A Brief History of the Payphone: 1984 to Today

 

This story begins in 1984, around the time of Bell Telephone’s breakup. That year was when the FCC deregulated interstate payphone service, although some states like Illinois and New York maintained strict regulations and taxes for local calls. During this decade and the 1990’s, a multitude of business owners, including shops and restaurant owners, installed payphones as a profit-generating mechanism (NY Times). The most enduring payphone of this deregulated era is the Protel 7000, last revised in 2002, and which can be found as “new unused stock” on two specialty websites. It turned out to be a reliable and easy-to-repair design. The model incorporated integrated circuits, and originally sold for $1,600 or so per unit; today the price is $300 per unit.

According to Pew Research, cell phone adaption in the US has increased from 60% to 95% from 2004 to present times. A decline in the number of payphones was first recorded in 2002, and over the past 3 years, the FCC has also noted that payphone revenue has decreased from 300 million to 250 million. The declining cost of long-distance calling meant that organizations such as hospitals and airports have set up no-cost phones. Without a coin mechanism, these are easier to maintain and replace.

Payphones continue to have a use where cell phones are prohibited, expensive or useless. Prisons, rural areas, courthouses, immigrant communities (who use low-rate phone cards to dial their home countries) are among current users. The last installation I have been able to find was in a North Carolina courthouse in 2014, where a new cell phone prohibition was put into place. Other devices have been labelled as “public interest payphones”, such as in New Jersey, where the state’s transit authority subsidizes payphones at transit centers.

Payphones may survive indefinitely in public buildings, at least while spare parts are still available. Under the PBX system, where a large number of office or hotel room phones route to a few outgoing lines (“Please dial your party’s extension”…”All lines are busy, please try again later”), there is no monthly cost to maintain a payphone. On the street, a payphone requires and individual line, which ups the margin of sustainability to three calls per day.

As of 2018, New York City possessed one-fifth of the United States’ 100,000 payphones. By a single action of the metropolis’ City Council, there are perhaps only 85,000 payphones left in the US. New York City has converted most payphones to free Wi-Fi, information kiosk, and telephone service under the name “City Link”. The most frequent call is made to the state’s EBT benefits hotline. This single-franchise system is subsidized by advertising revenue from CBS Outdoors, which had supported the city’s payphone network long after it had been dismantled in other cities. (NY Times).  New York City’s independent payphone operators, who emerged after major provider Verizon left the payphone business in 2011, were put out of work: “I guess I can become a taxi driver, later”, John Porter quipped. In other locales, the rules are more laissez-faire, and providers are free to enter and leave the trade. A private initiative, “Futel”, aimed at preserving payphones in the name of personal privacy and anonymity, has begun in Portland Oregon.

In theory, the payphone is an essential public service during a prolonged blackout. This was proven to be a benefit after Hurricane Sandy hit New York City in 2012. In practice, an average citizen without electricity could charge their cellphone using a car’s power port. With declining availability and reliability of the payphone network, citizens switched to using cell phones, a phenomenon recorded as early as 2003.  

I was last a regular payphone user in 2007, when my parents gave me my first cell phone. I last used a payphone in 2016, when my Apple iPhone had failed, leaving me stranded at an exurban trailer park after Sunday mass (I used Uber to get there, and needed a taxi to get back to the ship). What prompted my newfound interest in the old technology? I had a payphone in basement storage, which I had to move by June 1. I had purchased it on a whim two years earlier, fearing that it was the last chance to buy such a device. Weighing 50 pounds, I refused to store it on the second floor, so mounting it outside was the only sensible option. Intrinsically, it is an electronic device operating outside. Parts break, like the solenoid that I had to replace after two years in storage. There is a real possibility that I will lose the time and focus to service the device.

As a marine engineer, working with digital devices was a weak spot in my education and work. I had always deferred that work to shipboard electronics technicians, who were often retired from the US Navy. As a payphone owner, I had to run through troubleshooting procedures myself. 1990’s style programming, still used onboard many ships, was demystified enough for me.

When talking to the landline phone company, I was offered the “lowest business rate”, as required under state law; a savings of approximately $20 per month for a landline. The phone company (“incumbent local carrier”) also provided free use of the payphone booth, and additional assistance in repairing the line at no cost. As a selling point, I was offered a monthly contract, so I could pull this experiment at any time.

I got my hands wet in regulatory compliance. Reading the Code of Virginia and visiting the State Corporation Commission website, I paid my $4 payphone tax, and insert a “booth card” with the statutory language. More or less, I also gained experience in talking with the curious public.

While servicing my payphone, I had my first encounter with a Karen, or a neighbor who regularly calls law enforcement over quality-of-life issues. A concerned citizen had called the police about “someone messing with the payphone”. I had the proper keys, no big deal. The police officer, slightly younger than me, was impressed that somebody was practicing “a lost art”, an archaic trade that I recently learned.

 

References

Video Documentaries:

Dead Ringer, 2016. 

