Engineer Restores Pay Phones For Free Public Use (npr.org) 55
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Patrick Schlott often finds himself in a cellular dead zone during his drive to work. "You go down the road, you turn the corner and you're behind a mountain and you'll lose cell coverage pretty fast," he says. The 31-year-old electrical engineer says poor reception is a common frustration for residents of Vermont's Orange County. To address this issue, he's providing his community with a new way to stay connected.
Schlott has taken old pay phones, modified them to make free calls, and set them up in three different towns across the county. He buys the phones secondhand from sites like eBay and Craigslist and restores them in his home workshop. With just an internet connection, these phones can make calls anywhere in the U.S. or Canada -- no coins required. And Schlott covers all the operating costs himself. "It's cheap enough where I'm happy just footing the bill," he says. "You know, if I'm spending $20 a month on, say, Netflix, I could do that and provide phone service for the community. And to me, that's way more fun." Hundreds of calls have been made since the first phone was installed back in March last year. "I knew there would be some fringe cases where it would be really helpful," says Schlott. "But I never expected it to get daily use and for people to be this excited about it."
"One of the cornerstones that I want to stick to is, no matter what happens on the backend, the calls will always be free," he says. "And I will figure out a way to make that happen."
Schlott has taken old pay phones, modified them to make free calls, and set them up in three different towns across the county. He buys the phones secondhand from sites like eBay and Craigslist and restores them in his home workshop. With just an internet connection, these phones can make calls anywhere in the U.S. or Canada -- no coins required. And Schlott covers all the operating costs himself. "It's cheap enough where I'm happy just footing the bill," he says. "You know, if I'm spending $20 a month on, say, Netflix, I could do that and provide phone service for the community. And to me, that's way more fun." Hundreds of calls have been made since the first phone was installed back in March last year. "I knew there would be some fringe cases where it would be really helpful," says Schlott. "But I never expected it to get daily use and for people to be this excited about it."
"One of the cornerstones that I want to stick to is, no matter what happens on the backend, the calls will always be free," he says. "And I will figure out a way to make that happen."
Just an internet connection (Score:2)
Wtf?
How exactly is the internet connection done? A really long cable?
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He is setting these up in towns with existing wires and cabling.
Re:Just an internet connection (Score:5, Funny)
Your first guess is super long cable?
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So you think it's realistic for this guy to have run "really long cables" with the implied need to either burry or hang them and all the costs that entails?
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Re:Just an internet connection (Score:5, Insightful)
Because people with phones may not be around at convenient times when you need to make a call. And the lack of public pay phones is precisely the issue being addressed here - most people moved over to cell phones, so either they dont carry change for the few public pay phones which do still exist, or the phone companies either removed them or stopped fixing them after they were last vandalised.
This guy said he set the phones up because he lost cell phone reception during his drive to work - he may work antisocial hours, so he cant just knock on someones door when he gets a flat at 3am.
And lots of people would be concerned about their own safety knocking on random strangers doors - especially in society today.
So this guy is giving people the option to make calls in cell phone dead zones, because thats what *he* saw as missing. Good on him.
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This will be dead shortly. The local monopoly will get a law passed to prohibit this.
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Wtf?
How exactly is the internet connection done? A really long cable?
A series of tubes.
"modified them to make free calls" (Score:4, Insightful)
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+1. In my home town, the pay phone by the high school was used for exactly two things: calling parents to pick kids up after away games and calling in fake bomb threats(*) to get out of tests. I would expect similar behavior from public phones today, sadly, minus the kids calling their parents part.
* When I was a freshman, this is what the seniors told me people had done in previous years. I cannot corroborate the story with any actual evidence. Also notable: this was in the early 90s, before school sh
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I suspect the payphone by the high school issue is caused by THE HIGH SCHOOL. If you do not put a free payphone by a high school, you will not have that issue.
These are free phones in remote areas where cell phones do not work. I suspect that there are no high school students near those areas.
Effort (Score:4, Informative)
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Because people will hike out to the middle of nowhere to manually make abusive phone calls when they can get a free untraceable VoIP number from anything that can use the internet, including burner smartphones.
Sounds like all he needs to do is set it up to record the calls and place some hidden cameras nearby, then start the extortion. Why didn’t I think of this?
nerdvittles + BulkVS rock! (Score:2)
This will be abused in a nanosecond and then he'll claim he doesn't understand why people are so terrible.
NPR isn't exactly news for tech nerds, so some technical details might be light. The article seems to address everything is a volunteer effort for the community, including refurbishing old pay phones while it doesn't address the cost of using the PSTN network, (or internet connection).
I just came here to say I was forced to leave my prior PSTN provider a year or two ago so I switched to BulkVS [nerdvittles.com] and I can see why this particular tech nerd doesn't mind something like a Netflix subscription cost to support and
Re:"modified them to make free calls" (Score:4, Insightful)
This will be abused in a nanosecond and then he'll claim he doesn't understand why people are so terrible.
Whether it's abused or not, you can almost guarantee that now that it's getting public notice, some telecom will *CLAIM* it's being abused to the point of illegality just because he's providing somethin free to people that *SHOULD BE PAYING* for the privilege. If at all possible, they have the poor bastard arrested for trying to do a public good. Do not provide free things in a capitalist society. It will get you bent over a barrel.
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Well, the FOSS community won against the frivolous lawsuits and has been providing free things without being "bent over a barrel" ever since.
A lot of charities provide free things without harm coming to them.
People give free money through sites like GoFundMe all the time.
Of course, that doesn't mean that this specific instance is entirely safe. Once his phones are used for crime, there will be issues of liability to sort
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But it's not generally true that providing anything for free will bring harm to a person.
But ... but ... "capitalist society"? Outrage? Something something?
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This will be abused in a nanosecond and then he'll claim he doesn't understand why people are so terrible.
This, I'm old enough to remember when payphones were commonplace. First they had rubber cords connecting the handsets, as these were cut regularly they started using braided cords, then steel braided cords (like a high end brake line) then finally steel coil sleeves... and scrotes would still go out with bolt cutters on occasion. All that did was ensure that those who wanted to casually damage a payphone needed to put in more of an effort to do so than a pair of scissors. It reduced vandalism but didn't sto
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When Australia's public telco was privatised in the late 90s, one of the first things they stopped caring about (I mean after customer service, their staff and actual telephony service) was the payphones they were supposed to maintain. In the early 00s they argued that mobile phones had become ubiquitous enough that they didn't need maintain the public telephone infrastructure. As this was the same government who privatised them it was bought without question.
I hate Australian telcos as much as the next guy, but about the *only* thing they have done right this century is to update the remaining old payphones to make it free to call anyone in Australia.
From memory, there's a government mandate to provide telecommunications to all citizens, and Telstra receives a pile of government money each year to maintain those payphones... these two links are the best I can find though: https://www.telstra.com.au/exc... [telstra.com.au]
https://www.abc.net.au/news/20... [abc.net.au]
Details? (Score:3)
We get zero technical details. No financial details. What is the point of this story?
$20/mo. may cover a SIP trunk, but it doesn't cover the internet connection cost, the hardware cost, the time(labor) cost, the fraud cost...
I'd also really like to know how he keeps getting national media coverage at least once a month for the past several months.
Re:Details? (Score:5, Informative)
There are no details needed. A payphone is just a regular phone.
Sure it has bits that collect money and such, but those are completely secondary to the purpose of making a phone call.
You can just wire it up to a POTS line and it will work as normal.
The signalling and handling of money is done completely on the exchange end - payphones are hooked to a payphone register that handles the money part by watching the signalling on the lines (they used to be tones, but later on they were based on shorting out the lines in special ways). The payphone register would then tell the switch that it got paid and how much it got paid and to connect it as usual. The switch would tell the register what to do - return the money or keep the money and this was signalled back by sending a DC voltage of one polarity or another.
If you wanted to run a payphone for free, you just hook it up - it acts like a normal phone because the "pay" part is separate from the "phone" part. If he wanted he could use a normal phone to do the same thing, but I suspect it might not last as long.
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We get zero technical details. No financial details. What is the point of this story?
There are no details needed. A payphone is just a regular phone.
You can just wire it up to a POTS line and it will work as normal.
... and then?
