Fergie's Tech Blog

Vanishing pay phones in U.S. cause concern

A New York Times article by Katie Zezima, via The International Herald Tribune, reports that:

The pay phone in the dirt parking lot of the Acworth General Store here is not terribly impressive, its base coated in grime and a plastic-covered phone book hanging limply from its metal frame.

But to residents of this village of 150 people in southwestern New Hampshire, it is a phone worth fighting for. The town gets no cellphone reception, and there is no other pay phone for miles. The police and volunteer fire departments even have to use the phone sometimes when their radios do not work.

So townspeople were determined to keep the phone when the telephone company, Verizon, said in 2000 that it planned to remove the device because it was not making enough money.

"There's no other phone nearby," said Skip Auten, an electrician who volunteers shifts at the store. "It's all there is here."

The phone was the first in New Hampshire to be protected under a state law passed in July. The law sprang from the 1996 U.S. Telecommunications Act, which deregulated pay phones but allowed states to enact "public interest" laws to save phones that provide a crucial service. At least eight states have similar laws, including New York, California and Maine.

posted by Fergie @ 10/11/2005 06:44:00 PM