large phone companies that are making up the losses through mobile phone service and other telecom services. However, the independent operators of mobile phones are uninstalling them as fast as they possibly can. It seems the remaining phones now cost a lot more than they bring in and are driving these firms towards bankruptcy. They say that low income areas are still generating cash, as people there can't afford mobile phones for themselves yet. Meanwhile, the independent operators of pay phones are moving into offering internet access, internet kiosks, and ATM machines. Of course, if the independent pay phone operators worked the way Hollywood works, they'd be demanding that Congress outlaw mobile phones, since they're clearly depriving them of revenue. It's nice to see at least one business trying to adapt to changing markets rather than crying to the government.

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6 Comments

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alternatives, 30 Dec 2002 @ 3:57am

Not quite right think.
You don't remember when local governments were banning pay phones because they 'attracted drug dealers'?

So the government has already been there, and wacked 'em. Why would the governemtn help 'em now?
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acb, 30 Dec 2002 @ 6:44am

No Subject Given
When I went to London and Edinburgh recently, I saw that (in some more tourist-frequented areas) there were "Internet phones", from BT, which had a large screen, a QWERTY keyboard and trackball, and would allow you to surf the web for 50p for 5 minutes.

Interesting idea, but the implementation was rather shoddy. For one, the use of ruggedised payphone keypad buttons for the keyboard made the thing impossible to type on except for very slowly. Also, the browser software didn't understand either SSL or HTTP authentication, making it useless for things like checking mail over a secure connection, blog posting, &c.

If they ironed these bugs out, they could be quite useful.
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dorpus, 30 Dec 2002 @ 9:21am

What about disposable cell phones
There was some scandalous company that talked about selling disposable cell phones at every convenience store. Their phone is really just a Nokia cell phone with the cover changed. Any word on it?

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- Mike (profile), 30 Dec 2002 @ 9:31am
  
  Re: What about disposable cell phones
  There were actually 3 companies working on "disposable" cell phones. The one you're thinking of, Hop-On Wireless, got in some trouble for showing a prototype that was a Nokia with a different cover. However, their "real" phone isn't a Nokia. That was just for demonstration purposes. The company claims that they're still moving forward with plans to offer the service, but I have my doubts. They had also put out press releases announcing deals with places like 7-Eleven and Chevron to sell the phones, but those deals turned out to be fake. The company also had gotten in trouble for being involved in a scam to "fleece investors out of $20 million" and not filing a corporate tax return for two years.
  
  They did recently receive approval from the FCC for their phones, but I still have my doubts about how strong the company actually is.
  
  The second company that was working on such phones, Telespree, has completely changed their business model, and now are working on systems to make it easier for mobile carriers to turn on a new mobile phone instead. It seems they realized the market for disposable mobile phones was a weak one, and there was a bigger, more profitable market selling the backend software they wrote instead.
  
  The third company is called Diceland, and they're working on a disposable mobile phone printed on paper. I think they're still a ways off on their technology.
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  - dorpus, 30 Dec 2002 @ 9:56am
    
    Re: What about disposable cell phones
    Yeah, ok. Refreshes my memory. I remember having a Sprint cell phone back in 1999, and they told me it is very difficult to get a 408 number. When I got a new cell phone recently, had no problem, and the sales clerk seemed confused by my question, like he never heard of such a shortage. So maybe they have better software now for recycling unused numbers.
    
    Along those lines, I was once invited to an interview with a company in downtown San Jose, abba.com or something, that was very secretive about what they do. When I got there, they told me they planned to sell email addresses with the person's phone number within the address. It sounded really stupid, and I said so, and the guy was like "oh, you picked up on that." And they gave some weird talk about how it's their software but it's not really their software, but I'm going to write software on some stand-alone desktop and it's not going to be used. Seems to have been a scam that never got off the ground.
    
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bbbb, 1 Jan 2003 @ 11:17am

Failure?
You really think that the pay phone is a failure?
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