Payphone

This article is about the American English name for a public telephone. For the song by Maroon 5, see Payphone (song).

A payphone (alternative spelling: pay phone) is typically a coin-operated public telephone, often located in a telephone booth or a privacy hood, with pre-payment by inserting money (usually coins) 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

Telus payphone in Golden, British Columbia

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 (COCOT) 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 (typically $1 for three minutes) than incumbent providers (whose rates start near $5 for the first minute).

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, (Template:Lang-ge), and integrated test program setting. It has a remote maintenance, the independent reports of a background system by means of an integrated modem error (for example, defects in components, lack of listeners), operating states (for example, full coin box) or departures (for example standing open the cartridge mounting door, missing coin) 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 (BG) and the secured below the growing payphone cassettes with the coin box.

India

Main article: Public call office

Japan

The majority of payphones on the street and in buildings in Japan are installed and maintained by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT).

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 (listen to an anecdote, to obtain legal advice, find the address of the subscriber by phone number, etc.). 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 (PRB-69) or replace the card reader (ACP-69). 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 (with the answer or the expiration of the paid period of time). 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 (California) 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.

A Verizon payphone on a street corner in the Eastern United States

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 (COCOT), 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 (47¢-39¢, inflation adjusted terms as above). 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 (in the case of many pre-paid calling cards) 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

Main article: Red telephone box

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.

Call prefix	Type of call	Seconds per 10p block	Cost per minute
01	To BT landline	900	0.67p
0870	Non-geographic	30	20p
079	Mobile	9.5	63p

Timeline

• 1891: William Gray patents his coin-operated telephone
• 1920: General Post Office (United Kingdom) introduces K1 public telephone kiosk

Devices

• Intellicall AstraTel 2 Smart Payphone (2011–present)
• Intellicall UltraTel Smart Payphone (1980s–present)
• Intellicall Tidel 3 (1990s–present)
• GTE Automatic Electric 120-type

In popular culture

Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) using a payphone at a bus terminal in Death Wish 3. Its number was 212-244-9466

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 movie starred Alex Winter who also appeared in Death Wish 3 which also showed a payphone being used. See the photo with caption to the left.

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 (1-760-733-9969) to an open conference bridge in 2013.

In an episode of The Brady Bunch, Mike Brady sees that the six Brady children are constantly fighting over the use of the house phone, and tying up the line. He tries to solve the problem by installing a payphone in the house.

In Cheech & Chong's Next Movie the title characters have a payphone in the house instead of a telephone.

Cheech gesturing to Chong (off camera) to answer the ringing payphone in Next Movie.

Gallery of payphones

• 

  Old time dime payphone

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  Japanese Public IC TEL

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  Bicycle payphone in Uganda

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  GTE Automatic Electric 120-type single-slot coin phone in Santa Monica

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  Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) using a payphone to call his friend Charlie from a bus terminal in Death Wish 3.

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  AT&T payphone signage

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  Toronto payphones covered with graffiti and bills.

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  Payphone in Ashgabat

• 

  A payphone in India.

See also

• Red telephone box
• Telephone booth

External links

• Pay phones: Is That Still A Thing? in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
• 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 (TV) shows that portray the use of a payphone