atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General Telecom News AT&T announces death of pay phone by end of 2008

Company says independent companies will pick up the slack.

https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-The-Death-Of-The-Pay-Phone-89905

I'll still keep a couple of quarters in my wallet. Sometimes I miss hanging payphones. I never did find an easy way to replace a hopper in the Protels and 5501s (w/ the Elcotel boards). Rest In Peace!! :bow: Thanks for posting the link to the article!

It does not surprise me. They took all the payphones out at my HS several years ago, and took them out at UT as well.

Please keep post to facts only!
Not personal opinion or jokes.

Payphones have been disappearing slowly in the U.K. for some years. There was an item on the local TV news a while ago about a village which was compaigning to keep its payphone when BT wanted to ax it.

Back 50, 40, even just 30 years ago in a lot of small communities a sizeable proportion of houses had no phone at all, so the village payphone was heavily used. Nowadays, rural payphones operate at a huge loss, and large numbers have been withdrawn.

Even the cities have far fewer payphones than in the past.

I honestly can not remember the last time I used a pay phone ! I don't think it was within this century though.

I'm kind of sad to see it. Being a phone geek, I liked the ability to identify who the LEC was in areas served by independent telcos. Their pay phones always gave me the answer. In some cases, you could tell from a block away until the COCOTs came along.

A big part of this issue is that hardly anybody carries coins anymore and credit card processing is too expensive. The telcos can't afford to keep them, which is understandable. Verizon is still pretty active with them around this area, but there aren't nearly as many as there used to be.

R.I.P. 1D2!

I have two pay phones that I take care of when they have problems. I doubt they make enough off them for my service call, heck I know they don't. Of course these are privately owned, but that's why the big boys are dumping them.

As a matter of interest, what's the minimum payphone charge (TelCo phone) in your respective areas now?

Over here BT payphones are now a 40-pence minimum (about 80 U.S. cents).

Ed, what is a 1D2?

The AT&T/Bell standard payphone Jeff.

Is that a USOC or a part number?

Part/ID The actual comcode number were a lot longer.

Jeff:

The 1D2 is Western Electric's last "dumb" coin telephone, still used largely by most Bell companies. It's the one with the coin return on the left and has the handset cord coming out of the front face of the phone rather than the side.

There are still plenty of them out there. As for your question, every Bell System part, even Band-Aids, ashtrays, cardboard boxes and trash cans had a nine-digit comcode for ordering purposes. Most comcodes that began with 4XX indicated that they were made by outside manufacturers. 1D2 is just a model/revision number, like a pink 2500 set which has it's own unique nine-digit comcode.

These phones are referred to as "dumb" because all of the call cost calculations were done by equipment in the CO. Aside from the obvious physical strength, they were just the equivalent of a 2500 set inside. Of course, they do have a coin accept/reject relay. Here's a picture of the one that I have in my basement. I'm sure that you've seen these before in Ohio Bell territory, or was that Ameritech, or was that SBC or was that at&t?

The oldest one I ever worked on was a Model 147, built in the 30's.

All things inside were WOOD.

I think the one in my "stash" is a 197, I will have to dig it out to be sure.

When I started with SWBT, back in '65, most of the Pay Phones were equipped with a ROTARY DIAL and they were "3 Slot" that is, they had a seperate slot for a nickel, a dime and a quarter.

When you placed an OPERATOR ASSISTED CALL, the operator would verify what coins you put in by listening to the sound the coins made.

As you dropped coins into the slot, they would pass through the "COIN SLOT" and certain bells or a gong would sound.

The Quarter gong was the lowest sound.

Of course, as time changed, electronics took over.

The "MULTI SLOT" was replaced with the SINGLE SLOT you see today.

And then we went to the TOTALIZER technology.

That device sent a number of tones based on the coin dropped into the slot.

The product numbers went from the 233 range to the 1A1 (Rotary) to 1A2 (Touch Tone).

But alas, I know the Pay Phone is a dying breed.

I only wish I could have scored that old one in the South Dallas Laundry Mat.

I have 2 Nortel QSD2400's in stock that I rent out every summer to a fair near by.

Never wanted to do that, but they just about kissed my ^%$# to avoid paying Bell $450 per just for the week.

I try every year to convince them that they don't need them with 6 year olds walking around with cell phones. They insist they do in case of an emergency.

The last time I used one it was 35 cents for a local call but it has probably increased by now.

50 cents here, that is if you can find one

Fifty cents in DC, Virginia and Maryland.

75 cents in some places in Wisconsin.

In the Boston area, 50 cents for local calls. No time limit.

This is a pay phone outside of a shop near my Long Island office in Plainview... notice anything odd about it considering it's location?

Yeah, it's only about 500 miles north of BellSouth territory! It is obviously a COCOT.

It only costs 25 cents?

We don't actually have any distinction between local and long-distance here anymore (for either payphones or private lines). The 40-pence coinphone charge covers up to 20 minutes, however far away the call.

