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Wiz Imp

(2,347 posts)
132. There are still pay phones in the US
Sat Dec 21, 2024, 11:08 PM
9 hrs ago

but there are less than 100000 left.

https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/pay-phones-coming-back-free.htm

There Are Still Many Phoneless People

The slow death of the pay phone has been harder for some people than for others. Though the vast majority of Americans now own some kind of cell phone, there are still some — including impoverished or unhoused people — who depend on the availability of public pay phones.

In some cities, innovators are working to solve the problem. Futel is a project based in Portland, Oregon, that updates old pay phones to provide free calls and voicemail. It has eight outdoor, pay phone-style phones in Portland, plus one in Long Beach, Washington, and one each in Ypsilanti and Detroit, Michigan. "Denial of telephony services has long been a tactic used against undesirable populations," write Futel's founders, "and our devices will counteract that."

In Philadelphia, an "amateur phone collective" called PhilTel is doing more than just preserving old pay phones: They're installing new ones, minus the "pay" part. The project aims to create a network of phones that make free calls anywhere in North America.


though I guess if they're free, they're no longer payphones.

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