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Recycling Pay Phones into Terminals 138

Posted by CmdrTaco from the not-a-bad-idea dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "Two weeks ago, The Washington Post published a story about the death of the pay phone. It was aptly named "Requiem for the Pay Phone." Basically, it argued that as cell phones use increase, pay phones are retired from the streets. Now, according to Fortune in "Making Pay Phones Pay," Bell Canada is trying to change this situation. "Bell Canada recently started converting public pay phones in Toronto, Montreal, and Kingston into terminals for 'Wi-Fi' Internet connections. Some U.S. phone companies may soon follow suit." Check this column for more details and concerns or visit the Bell Canada's AccessZone page for details on the program and pilot locations."
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Recycling Pay Phones into Terminals More

Recycling Pay Phones into Terminals

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  • Ok but (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TerryAtWork ( 598364 ) <research@aceretail.com> on Sunday January 12, 2003 @01:28PM (#5067429)
    When will we see the utopian frog-on-a-lilly-pad wi-fi stuff I read about in Wired?

  • If my Phone/DSL company (Verizon) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12, 2003 @01:29PM (#5067431)
    Started including Wi-Fi access via their pay-phones for me, it'd make me not only a happier customer, but one willing to pay a bit more for service.

  • Previous Post (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I believe there was a post on this earlier. I think this is just part of a growing trend by which blanket wireless coverage will supersede cabled connections.

  • Dupe? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12, 2003 @01:29PM (#5067433)
    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/11/162825 7&mode=thread&tid=95

  • Hackers. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by richjoyce ( 582073 )
    So know are we going to be able to use pay-phones as hacking devices like in the movie Hackers (and Hackers 2)?
    • There was a Hackers 2?!? Oh god. On a similar note my friend made a 56k acousitc modem. :D
      • Hackers 2:Takedown was the story of Kevin Mitnick, from the beginning of his social engineering career up through the cracking that led to his imprisonment. It had nothing to do with the original movie, except for the fact that both had individuals who were interested in gaining illegal access to other individual's resources (whether it be an improperly secured phone network or improperly secured computer network.)

        Unfortunately, the chief advisor to this movie was the guy who he cracked that took him to court and led him to prison. So, the movie is a little one sided and not as true to life as possible.

        But, as they say, history is written by victors.

  • How about 911? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ryu2 ( 89645 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @01:31PM (#5067446) Homepage Journal
    I just thought of this.... Could it be a point of argument that removing pay phones reduces access to 911 emergency services for those economically disadvantaged who don't have cell phones? Have there been any studies done to test the validity of this (eg, crime rates vs. pay phone presence?)

    • Re:How about 911? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yes, but the phones are provided as a money making venture. The company that put the phone there makes money and sometimes the business it is in/near gets a cut as well. It is not simply put there for the good of the community though as you said it looks like some emergency phones will have to be put in place for public safety.
      • there are two ways to do this 1. have '911' phones installed in areas where they're needed. 2. offer incentive programs (tax credits etc) for putting pay phones in low income areas. in the former you have single purpose phones that can only be used for 911. in the later low-income people can have a full function pay phone should they decide to order a pizza or, they could even use it as a 'home' phone number, to apply for jobs, so that maybe someday they could afford a cell phone.

    • Re:How about 911? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Simon Field ( 563434 )


      Pay phones are going away because they are not making money.

      This idea may save those pay phones, since DSL and voice can co-exist. And having a phone by the WiFi terminal allows you to get tech support (for another quarter?) when things aren't working.

      As for people who can't afford cell phones not having access to 911, I don't know if this is more of a problem since the cell phone was invented, or less. Finding someone with a cell phone nearby these days may be easier than finding a pay phone nearby was in the bad old days.

    • Re:How about 911? (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by zulux ( 112259 )
      Could it be a point of argument that removing pay phones reduces access to 911 emergency services for those economically disadvantaged who don't have cell phones?

      'round here, the only people who use pay-phones are the local drug dealers. I've had visions of smashing all the pay-phones with a sledge hammer and forcing the local bastards into getting a real job.

