Yesterday I found myself in need of a payphone. Someone was waiting for me, and I was delayed. Hardly a matter of life and death, but I really didn’t want to leave my friend hanging for an hour or more. My phone was dead. Defective battery, as it turned out. So I went looking for a payphone. I tried six payphones, and each one was out of order. I went into a local business and asked if I could use their phone. I was directed to the broken payphone outside. Fine. Private businesses have no obligation to let people wander in off the street and use their phones. I continuted my search for a working payphone and eventually found one. Life went on.
But WHY are there so few working payphones? Doesn’t Aliant have some kind of obligation to maintain them? My situation wasn’t urgent, but it’s not hard to imagine a scenario with more serious consequences. A strong argument could be made that payphones are an essential service. Someone needs to maintain them.
—Liz
This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2009.
I honestly think that Aliant has no legal obligation to maintain those phones. After all, most people are stupid enough to pay 50 bucks a month to them for a service they may use as much as a payphone.
I understand. One time for me it actually was urgent – I tried the only three in the area and not only did they connect my call, they took all my damn cash. What gives?!
Payphones have been made extinct by the hated cellphone. Another case of technology proving in the long run to be a step backwards for society.
Don’t forget that your payphone now takes .50c too..
and Aliant is supposed to maintain regular upkeep on all payphones, BUT it is up to the public to report all dysfunctional payphones. (how, when you have no phone to report it with, I’m not exactly sure…)
not only is there no workign pay phones these days there a rareity!
Then add to the fact they get vandalized. Why pour money onto a pay phone that doesn’t make any money.
As long as you can get an operator, you can get connected. If you paid, he/she will connect you for free. If you cannot pay due to a jam in the slot (or some such thing), he/she will connect you. If it is an emergency, and you do not have change, you can use your Aliant card, have it billed to your Aliant bill or if you are not with Aliant, he/she will sometimes connect you anyway.
i’ve complained to Aliant about the lack of (working) payphones MANY times, and they always give me some bullshit excuse.
fact is, the payphones don’t generate enough revenue for Aliant to actually care about maintaining/repairing them anymore (plus employing people to go around collecting the money from the phones).
essentially, Aliant doesn’t give a shit about the payphones anymore and is intentionally neglecting them.
and on top of that, there are the destructive vandals whose teensy peabrains think it’s just hilarious to trash/destroy public telephones. there’s a lot of losers in this city, what more can i say.
Have to agree with the OP…while I haven’t really been in any emergency situations, it can be a pain to wander around looking for a pay phone, get all excited when you do, and then find that the receiver’s dead or the money just falls through or it just takes your money. And then to have that happen three times in a row and suddenly there are no more payphones. I wonder though if it’s only something that’s happened since cell phones became so ubiquitous, or if there is some other reason as well.
What is their same “bullshit excuse” tech?
I don’t think there is an obligation to maintain payphones. It’s a business and if it’s not profitable, then why maintain them? I just wish they’d rip them out if they don’t work rather then leaving them around to be vandalized and get your hopes up should you need one.
I also side with the OP. People have been vandalizing public phones since public phones were invented. It’s not like the phone company realized this in 2009. And to say it’s too expensive to pay somebody to empty the money from them, two words come to mind twice, “equal opportunity” and “minimum wage”. If I were the phone company I would be embarrassed my hardware sucked and scrambling to replace old unit with units with card readers in them… chChing!
@Miles – i didn’t say ‘same’… i said SOME bullshit excuse
oops, my bad. But I was actually interested in hearing the reasons they give.
@Miles – most often, they (Aliant) tell me that unless someone reports it (the broken payphone), they don’t know about it – even though i might havve called about the SAME payphone(s) at least once or twice before. so bullshit right there.
and of course, they usually say something about phones being vandalized, which is true, but not always. in many cases, the phone is semi-operational (not physically damaged), but the coin slots are gummed up/jammed or the damn thing just eats your money, but doesn’t allow you to make a call (without operator assistance). that alone, the frustration of putting your last quarter (now 50 cents) into a payphone that doesn’t actually work, probably accounts for some of the vandalism.
anyone who has tried to use a pay telephone in this city knows exactly what i’m talking about, and this is not something new, the payphones have been neglected for years now.
i thought that the phone company was under some obligation (by the CRTC or something) to provide public access to pay telephones, but i may be wrong about that.
look, it’s basically all about money – compared to mobile devices, the phone company makes practically NO money from public telephones (plus the cost of maintaining them). Aliant would much rather sell us all mobile phones and contractually obligate its subscribers into ridiculously expensive voice/data plans. same goes for Rogers, et al. $cha-ching$
the pay phone at the dartmouth term, there is a crow bar under the garbage which some ppl take out to beat it with, its odd
And why shouldn’t it be about money? It’s phone service. People want cell phones and not pay phones. People didn’t stop using pay phones because they are broken, they are broken because people don’t use them and it doesn’t make sense to maintain them. Their phones, their business. They don’t have any obligation to place phones on every corner or anything.
well, apparently the CRTC allowed the phone companies to increase the cost of using a payphone by 100% as an incentive for them to NOT remove and also maintain existing ‘unprofitable’ payphones.
although, the logic in that seems screwy to me, how exactly does doubling the cost of using a public telephone increase profit, if fewer people use the phone because it costs too much?
in any case, the damn phone companies got the 100% rate hike they wanted… so what excuse do they have (now) for not maintaining the payphones?
http://www.piac.ca/telecom/consumer_groups…
I don’t think it’s the price that makes people not use pay phones, it’s the abundance of cell phones that make people not use pay phones. Airports and malls are probably the only places pay phones turn a profit. Oh, and the occasional phone on some seedy street corner that gets used for illicit business.
I’ll bet that Aliant makes a profit from the payphones at Gottingen/Cornwallis in Halifax and in front of Moffatt’s Pharmasave on Portland St in Dartmouth. Those 3 payphones are always in use.
The phone company (along with the power company) uses city streets, city rights of way, to place poles, electrical boxes, etc. In lots of other places, the city charges a “franchise fee” as a rent for that private use of public property. Not here, tho.
I’ve long argued that the city is the ultimate responsible party here. It’s an entirely reasonable demand on the phone company that if they’re going to use public property to conduct their private business, then they’ll have to provide, and maintain in good working order, a reasonable number of pay phones in desirable locations.
If the phone company doesn’t meet that demand, then the city should start refusing them permission to intrude on the public right of way.
I agree….rip ’em out and install suicide booths like in Futurama.
I watch too much TV.
Oh Miles, thanks for the reminder of that episode. I only watch Futurama when I’m drunk ’cause it makes it a hell of a lot funnier.
I cringe at the thought of putting a public payphone receiver to my ear. My vote is to rip out the non-functioning and unprofitable payphones and don’t replace them with anything.
I worked for Aliant for 2 years and they suck!
They have poor customer service
theyre always jammed with quarters..
LOL @ Voice of Reason! 🙂
Yep crack heads helping out the phone company, who knew? 😉