Bob Collins
On Monday, AT&T announced it would get out of the “shrinking payphone business” in 2008.
Shrinking? That’s charitable.
Payphones, in an age of cellphones, are virtually non-existent. Its death is also a testament to the inability to revive a dying industry through government action. In 1996, the Federal Communications Commission deregulated payphone rates, hoping it would encourage a little action with more competition. That didn’t work; an estimated 40 percent of remaining payphones were removed last year, and with them the opportunity for many of us to talk to strangers, just because we can.
I wanted to survey the use of payphones by Minnesotans today, to find out how often people who answer payphones, use payphones.
I needn’t have bothered.
The Luverne Laundry, The Standard station in Monticello, Hoffman’s Oak Lake Camp in Kerrick, the Choo Char Bar in Maple Plain, the Trucker’s Inn in Faribault, Albatross in Mankato, Bemidji State College, Marion’s Cafe in Parkers Prairie, Econowash in Moorhead and WalMart in Mankato came up as disconnected, mostly because payphones don’t take incoming calls anymore.
Back in the day, it wasn’t always so. A social phenomenon, calling payphones at random just to see who answered, depended on it. The Payphone Project, started by Mark Thomas of New York and inspired by a David Letterman bit, encouraged random contacts among strangers.
“It has been largely moot for some time,” Thomas said Tuesday. “I’ve found that many payphones that do actually take incoming calls, ring so faintly that no one would ever hear it.”
I talked to Mark on my dime. All of these are in RealAudio format.