      It's always the same crowd: Oil-spewing '70's car, with a crack-baby or two in the back seat, pulled up close to the pay-phone at the local kwicky-mart. Just stiiting there, waiting for a call. Oh, and their fucking car isen't even in a parking space. And get this, the fuckers bread like crazy. According to Darwin, there more fit for their environment. And I get stuck with the bills for their Section-8 housing and 'gubment cheese.

      • And get this, the fuckers bread like crazy.

        Who's fucker? Who's the crazy racist fucker? YOU!

        Dude, you have some serious issues. And when was the last time payphones accepted incoming calls? That's old school shit.


        • You muct be one those grown up stupid ass crack-babies. Where in the fuck did I mention race.

          Get you panties out of a bunch and go watch your credit-card-financed big screen TV.

    • Seems to me that if you're in an area where there are poor people who don't have cell phones, the pay phones will still be there because they're making money.
    • Seems there might be other reasons besides economic situation for not having a cel phone (dead battery, burning in the fire you're trying ot report, stolen when you got mugged, etc.)

      Perhaps it would be a good idea to have an auto-dial "hotline" handset at each access point for emergencies, similar to the "Police call boxes" located on college campuses and downtown areas?

    • Re:How about 911? (Score:3, Informative)

      by qqtortqq ( 521284 )
      Up until a few months ago, I worked as a section 8 housing cop, and NO ONE in the ghetto uses pay phones. Most folks will wander for half an hour begging to use someone's phone who has one rather than stick the 50 cents in one of the many conveniently located pay phones. Whenever there was a problem on the property, magically 50% of the residents knew about it in less than 2 minutes, and a few would invariably come find us. We wandered the 4 buildings the whole night, and were never hard to find.

      As for people without a phone that don't live in apartments, im sure it works the same way; they go to a neighbor's, or in case of emergency, the neighbor who hopefully has a phone will hear the screaming.
    • Well 911 is provided free of charge (well kinda, that's what that 911 surcharge is on your monthly bill.) So a less fortunate person could in theory purchase an old cell phone (probably for a very small sum,) and use it to make free 911 calls in an emergency. In fact this is exactly what women's shelters do with donated cell phones, give them to battered women to call 911 in emergencies.
    • The War on Drugs already killed pay-phone availability in areas where those "economically disadvantaged" live. One of the other commenters said that they only see drug dealers using them,
      but not only _do_ they use them, replying to their beepers from phone numbers that aren't easily traced to them, but police and cities have discouraged phone companies from providing them there because they want to discourage drug dealers, and this is most common in poorer urban areas. Pay phones used to be able to support incoming calls as well, but the telephone deregulation changes in the 80s and early 90s that let them be privately operated instead of only run by telcos killed that, because private operators didn't get any revenue from receiving calls (and also, the War On Politically Incorrect Drugs also meant that drug dealers would use them to receive calls.)

      A few years ago, before I got a cell phone, I was trying to hunt for an apartment or house to rent in the San Francisco Bay Area. This involved a lot of trying to contact landlords and property managers to get in to see places that were advertised, but they're never in their offices - you call their beeper or answering machine and leave your phone number. I did have a beeper, but of course with no PAY PHONES around, it was hard to call them back. In some areas, there'd either be a 7-11 or else a restaurant that had a phone in the back, so if we'd left enough calls in a given area, we'd get coffee and more quarters and wait. Really frustrating....

      Of course, pay phone usage in poor areas also went down because of low-cost lifeline phone rates, and because deregulation meant that the prices of pay phone calls went way up, and in high-crime neighborhoods, a coin-operated pay phone looks a lot like a parking meter - it's a box of money sitting there for any teenager with a spare metal pipe, unless it's in a well-lit high-traffic area.

    • Unless I'm at the mall, there isn't a pay phone around here for miles. I just keep an old cell phone (without service) in my car for emergencies. 911 calls still work, even if the phone is otherwise without service.