I may be wrong (and how would we know, given the lack of details), but it doesn't sound like he's hooking these up to POTS lines. AFAICT, they're eventually doing a VoIP call at some point. I *think* they're connecting to nearby WiFi, then either direct to the provider or through an intermediate system and then onto the provider. Either way, what hardware and software bits are being added to the phones to make that work?
If you wanted to run a payphone for free, you just hook it up - it acts like a normal phone because the "pay" part is separate from the "phone" part. If he wanted he could use a normal phone to do the same thing, but I suspect it might not last as long.
Pretty sure you're dead wrong, at least as far as this situation and just h
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Thanks for the alternate article! The additional info in it:
“Basically, there’s a small piece of equipment that converts an internet telephone line to an analog line that these phones can operate off of,” he said. ... ... $2-$3 a month for each phone line and less than $5 a month for calls
And the adapter you linked is $30. Searching for similar stuff shows it's one of the cheapest ones on Amazon.
So... that more-or-less confirms that he's not simply hooking them up to the POTS. But it also leaves open how it's being implemented... which is what any self respecting slashdot reader should be interested in. I'm amazed how far this story has spread with so few details and so little variation in the reporting. Like, where is this guy's gi
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It's just a VoIP to POTS adapter. You know, those little devices you can buy that either have an Ethernet port on one side and POTS on the other. Cheaper ones have a USB port and relied on your PC to make the connection. You can even buy ones that use Bluetooth and connect the POTS to your cellphone.
Surely we're not oblivious to the fact those ATA (analog telephone adapters) existed? Cisco/Linksys was a prominent manufacturer of one. And if you want to interface to a telephone, they are a stupidly cheap way
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He said he "needs an internet connection" so the phone isn't being connected to a POTS line.
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The signalling and handling of money is done completely on the exchange end
That was far from universal, as anyone with a red box 30 years ago could tell you.
Later payphones were surprisingly 'smart'. Not only could handle payments, they could even be scheduled to call home to report. Others you had to initial the call,and hope no one answered! Sometime around the turn of the century, I worked on a project that used that data to create dynamic collection routes.
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You could use them on a POTS line, but basically you have to disconnect most of the circuits and and the ones from a regular telephone.
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If I were doing it I'd look for an old POTS to SIP gateway device on eBay and use that. No need for a phone line, which these days tends to be expensive. Just an internet connection and SIP service, or he could even be running his own.
how are you getting internet for $20/mo in cell de (Score:2)
how are you getting internet for $20/mo in cell dead zones?
Re: how are you getting internet for $20/mo in cel (Score:5, Informative)
The pictures show that the phones are indoors. So most likely he provides this to store owners that get it connected to their existing business electrical and internet connection.
The businesses will see the benefits of increasing customer satisfaction and increased sales.
I'm just guessing but I can see this as a viable solution.
Re: how are you getting internet for $20/mo in cel (Score:4, Informative)
Ring ring ring (Score:1)
I like how the article author's last name was "Ring"
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Skype (Score:2)
So he's using old handsets to control skype on their local computer. Tell me if this is somehow not what's going on.
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Since Skype no longer exists, no.
Re:Skype (Score:4, Interesting)
So he's using old handsets to control skype on their local computer. Tell me if this is somehow not what's going on.
That's not what is going on [nerdvittles.com].
kudos these types of stories keep me ... (Score:1)
... hooked to slashdot.
nice selfless effort by Dr. Ring .
Good, but Ham and GMRS has it's places (Score:2)
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Next, ... (Score:2)
John Draper is that you? (Score:2)
You mean I can shelf my Cap’n Crunch whistle and still screw Ma Bell for free?
Liability? (Score:1)
Is he liable for criminal, and or fraudulent use?
Across the pond (Score:2)
Here in the UK many payphones have been removed much to my annoyance as I see the access of such facilities as a modern right, certainly for emergency calls.
Sure, most of the time most people even myself are reaching for the mobile phone, but I'm very much aware of the crazy state of mobile network coverage, and with the threat of 2G shutdown that will make coverage way worse.
In 2025 I frequently laugh as I try to browse the web or stream a short low quality youtube video or use a radio stations app to stre
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They had to remove them because people were upset at finding themselves in a different century as soon as they entered.