NEW YORK (Reuters) - Top U.S. phone company AT&T Inc said on Monday it plans to end its dwindling pay phone business by the end of 2008, as more consumers use mobile phones. The move affects AT&T pay phones in the company's previous 13-state service area, including California and Texas. BellSouth Corp, which AT&T acquired late last year, has already exited the pay phone business in its nine-state service area. Pay phones in the United States have declined across the industry from about 2.6 million phones in 1998 to an estimated 1 million phones today, AT&T said. The use of pay phones has been declining in much of the developed world due to the popularity of mobile phones. But some complain that ending pay phone service restricts low-income, low-credit consumers' access to communications. AT&T has grown its profit in recent years, as strong sales from its mobile phone and Internet business make up for a fall in traditional phone use. (Reporting by Ritsuko Ando, editing by Gerald E. McCormick) AT&T to end dwindling pay phone business - Yahoo! News
I thought that BellSouth ditched their payphones (this story confirms it for me)... so it makes sense that AT&T would do the same. Perhaps maintaining the payphones were more trouble than they are worth. In my area, when Sprint spun off its landline division, their payphones were part of the spinoff as well. I havent seen many payphones in town except at the libraries or at the bus terminal... and those arent used too often... more often than not, they are out of order. When I went to Atlanta last week, I saw this payphone that charges only fifteen cents for unlimited local calls ... Maybe this is a ploy to get people to use the payphone???
There's a payphone at the gas station down the street that will call anywhere in the US for $0.25 for the first 3 minutes. -Jay
This is a bit of trivia. In 1970 AT&T ( the old AT&T ) made more money on its payphones than the CocaCola Company and the Campbell Soup Company put together.
Wirelessly posted (Walkguru's: Opera/9.50 (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini/4.0.9800/209; U; en)) i guess we shulda seen this comming.
Remember how much it used to be to call from a payphone? I remember when I was 17 (late 80's) my starter died and I could not start my car. I was stuck at the mall which was about a mile past the local calling area for my house. I had to scrape up about $3 in change from the seats of my car to make that 2 minute call to Dad so he could come down and help me get the car started. -Jay
LMAOL! THat's awesome! In most countries around the world, pay phones are used with phone cards (an unknown concept here in the US) so pay phones are still popular around the world. It may be weird when tourists come here and they can't find any pay phones. Basically, you buy a phone card at any store. The phone card is basically a smart card that you insert in the pay phone and the phone computes your credit from there. It's a good idea considering that this way the phone companies no longer have to pay someone to go around collecting the coins out of the pay phones.
Phone cards used to be popular, but then the pay phone operators got upset because the phone cards were accessed by toll free numbers, and they were not getting any revenue. They lobbied congress to get a law passed that required phone card users to pay a fee to use the pay phone. This caused the cost of phone card calls to rise to the point that they were not economically feasible anymore, and it was cheaper to buy a cell phone. -Jay
The place where I work had their SBC/AT&T pay phones pulled a couple years ago because they were getting out of the business back than. We bought our own pay phones, hooked them up to our pbx, and they're a customer service that costs us nothing in ongoing costs. The only reason we charge 25 cents is that they couldn't be programmed any lower. We didn't want it completely free for obvious reasons.
Years ago I had a pager with an 800 number. When I got the bill it indicated what calls came from a pay phone and charged me a premium for each pay phone call. There is still a need for pay phones but it is small.