      Many people have multiple cell phones from previous service contracts. It's pretty easy to get an old phone from a friend, acquantence or local community service.

      My previous employer regularly collected old cell phones to give to community services, so that they could redistribute them to those that needed emergency phones.
    • Could it be a point of argument that removing pay phones reduces access to 911 emergency services for those economically disadvantaged who don't have cell phones?

      That nothing to do with Bells. Telcos originally started the payphone business with the only goal to make money, not because the govt ordered them to do so. Therefore, if this business is not working anymore let them get phones out of the street.

      And if the safity of citizens is any concern of the govt then the govt must compensate telco all TCO they have plus prenegotiated profit minus total revenue. Otherwise, let the govt to buy out the payphone business from telcos and run it on their own for the money of tax payers if the tax payers agree to pay such a price for very doubtful benefit in their security.

  • I'm all for mass adoption of these technologies. But I can't see this being useful for another 10 years. When cell phones came out, they were more of a novelty. People were always around a land line, and didn't need the freedom. People didn't start to really need them all the time until 10-20 years later. I think the same thing about internet access everywhere. Sure it's cool, but how many people really need internet everywhere? By the time it will be useful, I'd guess everyones moving over to a different standerd.
  • Though I wonder how many quarters it'll take to get 10 minutes of Wi-Fi access? I can just see it: "Please Mr., can you spare a quarter? I gotta finish this upload to the home office in Duluth or else!" And thanks to the the wonders of wireless, you've already walked a half block away from the payphone and now you're gonna have to hoof it double time to make it before your connection is lost.

    And don't even get me started on the resurgence of phone phreaks!

    • Forget quarters. No one said a thing about quarters or even keeping a PHONE in the booth. Make it a police call box, taking care of the emergency-phone aspect at the same time. Wi-Fi antennas can be tiny and on the roof of the thing.

      The way it would probably be done is via PPPoE with a pretty user interface.

      My phone company (Verizon) has residential DSL using PPPoE, so why not run that over the Wi-Fi? The Verizon Online back-end is already in place. You can control bandwidth, you have accounting, and you have authentication. The charges would show up on your Phone/DSL bill.

  • Money (Score:2, Interesting)

    by trans_err ( 606306 )
    The idea truly is grand, and how great will it be to sit on the sidewalk, or outside of the movie theatre with your laptop soaking up those WiFi rays.

    1. I dont understand how they plan on making money, will you have to preregister with bellsouth, or whomever.

    2. I see a lot of potential if this could be used in conjunction with PDA's, the idea of being able to walk to certain parts of the street and hit a DSL connection would be very nice.

    • Re:Money (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kawaichan ( 527006 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @01:41PM (#5067511)
      how payment might work:

      1) Your laptop/PDA/whatever requests an IP address via DHCP.
      2) Access point hands out IP address, makes a note against that IP address that "has not paid yet"
      3) At this point, all that you can do is access HTTP and DNS.
      4) You point your browser at any web site - let's say http://slashdot.org for grins.
      5) DNS succeeds.
      6) Your computer does an HTTP GET.
      7) Access device sees you've not paid yet. Sends HTTP REDIRECT to https://fork.it.over.to.me
      8) Your laptop looks that up. Gets an IP address.
      9) Your laptop requests page.
      10) Page comes up - input credit card here.
      11) You do so. Access device marks you has "paid for 1 Hour". Ports open up.
      12) You again try /., and it goes through.
      • The University of Toronto is already doing this [utoronto.ca] for its 802.11b connections. However, they do payment by assigning an account to the MAC address of your wireless card, which means that you only have to authenticate once. (Are MAC addresses easy to spoof?)
        • Yes, they are trivially easy to spoof, and even easier to "sniff". If I were at the University of Toronto using this system, I'd contest every charge after the first, saying I'd never made the connection.

