AT&T To Decommission Pay Phones 470
oahazmatt writes "According to MarketWatch, AT&T said that its pay phones will be phased out over the next year. A company spokeswoman declined to say how much revenue its pay-phone business generated, but the number is small and declining. 'The first public pay-telephone station was set up in 1878, just two years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the talking device. The first coin-operated pay phone was installed in Hartford, Conn., in 1889. For decades after the pay phone's invention, many Americans relied on them because of the expense and difficulty in obtaining reliable home service. Only after World War II did the telephone become a household necessity.'"
not a surprise (Score:3, Interesting)
As TFA says though, almost anyone and everyone has a wireless handset. I recent switched to a PP cell myself.
That's the real key... Pay phones were anonymous, with Pre-paid you can pay cas for the phone ans sim, using bogus info where needed. You can still be invisible.
-nB
wireless access points any one? (Score:3, Interesting)
Profit != Bad (Score:5, Interesting)
People are treating ATT like the scum of the Earth here, which they may be in their mobile business, but I can't see why expecting to break even is such an evil goal.
Pay phones here in Canada are up to $1 a call now, ridiculous, when it was a quarter merely a few years before. The downturn in usage means increased cost per call for the few people that still use them, which drives a cycle that forces everyone to get some sort of cell phone.
Both my brother (an academic) and my mother have pay-as-you-go plans, which cost them about $120 a year. That's really not too bad, considering they're light users. They enjoy the convenience of a cell phone, and also the security from being able to call emergency services wherever they may be, as opposed to having to locate the nearest (dwindling number) payphones.
I simply do not see pay phones as having any further use to our society. They were important pieces of technology from a bygone era, that's all.
Re:Good (Score:3, Interesting)
Payphones became worthless when... (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Presumably (Score:4, Interesting)
Hmmmm... With the dollar going off the cliff I might just be able to afford it.
Worse yet how will car run down trapped victims (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Good (Score:3, Interesting)
They've been phasing them out for some time now... (Score:2, Interesting)
The feeling of being out in a completely isolated, absolutely silent, gorgeous desert valley, yet receiving communications from all over the world, was indescribable. The 25+-mile, largely open-wire line even made strange pinging and popping sounds while one talked on it, which I later learned were distant lightning strikes being picked up on what amounted to a giant VLF antenna! I would imagine that someone would have heard similar sounds by hooking a speaker to an early transcontinental telegraph line.
Leave it to the government to destroy a very positive and innocent phenomenon that served to bring people together. I imagine the copper thieves would have pilfered the wire eventually anyway, but the Park Service's action was premature, selfish and uncalled for.
The death (murder?) of the MPB is a sad story, and was just the beginning of the end of the pay phone in general.
Re:No longer required.. (Score:1, Interesting)