When was the last time you used a pay phone?
Pay Phones Suffer As Cell Phone Use Rises
With rising cell phone use and vandalism and neglect taking their toll, pay phones are disappearing around the nation. Consumer activists and advocates for the poor have protested the drop in numbers – saying that public phones are necessary in emergencies and represent a lifeline for those who can’t afford a cell phone or even a landline.
“If you have a cell phone, you hardly look for the pay phones,” said 25-year-old Sayed Mizan, listening to his iPod on a subway platform. “Besides, most of the time if you see the pay phones, they’re either out of order or they’re too filthy to touch.”
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Nationwide, the number of pay phones has dropped by half to approximately 1 million over the last nine years, according to an estimate by the American Public Communications Council, a trade association for independent pay phone operators.
A full 7.1 percent of the nation’s households had no phone of any kind in November 2005, up from 4.7 percent three years earlier, according to the Federal Communications Commission.
I’m sure that our land line telco doesn’t makes a profit off of us. We live a couple of miles from a small town. A very small town. The cost of stringing the wire along our road, rent on the poles, and upkeep surely aren’t covered by the monthly charge. Yet, they are required to service us in order to access that larger city 20 miles away with all its profitable commercial accounts. That is a cost of doing business.
27,
then you dont know the basics of Cellphones, and radios.
1. is that the ONLY digital setups are in Big cities, 50-60% of the cell system STILL isnt digital.
2, analog?? secure?? NOT… even with scrambling it isnt, as ALL the formats have been copied, and can be descrambled.
3. digital security?? LMAO.. Did you know that to get the Cell system up, that ALL the codes had to be ABLE to be recorded, and Unscrambled by our government. So WHAT you got 65,000 codes, Even if it takes me a week, I can descramble your call.
Since I’m an avowed hater of cellphones, I do use pay phones. Most are now privately owned and charge .50 cents or more and are card accessable.
#11 Rod…I sure hope you wrote that with tongue in cheek.
I take it you are having a problem Gary finding a place to change into your blue tights. 🙂
I strongly disagree that payphones should go. Payphones apart from being part of history, still has a function in the 21st century. Not every person has a cell phone, and payphones can be a lifesaver. Not everyone will call if they see peoiple in trouble you would be amazed at the number of people who would just walk by. No I say keep payphones, and lets face it what are you going to do if your cell phone battery packs up at 3am with no one about what are you going to do then?