          At the very least, they should be (securely) prompting for a userid and password, and matching that to the MAC address(es) previously authenticated before associating the accounting information.
          • Regular Ethernet cards (10baseT, 100baseTX, GigE, etc.) have MAC addresses that are trivially easy to spoof. Every wireless card I've ever used (four, now, from different vendords) has the mac hard-coded into the card. You can try to spoof the mac, but coming out from your port (or responding to ARPs) it reports its hard-wired MAC address.

            In general, most WAPs these days just require you to use a PPTP connection over them so that you have encrypted traffic and user authentication. Sign in using PPTP, and every packet on that PPP interface can be billed to you.
            • Uh, you're using a weird wireless card. All Ethernet cards have a hard coded MAC, wired or wireless. They can all be overridden:

              [root@buggsb root]# ifconfig wlan0
              wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:06:25:xx:xx:xx (changed for publication)
              inet addr:13x.x.x.x Bcast:13x.x.x.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 (changed for publication)
              UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
              RX packets:2071986 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
              TX packets:4172682 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
              collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
              RX bytes:969512650 (924.5 Mb) TX bytes:1160156046 (1106.4 Mb)
              Interrupt:3 Base address:0x100

              [root@buggsb root]# ifconfig wlan0 down
              [root@buggsb root]# ifconfig wlan0 hw ether 00:01:02:03:04:05
              [root@buggsb root]# ifconfig wlan0 up
              [root@buggsb root]# ifconfig wlan0
              wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:01:02:03:04:05
              inet addr:13x.x.x.x Bcast:135.82.8.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 (changed for publication)
              UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
              RX packets:2072456 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
              TX packets:4173602 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
              collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
              RX bytes:969569432 (924.6 Mb) TX bytes:1160184256 (1106.4 Mb)
              Interrupt:3 Base address:0x100

              • I retract the statement; the user interface reports the MAC address change, but the card does not transmit the changed address.

                I guess that means you can't do a wireless failover. Is that intentional, or just a deficiency in the current drivers/fimware/hardware?
    • This isn't just a theory, my friend was flying through Helsinki during the christmas season, so he pulled out his notebook waiting for the plane and *boom*, three different wireless networks. All of them charged, all of them cut you off after 5 minutes if you didn't give up a credit card number.

      Still, good stuff.


  • I understand how pay phones make money.

    Would this work the same way? I feed coins into a slot, and then my WiFi card sees a carrier?

    Maybe it is even somewhat secure. Suppose after I drop the coins, an LCD screen tells me what to use for WEP keys. If every 10 minutes, I need to drop more coins and get a new WEP key, I can stay ahead of the guy in the van outside who is trying to collect a day's worth of data to break that first WEP key.

    Or, it could be an open WiFi channel, on the cafe jukebox model. I drop the coins, and share the bandwidth with everyone else within range. I then use a VPN and/or PGP when I want privacy.

    • I imagine the system they would use is that you'd just log onto the network, and be billed for it every month. Seems like that would be the easiest way, cause otherwise you'd have people standing in line at a terminal holding laptops and trying to rush before they get disconnected.

      As for secure, please remember that the information backbone of general America, the phone lines, used to be fooled by someone using a cereal box toy to make a certain tone. If you build it, they will break it, and you won't find out until your pants have already fallen to your ankles. Intrusion security into the actual network may get better, but theres always some asshole whose user name is sex and his password is daddy, and boom, hello wi-fi network where most people don't even use firewalls.


      • Actually, I'm sure that there are a number of ways to make money and still keep the customers happy. In an airport, I could charge the customer a buck for unlimited time. When the carrier drops, I assume he's done and gone. Since the bandwidth is shared, I can accomodate the occasional person who stays on all day, and the guy in the house across the street with a directional antenna.

        But I don't understand the point of your comment about security. You seem to be saying that since locks can be cut, broken, or picked, that there is no point in having locks.

        By providing WEP keys, you are giving the customer a reasonable expectation of privacy, especially if the keys are changed faster than current technology can decrypt them. This expectation of privacy is an important legal distinction, and can be useful in prosecuting the person who cracks the security and abuses the information gained. Many people rely on the legal system to deter theft and vandalism, rather than relying on locks and fences.