There's a good assortment of British payphones on this page:

https://www.telephonesuk.co.uk/kiosks_payphones.htm

The No. 600 dating from the early 1980s is the oldest public coinphone still in use. A lot of the phones toward the bottom of the page are ones which were/are the equivalent of COCOTs, typically used in pubs, clubs, hotels, etc.

I thought they dumped them a long time ago. I havn't made a pay phone call in years.... probably the last time was from an airport back in the 80's.

[paranoid matt]

I wonder if (in the times we live in) the gov't also has a hand in this, to prevent calls being made that they can't necessarily trace to a specific individual. Of course other then the cameras (seemingly every 15 feet) that are tied back to the citizen control center. Maybe if someone mounted a camera inside the payphone they would make a comeback.

[/paranoid matt]

We still have one that we service. The hills at the ski resort play heck with cell phone reception.

what's a cocot?

Customer Owned Coin Operated Telephone.

25 cent local calls in my area is the cheapest, but they are definitely dying quickly here. When I do see someone on one I doubt they are on an actual call, they're probably up to something or killing time...

Like most, haven't used 1 in years, my wife tells me the one outside wally world where she works is 75 cents. John C. (Not Garand)

Interesting post. thanks for that.

Sad but most payphones gets mistreated anyway. Some people that use these phones have no manners.

Nothing better than using a phone that someone may have spit on once or twice..

This explains why I lost a couple pay phones around the corner. But this is just the Exit of AT&T/SBC payphones. I still have Pellican Phones and Verizon Phones but the Verizons or 75 cents a call.

In the last few months many of the payphones outside of towns in my local area have become non-coin phones, the coin slots being blanked off and "No coins accepted" stickers being placed on the outside of the booths. It seems to represent BT's latest policy of trying to maintain the phones for emergencies or so people can use calling cards etc., but without having to go and empty coin boxes regularly.

Paul, the people in your area must be geniuses compared to idiots around here.

As I stated above, I rent out two every year for a fair.

I have to temporarily disconnect one so they can use the line for OTB (Off-Track Betting).

While disconnected, I post signs all over it in LARGE letters, in English & French saying that it is Temporarily O/O/S and to use the other one. I was having a coffee and sitting near the phones and sure enough you should have seen the number of idiots that would drop in the coins and try to dial THROUGH the paper that was covering the dial pad. The coin mehanism is rigged so the coins go straight into the box, no refundss. Easiest money I ever made and just about %*#@*%'d my pants while watching.

dave, that the brome fair?

Payphones here in NYC are either .25 or .50 - depending (I think Verizon's are .25 qnd other peoples are .50)

My wife (who's younger then me) remembers not having a phone in the house when she was young. Everyone in the apartment building she lived in used the coin phone in Rosie's candy Store downstairs. Neighborhood kids would hang out by the phone and answer it and then go to the called party's home and notify them that they had a call. My wife said that there was a standard tip for doing this, but she doesn't remember what it was (it couldn't have been too much). This was in East NY (Brooklyn) about 45-50 years ago.

Sam

Here's my old GTE payphone in my garage. It works great as a 'piggy bank' :dance:

Jay....

No it's the Ayer's Cliff Fair around the 26th of August. Always the week before Brome.

Brome is in DuoTel's territory. He's a buddy of mine & the guy that watches my area as I do his when either is away, plus we help each other out in many ways....ideas, parts, etc.

Tried to get him on here, but he's not too computer savy...

ahh, interesting, we have the ormstown fair in my backyard, bell drops off this trailer and dodge ram van with holes in its sides to provide 2 banks of phones one at each end of the site

we still have a few $0.25 payphones in downtown Lancaster but most of them around here are $0.50 now. in some of the rougher neighborhoods the payphones are turned off after dark to discourage the crackheads from calling out for delivery.

i remember building a device known as a 'red box' in high school.. it generated the same tones as the payphone to signal money being dropped in - one beep for a nickel, two for a dime, five for a quarter. we used to place calls just for the heck of it but our fun ended somewhere along the line. instead of our 'free' calls going through, an operator would come on and ask us to try using real money. too bad, because college kids would pay upwards of $300 for 'em! =)

btw, is this one in Cedar Rapids, IA?

anyone know where i can find any internal parts for a W.E. single slot rotory dial payphone?

SP1KERZ. This is a two year old thread. I bet if you were to start a new thread in a forum like "Antique Phones" or use the "search" feature you may find what you are looking for....

And, 93mdk93, Cedar Rapids is at the north end of I380 in the NE part of Iowa.

:toothy:

But Ken! It's like it was only just yesterday!

Interesting discussion none-the-less. I'm pretty sure the last time I used a payphone was prior to 1992 when I had a 'car phone' installed in my '91 Astro. Then shortly thereafter, a cell phone on my hip full-time ever since...

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by dwflood:
<strong> </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by KLD:
<strong> SP1KERZ. This is a two year old thread.
:dance:

I have a few payphones in and around Calgary they make lots of coin. The moment the phone stops working it gets smashed LOL! They even make money when they don't work people still put coins in them. Here's picture of a payphone in need of repair https://www.contact-directconnect.com/Work%20Pictures%20026.jpg

I love the picture of that antique payphone would like one in my garage :toast: