A payphone is typically a coin-operated public telephone, often located in a
telephone booth or a privacy hood, with pre-payment by inserting money or by
billing a credit or debit card, or a telephone card. Prepaid calling cards
also facilitate establishing a call by first calling the provided Toll-free
telephone number, entering the card account number and pin, then the desired
connection telephone number — also offering the benefit of establishing
many telephone number connections during a single payphone session. An equipment
usage fee may be charged as additional units, minutes or tariff fee to the
collect/third-party, debit, credit, telephone or prepaid calling card when
used at payphones. Payphones are often found in public
places, transportation hubs such as airports or train stations, buses,
convenience stores, malls, casinos, 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. Some
payphones, particularly at gas stations, are mounted in drive-up kiosk structures
that can be used without leaving the vehicle.
Payphone revenues have sharply declined in many places, largely due to the
increased usage of mobile phones. Payphone providers have sometimes 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. The
abandonment of payphones by telephone companies has angered some people who
consider them a communication staple for low-income consumers.
Payphones in countries with unstable currencies have used token coins,
available for sale at a local retailer, to activate pay phones instead of legal
tender coins. In some cases these have been upgraded to use magnetic cards or
credit card readers. Countries
= Canada= Most payphones in Canada are owned and
operated by large telecom providers such as Bell, Telus and SaskTel. In the last
20 years customer-owned coin-operated telephones have also appeared in the
market, but their numbers are smaller due to emergence of cellular phones.
Pricing on most local payphone calls is now 50 cents CAD, having increased from
25 cents since 2007. Pay phones in Alberta were 35 cents for a time, but in
most jurisdictions the price simply doubled. Newer phones allow users to use
calling cards and credit cards. For coin-paid long distance, COCOTs are less
expensive for short calls than incumbent providers.
Dialing 0 for operator and 911 calls are still free.
The Toronto Transit Commission deploys payphones on all subway platforms as a
safety precaution; a blue "Crisis Link" button on 141 payphones connects
directly with Distress Centres of Canada as a free suicide prevention measure.
As of 2013, there were about 70,000 payphones across the country.
= Germany= The payphone model 23, introduced at
Deutsche Bundespost Telekom in 1992, is an electronic software controlled
payphone for analog connections. It is equipped with coin,, and integrated test
program setting. It has a remote maintenance, the independent reports of
a background system by means of an integrated modem error, operating states
or departures to the all public pay telephones of Deutsche Telekom AG are
turned on. The Payphone 23 consists of two basic
units, the equipment part including all the necessary for the operation modules
and the secured below the growing payphone cassettes with the coin box.
= India= = Japan=
The majority of payphones on the street and in buildings in Japan are installed
and maintained by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone.
= Russia= In the Soviet period different types of
payphones were produced such as AMT-47, then AMT-69, billed them worth 2
kopeiks. There were also long-distance call payphones paying 15 kopeiks,
allowing also get the services of a paid media. After the collapse of the Soviet
Union and the monetary reform of 1991 this form of payment has become
irrelevant. Payphones AMT-69 have undergone modifications: coin acceptors
were altered to accept coins or replace the card reader. For example, in St.
Petersburg payment for talking on a pay phone carried with subway tokens. In
some regions, calls from pay phones free of charge, and the coin acceptor was not
used. The existing constructive payphone AMT-69 and other changes have been made:
Disk dialer replaced Button, including the options existed touchtone and LCD.
Coins in the AMT-69 was carried out by changing the polarity on the telephone
line. For this purpose there were special PBX subscriber sets designed
only for outgoing calls. Later replaced by AMT-69 and its
variants came modern payphones that accept magnetic or chip card with an
informative display and advanced system protection and alarm.
= United States= Payphones were preceded by pay stations,
manned by telephone company attendants who would collect rapid payment for
calls placed. The Connecticut Telephone Co. reportedly had a payphone in their
New Haven office beginning June 1, 1880; the fee was handed to an attendant. In
1889, a public telephone with a coin-pay mechanism was installed at the Hartford
Bank in Hartford, Connecticut by the Southern New England Telephone Co. It
was a "post-pay" machine; coins were inserted at the end of a conversation.
The coin mechanism was invented by William Gray; he was issued a series of
patents for his devices, beginning with US#454470 issued Jun 23, 1891 for a
'Signal Device for Telephone Pay-Stations' which rang a bell for each
coin inserted. He subsequently founded the Telephone Pay Station Co. in 1891.
The "pre-pay" phone debuted in Chicago in 1898.