        Don't let the best be the enemy of the good. We may not be able to prevent all armed robberies, but reducing the odds of my getting robbed at gunpoint is a worthwile endeavor.

  • My proposal. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kaosrain ( 543532 ) <<moc.niarsoak> <ta> <toor>> on Sunday January 12, 2003 @01:41PM (#5067505) Homepage
    Why don't we all band together, and whenever a user submits a dupe we all add them to our 'foes' list? Doesn't directly stop anyone from posting repeats, but if I knew that submitting one could get me hundreds of foes, I'd probably check my submissions for duplicates.
    • How about a new category / icon for duplicates? That way I can just set my preferences to ignore them!!
      • How about a new category / icon for duplicates? That way I can just set my preferences to ignore them!!

        You make it sound funny, but it's actually a great idea. If a story is found to be duplicate, it's topic icon can simply be changed and be ignored by users that hate duplicate stories.

    • Re:My proposal. (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      That is a stupid idea. Often dozens of people submit the same story, but until one of them is accepted, there's no way for them to know that they have already been posted by someone else. What happens is that 10 people submit the same story. Then a slashdot editor accepts it. Then later, a slashdot editor accepts another one from another user, even though both users posted around the same time. Or even the second (dup) may have submitted theirs before the one that was accepted first.

      So yes, the slashdot EDITORS should be punished. NOT the submitters.

      • Re:My proposal. (Score:3, Informative)

        by Spunk ( 83964 )
        Parent is correct. I'll repost the AC's comment here so it's +2 rather than 0

        -----
        That is a stupid idea. Often dozens of people submit the same story, but until one of them is accepted, there's no way for them to know that they have already been posted by someone else. What happens is that 10 people submit the same story. Then a slashdot editor accepts it. Then later, a slashdot editor accepts another one from another user, even though both users posted around the same time. Or even the second (dup) may have submitted theirs before the one that was accepted first.

        So yes, the slashdot EDITORS should be punished. NOT the submitters
        -----
    • Modify slashcode so that if a user submits a dupe, he/she is banned from submitting a story for X amount of days. This would still leave a gaping hole because anonymous users could post dupes, but it would be better than the current situation. Perhaps slashcode should have automatic duplication checking? Some code that would check stories from say the past 2 weeks and look for inordinate amount of matching words and/or phrases? I would do it myself, but I'm not a PERL haxor. Anyone here know PERL? Slashcode [sourceforge.net] is an open source project, fix it! If we took the gross of the amount of hours spent writing about duplicate slashdot posts and put it in to slashcode development for duplicate story checking, dups would be nonexistent.

  • Cafe Security (Score:4, Insightful)

    by HealYourChurchWebSit ( 615198 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @01:42PM (#5067520) Homepage


    While this plan isn't without its merits, its also going to be without users such as myself for some time. No matter show secure the "FI"delity is stated, I get about the same warm fuzzies transmitting anything of any value over such a system as I would shopping online at an internet cafe.

    And its not really the systems themselves that concern me, but the human error factors ... and mostly privacy factors. I can't imagine any large corporation implementing such a system without the temptation of at least using my demographics, if not outright selling any non-secure personal information to me to the highest bidder.

    This not to say I'd never use it ... just not for anything really important or private. At least for now.

    • Re:Cafe Security (Score:3, Interesting)

      by zulux ( 112259 )
      No matter show secure the "FI"delity is stated, I get about the same warm fuzzies transmitting anything of any value over such a system as I would shopping online at an internet cafe.

      Do wha I do: Make a secure tunnel from your laptop to an OpenBSD server you have hanging off the net and set up as a gateway. They can grab all the wireless packets they want, but it ain't gonna' get them anywhere.

    • I get about the same warm fuzzies transmitting anything of any value over such a system as I would shopping online at an internet cafe.

      If you never bring your wi-fi into the cafe, you will never know if the cash register is transmitting your credit card via wi-fi. Hardee-har-har. Oh, and you better not buy anything over a cable modem because that's a shared connection that can be sniffed. Your dial-up traffic is also sniffed by the local bell. Better give up now and go back to barter. They can't take things off of you can they? Oh my, yes they can. Sorry.