The Pay Phone Repairmen of New York City, Mashable, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH-FqLdqWLo

Hang Up, Hugo Massa, 2014.

https://vimeo.com/95554820

Articles:

A Payphone Can Be Yours and the Toll is Negotiable, NY Times, 1/18/1986

There are still 100,000 Pay Phones in America, CNN Business, 3/19/2018

https://money.cnn.com/2018/03/19/news/companies/pay-phones/index.html

What are those tall kiosks that have replaced payphones in New York?, NY Times, 1/11/2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/nyregion/what-are-those-tall-kiosks-that-have-replaced-pay-phones-in-new-york.html

On the Reasonable Use of Force

 

Duty to Retreat

In contrast to the Wild West, crowded East Coast cities discouraged the possession and use of weapons in self-defense, especially among the often-immigrant proletariat. In the book “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”, set in 1910’s New York, a father who shoots a child predator is congratulated by his neighbors and the responding police officer, but was ultimately fined for having an unregistered handgun.

The Baltimore Catechism notably favored state power in the form of just war and capital punishment, over the individual action of self-defense. This statist logic was followed by Congress through the 1990’s, when a decade-long Assault Weapon ban and effective death penalty statues were both put into law to combat crime. On taking a life in self-defense, the Baltimore Catechism (1891) stated: “When we are unjustly attacked and have no other means of saving our own lives”.

 

Castle Doctrine

In the midst of late-1960’s protests, Law-and-Order politicians told anxious voters that “your home is your castle”. Rising crime rates, overtaxed police, and inner-city blight made it more plausible than ever that citizens would need to exercise lethal force to protect their homes and businesses.

Bernie Goetz had had enough in 1984 when he was robbed in a New York City subway car. He fired off his handgun, injuring the four muggers. A New York jury affirmed Bernie Goetz’s right to self-defense, and he was only charged with illegal handgun possession. He earned the title of “Subway Vigilante”. Gary Fadden of Virginia, meanwhile, had the run-through by a prosecutor. Chased down on the country road by two armed drunks, he keyed into his workplace for refuge. Instead, the armed drunks had barged through the gate, and Fadden was forced to take a last stand. As part of his job with the firearm manufacturer, he had a machine gun in his possession, and fired it. “F--- you and your high-powered weapon”, one assailant shouted. Empty bullet casings were found near the assailant’s seat. Fadden was cornered in his workplace. Even so, the prosecutor chose to take Gary Fadden to court. The jury sided with Fadden; this was a clear-cut case of self-defense. While vindicated, Fadden was left with over $30,000 in court costs and legal fees; and ultimately lost his job.

 

Stand-Your-Ground

On the eve of passing its stand-your-ground law, Georgia had to reckon with a ghost in its closet. Lena Baker, a Black woman, was sent to the electric chair in 1945 for using deadly force against a White attacker, who happened to be her employer as a maid. She was posthumously pardoned in 2005, and Georgia’s stand-your-ground law took effect in 2006. Then as now, the benefits of stand-your-ground laws are seen as subject to the whims and prejudices of the jury.

 

What was Kyle Rittenhouse thinking?

Kyle Rittenhouse, age 17, the alleged shooter in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was neither owner, employee, neighbor, nor a duly registered security guard protecting an auto dealership across state lines from his Illinois home. Teen access to firearms has been a contentious issue this past decade. Most recently, the Virginia legislature affirmed the right of a 14-year old to use a firearm in home defense. (The premise of the new law is that firearms must now be secured from children under 14).

 Most likely, Rittenhouse was a teenager caught in the tenor of the times. In 1976, 17-year old Joseph Rakes jabbed a man with the American flag in protest of Boston school integration. He was later convicted of assault. Rittenhouse, of course, carried a deadly weapon. A Wisconsin jury will decide if the state should lock him up and throw away the key.

Coronavirus: A Public Act of Faith

Reason and Logic are two tools of a mature society. Sometimes, one exceeds the other in a given moment of time. Due to COVID-19’s diminutive size, use of fabric to prevent transmission was once considered to be “catching a fly with a barbed-wire fence”. This logic is often used by anti-mask individuals. Even if this analogy remains true, epidemiological evidence has shown that wearing a face covering greatly reduces the rate of transmission. The two people I know who recovered from COVID-19 had contracted the virus at Texas bars. These venues are characterized by casual contact, loosened inhibitions, and no face masks. On the larger scale, one could compare Black Lives Matter protests against a biker rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. Both types of events consisted of large, working-class crowds who had a significant risk of workplace exposure to the virus. Despite public concerns, the former events did not create a statistical spike in COVID-19 cases- mask-wearing was prevalent. The latter became a super-spreading event- mask-wearing was rare.  It is a reasonable assumption that mask-wearing helps prevent the transmission of coronavirus.

Faith in God, humanity, and so forth, has given way to great cynicism. In the late Middle Ages, farmers in Europe rotated their crops and used fertilizer for at least three centuries before a scientific explanation of soil nutrition was given. Good results meant that the practice spread beyond a renegade farmer’s field. And as those farmers rotated their crops, so let us have faith in masking up.