As pay phones die, prepaid has opportunity

I just caught this article in Newsday regarding the rapid decline in number of available pay phones. This isn’t the first article of its type; I’ve seen a number of articles lamenting the slow death of a familiar device. Standing at 2.6 million strong 10 years ago, we’re down to a million now — and it likely won’t take 10 years to get that number to around 10,000. Pay phones, for the most part, are unprofitable, so now that phone companies aren’t forced to keep them operational, they’re really assessing the profitability of each and cutting where necessary. What this means for the masses is that we’re all going to need a cellular communication device of some sort. Hello prepaid.

Prepaid Reviews ran a piece a while ago, which compared the rates of our featured providers in terms of how well they fared in an emergency-only capacity. With the dying out of pay phones, this issue is becoming more and more important.

Prepaid is the ideal alternative to pay phones. You only pay for minutes you intend to use, and usually only have to recharge your account every three or so months, depending on which service you use. The best part is that you’re free to switch services. So if you’re not getting reception at your most frequent haunts, you can just switch to a company which has service in that area.

This doesn’t mean, though, that I’m against pay phones. Hardly. From where else can the youth of the nation crank call toll-free numbers? Kidding aside, though, there needs to remain a level of balance in pay phones. There’s never going to be a scenario where every adult resident of the U.S. has a cell phone, so there should be no one without access to a pay phone. For some, these phones are lifelines.

Anyway, the Newsday article is a good read, with a bit of history on the pay phone.

[Newsday]

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2 Responses

1. PrepaidEarth Says
   

   We have noticed in Australia that Telstra have also removed a great deal of payphones since they bring in little revenue. The pay phones that Prepaid Earth has seen are selling landline to sms(text) services. With the 50% adoption of prepaid and with recharge available on all street corners its a great idea to do away with pay phones.

   
   Posted on January 8th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
2. Someone Says
   

   “From where else can the youth of the nation crank call toll-free numbers?”

   Skype, old man. Toll-free numbers beware.

   
   Posted on January 9th, 2008 at 5:30 pm

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