  • Just so we're all clear... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12, 2003 @01:42PM (#5067521)
    Dupe 1 [slashdot.org] (orig [slashdot.org])
    Dupe 2 [slashdot.org] (orig [slashdot.org])
    Dupe 3 [slashdot.org] (orig [slashdot.org]).

    Ok? Check the originals for more comments, I don't think it'll fly unless it's outrageously cheap and can maybe be paid just by walking by with an RFID tag or something else equally effortless. Geesh.

  • Well (Score:1)

    by Nemus ( 639101 )
    Thats actually one of the cooler wi-fi ideas I've heard in a while, but I don't really think it'll take off just yet.

    Unfortunately the page seems to have been brought down by the almight /., so I can't get specifics, but just how many sites do they plan on having running? I mean high traffic areas where people are more likely to have wi-fi cards like airports are good, of course, but would it really be worth paying a fee to use this?

    I'm American, so I don't know how big an area Bell Canada actually covers up there, but in the world of business travel, where its unusual to hit up the same city more than say, once every two weeks, how much is it really worth to be on the internet for an hour per visit?

    Now, if they could get some international cooperation for this, I can see it being viable. I mean, I know plenty of business travelers who would love to stay connected while waiting for adjoining flights in three different airports ov er the course of a day. But just in one area.....naaaaaaah

    And of course there are always parks, stadiums, etc, but with the exception of parks that normally seems to be more of the business's perogative, and in parks....well, isn't it kinda cold up there? I mean who really wants to sit in the middle of a park at 3o degrees farenheit trying to type with numb fingers?

    And also, to have a truly effective network, as well as a viable profit option, you'd have to have massive blanket coverage over a large area, but wouldn't that be a little cost prohibitive, especially since relatively few people use wi-fi cards in the mass public? Neat idea, but......

    • AccessZone Pilot Locations

      You can find AccessZone pilot sites at the following convenient locations across Canada. Visit this page regularly for updates as we add more hotspot sites.

      Ontario:
      Toronto: Union Station
      Panorama Lounge, Union Station Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge,
      Pearson International Airport, Terminal 2

      Kingston: Confederation Park and Marina
      St. Lawrence College

      Quebec:
      Montreal: Panorama Lounge, Central Station
      Dorval Airport, Departures Area
      Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge, Dorval Airport

      Alberta:
      Calgary: Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge,
      Calgary International Airport
      Billing Centre
      Establish/Change Service
      Hints, Tips and User Guides
      myBell
      Contact Us
      Service and Repair
      Privacy Issues
      Special Needs
    • "I'm American, so I don't know how big an area Bell Canada actually covers up there, but in the world of business travel, where its unusual to hit up the same city more than say, once every two weeks, how much is it really worth to be on the internet for an hour per visit?"

      Bell Canada is frickin huge. They own practically all the phone line hardware all across the country. Almost everyone (at least 99% of people) get their local service from Bell because there is no other choice. Bell Canada also has nationwide long distance service, mobile phone service, dialup internet access, DSL access (with limited areas of course), Satellite access, Corporate class web hosting. They own a large amount of the canadian fiber backbones (BellNexxia). To summarise, Bell is everywhere and if all their payphones had WiFi, it would probably be the biggest WiFi network in the world.

      • Well... the country is bigger than Quebec and Ontario. BC and Alberta are owned by Telus, Saskatchewan is owned by Sasktel, Manitoba is owned by MTS, Ontario and Quebec by Bell Canada, The Maritimes by Alliance and its subsiduaries, and Newfoundland by Islandtel or something like that.

        So, Bell has at most 50% of the country, and outside of cell phones and sattalite, they don't exist in Saskatchewan at all.