By 1902 there were 81,000 payphones in the United States. By 1905, the first
outdoor payphones with booths were installed. By the end of 1925, 25,000 of
these booths existed in New York City alone. In 1960, the Bell System
installed its one millionth telephone booth. After the divestiture of Pacific
Bell and AT&T in 1984, it was not long before independent stores selling
telephones opened up. After that privately owned payphones hit the
market. Sources differ as to whether the peak
number of payphones in the United States was 2.6 million in 1995 or 2.2 million
in 2000. As of 2013, the number is reportedly less than 500,000. The major
carriers, AT&T and Verizon, have both exited the business, leaving the market
to be served by independent payphone companies.
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, and are mostly 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 hard-wired list of non-toll telephone
exchanges to which it will complete calls.
In the United States, the coin rate for a local direct-dialed station-to-station
call from a payphone has been 50¢ in most areas since mid-2001, for an
unlimited 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 cities between 1985 and 1990. In the late 1990s, the price rose to 35¢ in
many areas. However, in most of California, for instance, the price is
very often 50 cents a call. New York City is a notable exception, where
Verizon's and other companies' phones still cost 25 cents for 4 minutes,
except in hotels and airports. Verizon tried raising the price to 50 cents, but
lowered it to 25 cents after customers started using their competitors' phones.
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 the deduction of an extra
number of minutes from the balance of the pre-paid card.
Since 2007, the number of payphones in the United States in operation has
declined by 48 percent. In July 2009, AT&T officially stopped supporting the
Public Payphone service. All remaining payphone contracts were cancelled,
equipment at the locations were disconnected and sold, and Call Center
located in Evansville, IN was closed. Over 139,000 locations were sold in
2009. = United Kingdom=
In the U.K., as in the U.S., payphones have been deregulated. The great
majority of them are still operated by British Telecom but there are other
providers, mostly in urban areas. Manchester, London, Cardiff and Glasgow
at the turn of the 21st century have a greater concentration of non-BT
payphones. BT has steadily been removing payphones throughout the UK since 2000
where BT deem the kiosks not to be profitable, and have few or no calls
made in any given financial year. Kiosk adoption
BT however is offering local communities the option of adopting the iconic Red
K6 Kiosks due to strong opposition from the communities that the kiosks reside
in. This will mean the removal of the phone, leaving the empty kiosk in-situ.
A bizarre feature of the adoption contract is section 5.5.4 which
prohibits the re-installation of a telephone in the kiosk.
Sponsored kiosk Another option BT has provided is the
sponsored kiosk, that will retain the phone service, and retain the kiosk for
an annual fee of around £300 +VAT, whether it is the Red K6 or the newer
Aluminium and Glass Kiosks that cannot be adopted.
Pricing From June 1, 2010, BT payphones have
£0.60 minimum charge which buys the first 30 minutes of any direct dialled
national geographic call. Previously the minimum charge was £0.40 for the first
20 minutes of any direct dialled national geographic call. Then before
November 2006 the minimum charge was £0.30, before 2004 it was £0.20 and
before 2000 it was £0.10. However, making a call using a credit/debit card
incurs a minimum charge of £1.20, and includes 1 minute of call time, £0.20
per minute thereafter, as of September 2011.
A BT Chargecard is a considerably cheaper way to call from any UK
landline, including Payphones. Other cards which can be used are the Post
Office phonecard, Tesco international calling card and many other telephone
cards which can be bought from newsagents.
The high cost of calls is a deterrent to use and has led to allegations of
closure by stealth. Pricing examples
The following examples are taken from the BT price list. There is a 40p
connection charge, in addition to the "per minute" charges shown below, and a
minimum charge of 60p. Timeline
1891: William Gray patents his coin-operated telephone
1920: General Post Office introduces K1 public telephone kiosk
Devices Intellicall AstraTel 2 Smart Payphone
Intellicall UltraTel Smart Payphone Intellicall Tidel 3
GTE Automatic Electric 120-type Gallery of payphones
In popular culture In the Superman comic books and live
action films, Clark Kent routinely uses a phone booth to change into his
Superman costume. A pay phone booth was used as a time
machine in the 1989 film Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
The 2002 film Phone Booth takes place in a phone booth. The main character is
held hostage in it for a whole day. He has been using the payphone to call his
mistress so that his wife will not see the telephone number on their cellular
telephone bill. A Mojave phone booth in an isolated area
of the Mojave National Preserve miles from the paved road was the subject of
an Internet meme and a 2006 independent film, Mojave Phone Booth. The original
Pacific Bell booth was removed in 2000; for nostalgia, Lucky225 assigned its
number to an open conference bridge in 2013.
In Nevada on route 50 promoted as the lonelyest road in America. There in the
desert near Sand Mountain and Middlegate is a lone payphone promoted as the
loneliest payphone in America. See also
Red telephone box Telephone booth
References External links
PayPhoneBox Index of payphone numbers and photographs of payphones in unusual
or famous places around the world. 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 Movies and television shows that portray
the use of a payphone