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Concept
Payphone
Summary
A payphone (alternative spelling: pay phone) is typically a coin-operated public telephone, often located in a telephone booth or in high-traffic outdoor areas, with prepayment by inserting money (usually coins), swiping a credit or debit card, or using a telephone card. (To use the latter, a user calls the provided toll-free telephone number, enters the card account number and PIN, then dials the desired telephone number.) In the 20th century, payphones in Spain and other countries took locally-sold tokens instead of legal-tender coins.
The company that operates the payphone generally pays either rent or a revenue share to the owner of the property where the phone is installed.
Invented in the late 19th century, payphones became ubiquitous worldwide in the 20th, enough to contribute to the notion of universal access to basic communication services. In the late 1920s, the cost of a payphone call in the United States was two cents. In the 1930s, calls were five cents. Early in the 21st century, the price of a call was fifty cents. The arrival of mobile phones led to the near-extinction of payphones. New York City once had 30,000 payphones. A few do remain, despite incorrect reports that the city removed the last public payphone in 2022.
In 2021, Telstra made its public pay phones free (for national calls), for three main reasons:
in emergencies such as when bush fires damaged mobile phone towers, etc.
declining revenue started to make collection of coins costly by comparison.
as a service for people without mobile phones.
Most payphones in Canada are owned and operated by large telecom providers such as Bell, Telus, and SaskTel. In the last 20 years, customer-owned coin-operated telephones (COCOT) have also appeared in the market, but their numbers are smaller due to the emergence of mobile phones.
The cost of most local payphone calls is 50 cents CAD, having increased from 25 cents since 2007. Payphones in Alberta were 35 cents for a time, but in most jurisdictions the price simply doubled.
Official source
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