  • Maybe (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Znonymous Coward ( 615009 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @01:47PM (#5067551) Journal
    Maybe people like me would use the pay phone more if it were 10 cents per a call, not 50-75 cents like it is now. And maybe I would have a "land line" phone in my home if it weren't nearly $50 a month after taxes, FCC feens, 911 imposed fee, etc.

    Or, the monolpy phone companies can just coninue to loose money and customers to cell phones.

    [/rant]

    • Okay...
      Wow. IN Canada, payphones are still 25 cents... and that's Canadian cents... (35 in some places)

      Oh.. and you don't like 911 fees, hunh? I guess you have a problem with 911 service? You don't like it?
    • Around here, payphones at $.35 weren't making money. The biggest cost was looking up where the phone you were calling was located, so they knew if it was long distance or not. To fix this, the phone company jacked up the price to $.50 to cover the lookup cost, but then gave you unlimited minutes. When I worked security, some sites required you to sit in your car all night. I brought my laptop and acoustic coupler, was able to surf for usually 45 mins at a time before something disrupted the coupler or I lost the connection for some other reason. $.50 for 45 mins was not a bad deal at all.
    • Who charges $50 for a landline? I pay about $17/month, which includes a mandatory Interstate Access Charge, etc. No call waiting, no caller ID, bare bones local service. Price cannot be beat for recevining phone calls and leeting the TiVo dial in.

      Incidentally, why do we let telecoms get away with itemizing their taaxes can NOT including it in the basic cost of service? I mean, Border's doesn't charge a "Property Tax Recovery" charge when buying in-store.
  • ...the sprit of Canada's inventive iniative to recycle pay phones has prompted Slashdot editors to recycle the popular site's headline stories.

  • This is a case of deja vu [slashdot.org]. Is someone messing with the Matrix?
  • YAY! I live in Kingston! YAY! Now I can go downtown and surf! YAY!

    Oh, wait. Crap. I don't have an 802.11b card, and I killed my laptop's screen and keyboard. Well, that's a bitch.

    Would have been nice, checking my e-mail down at confederation park.
    • I wonder why they chose St. Lawrence College. It'd be cooler at Queen's University, especially since my school is ON the Queen's campus.
  • Funny how I wrote an article three days ago but Roland Piquepaille is writing almost the exact same thing that I did. Mere coincidence? In any event, here's the abstract of my article:

    "The purpose of this article is to explain how Warchalking has become obsolete. It is being replaced by Wi-Fi Zones that are being fueled by home networks, corporate networks, and even payphones. The internet will be all around you in all places but you won't ever need to care about Warchalking. Let's bury the idea and move along."

    Read the rest of it here: How Warchalking Died [webword.com]
  • Why don't the phone companies try to get Congress to pass a law that allows them to jam your cell phone transmissions if you're within 50 feet of a pay phone?
  • Especially in Europe, where there are smart meters and/or smart-card-enabled pay stands.

    Modern parking meters are electrified already, so maybe it'd be a good way for metro areas to raise a little revenue? I'd pay the city for wireless
  • "Will Bell Canada make money with these Wi-Fi hotspots? It's hard to guess, especially if this service is offered for free, as it is the case up to the end March."

    And I now have to pay $50/month for cable? I'm moving to Canada, at least until the end of March. Which also causes me to add a question to the list of things I need to make sure an apartment has when I'm renting one..."Does the water work? Is it near a pay phone?"
  • Bell Canada is trying to change this situation. "Bell Canada recently started converting public pay phones in Toronto, Montreal, and Kingston into terminals for 'Wi-Fi' Internet connections.

    So now we'll have to pay how much for phone calls now?

  • Already in the UK (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Cally ( 10873 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @02:49PM (#5067891) Homepage
    BT has been doing this in the UK for ages - I think I saw the first ones (in Liverpool St station, London) in late 1999 or early 2000. There's one on the corner of my street now. (Brixton.)
  • Hmm - so each payphone is going to have the bandwidth of [roughly] 1 DSL line. This doesn't sound like much.

    The other problem I forsee is that people living near to phone boxes may just decide to use the WiFi instead of getting DSL installed depending on how it's priced - this would be bad since the WiFi bandwidth could get used up by these static users (Although the phone company wouldn't care if they still got cash).

