GTE Automatic Electric 120-type single-slot coin phone in Santa Monica, CA (2004)

A picture of a payphone that still accepts money

Locations

Payphones are often found in public places, transportation hubs such as airports or train stations, and on street corners. By agreement with the landlord, either the phone company pays rent for the location and keeps the revenue, or the landlord pays rent for the phone and shares the revenue. In recent years, deregulation in the United States has allowed private companies to provide pay phone services to businesses; such arrangements are called Customer Owned Coin Operated Telephones (COCOTs). In some cases, particularly at gas stations, payphones are mounted in drive-up structures in which people in automobiles can make calls while still in their vehicles.

United States

In the United States, the coin rate for a local direct-dialed station-to-station call from a payphone has been 50¢ in most areas for an unlimited number of minutes. As late as the 1970's, the same call typically cost 10¢. While some areas only cost 5¢, smaller companies occasionally charged as high as 15¢ to 20¢. Over the years the price of a call gradually changed to 20¢, and again rose to 25¢ in some areas between 1985 and 1990. In the late 1990s, the price rose to 35¢ in many areas.

AT&T payphone signage.

The decline of payphones supported and maintained by telephone companies due to widespread mobile phone usage has been in contrast to social advocates who consider them a communication necessity for low income people. Nevertheless, on December 3, 2007, AT&T announced that they will sell all 60,000 pay phones they operate. The company claims that they will exit the pay phone business before it becomes unprofitable.http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/business/04phone.html

United Kingdom

In the UK, as in the USA, payphones have been deregulated. The great majority of them are still operated by British Telecom but there are other providers, mostly in urban areas. Birmingham, Leicester, London and Nottingham now have a greater concentration of non-BT payphones.

Japanese Public IC TEL

Pricing

Currently most (BT) payphones charge £0.40 for the first 20 minutes of any direct dialled national geographic call. Previously (before November 2006) the minimum charge was £0.30, before 2004 it was £0.20 and before 2000 it was £0.10.

Timeline

• 1891: William Gray patents his coin-operated telephone
• 1920: General Post Office (United Kingdom) introduces K1 public telephone kiosk

Device

• Nortel Centurion 1970s-1980s
• Nortel Millennium 1990s
• QuorTech Millennium 1990s-present
• QuorTech Olympian 5501 1990s-present
• GTE Automatic Electric 120-type

See also

• Telephone booth
• Red telephone box

External links

• World Payphone Images
• 2600: Payphones of the World
• Stylized Payphones from Brazil
• For North America:
  • Payphone Project
  • Payphone Directory
  • The McPayphone Database
  • YAPL: Yet Another Payphone List
  • Independent Payphone Provider

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