    On the plus side, it may mean that many more exchanges get DSL capability installed.

  • Beware the Standards! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Durindana ( 442090 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @03:00PM (#5067946)
    I used several different types of these toll-booth terminals, run by British Telecom, on a recent holiday, and discovered something not to my liking: at least the way BT does it, you'll have trouble with sites that consist of more than bare HTML. The thing was Windows- and IE-based, of course, and it did not do Javascript well at all (though it didn't seem to be a performance issue). Also the terminal refused to work with WebObjects sites... so without those two I couldn't check email at all. Waste of a pound or two.

    Now Bell Canada certainly could use a better implementation. BT at least screwed this up.
    • A few weeks ago I needed to make a quick call before hopping on my (more than likeley delayed) train. I tried three of BT's jazzy touch screen web browser type phones without any luck. One had crashed, one wouldn't dial out, and with the third the touch screen calibration was off by about 2 inches to the left. In the end I gave up trying to dial the number on this one and jumped on the train. It's nice to see BT acting as an innovator rather than stifling inovation as usual, but these phone booths were/are badly designed and executed. Having said this, I can't beleive that any comunication developments (e.g the growth of mobile phones) hasn't increased the number of potential revenue streams to telco's, rather than killing them off - e.g. web, sms, wap, email, yadda yadda.

  • Dupe! (Score:3, Funny)

    by gmarceau ( 119282 ) <dnys2v4dq1001@sneakemail.com> on Sunday January 12, 2003 @03:33PM (#5068129) Homepage
    Well, its turns out that living in Montreal and caring for the phone company there(*) is useful to spot duplicate stories :

    Bell Canada Turns Payphones into Public Hotspots
    Posted by michael on Wed Dec 11, '02 11:59 AM
     http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/11/162825 7&mode=flat&tid=95 [slashdot.org]

    (*) : Bell Canada actually offers very good service, ground lines phones, cell phones, dsl, it's all good

  • It is possible to surf the net from many payphones, and more still can send text messages and emails.

  • Pay phones? What are those? (Score:3, Informative)

    by dghcasp ( 459766 ) on Sunday January 12, 2003 @11:00PM (#5070153)
    Funny this should come up now... I just saw something about pay-phones in the Facts & Arguments column of friday's Globe and Mail [globeandmail.ca] (italics mine...)

    In October, a shopping mall devoted to 1960s-and-earlier nostalgia opened in Tokyo, The New York Times says. Ichome Shotengai (District 1 Shopping Area), which attracts the elderly, has been doing booming business in an otherwise flat Japanese economy. "Increasingly, young people are turning up to gawk at the artifacts of a world they never knew -- boxy televisions that play tapes of the original black-and-white shows, beauty salons with posters of big, beehive hairdos and public telephone booths with rotary dial phones.
    In a country where almost everyone under 30 owns a cellphone, it is not uncommon to see young people step into the booths unaware that the caller has to turn the dial to operate the old phones."
  • I have to say, I called it here [slashdot.org] (attached to the previous story [slashdot.org]). If you think about it for a moment you realize it's an interesting idea. I wouldn't expect this to work for another 2 or 3 years though. There simply aren't enough people (and devices) that need/want wireless access to the Internet when they are mobile. A cell phone is more than sufficient for most people. I was approched by a company just a few months ago that is going to do something very similar in a large chain of retail stores. Wireless is the next "big thing", but you aready knew that... right?

  • In the Netherlands we have these kind of 'payphone terminals' installed by our national telecom provider (yes, the old privatized giant). You can find them in larger train-stations and on the streets of our major cities. I've never seen one being used though. Although we are behind in a lot of tech things over here, compared to the US, mobile phones isn't one of them and I think that if the coverage of cell-phones the US ever reaches the same levels as over here you can kiss profitability on whatever land-solution goodbye. Pitty though, I think payphones are a necessity and the terminals _could_ be quite usefull.

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