MITCHELL, S.D. (AP) - A pay phone in the county courthouse in Mitchell will be unplugged after officials discovered it cost the county $69 per call last year.
County Maintenance Supervisor Mark Ruml told the Davison County Commission that he'd never seen anyone use the phone in more than three years and money to pay for it was coming out of his budget.
It cost the county $763 a year to have the phone. Ruml said records showed only 11 calls were placed on the phone in 2010.
The Daily Republic newspaper said the county commission voted to remove it.
With -that- volume of calls, nobody's going to be interested -- *UNLESS* the county pony's up for all the costs.
They might find a cut-rate COCOTS operator to put one for a somewhat lower cost, but I _really_ doubt they'd be able to get it to under $25/call, given the indicated traffic level.
It didn't really cost "$69 per call". That implies each time someone used the phone the county was billed $69, and it wasn't.
Like everyone else, the county paid a fee to have a pay phone in service (though their fee seems high). Had enough people used it the "per call" amortized cost would've been much lower.
I suspect there are a many payphones on private property still in service but rarely used because the property owners, perhaps a large business, get a large overall phone bill and aren't aware of the pay phone component. Some organizations pay bills as presented without verifying or thinking about them.
As mentioned, several transit carriers pay to have a pay phone at their stations so to have an emergency phone available for passengers. A pay phone is cheaper than a dedicated direct police line plus offers passengers full service and that is utilized from time to time by the public. (Not everyone has a cell phone, and people forget theirs, the battery runs low, etc.)
In NYC, at least on the streets and other public areas, there's been a competition of sorts to install pay phones.
The trick is that the payphone owner, whether the main telco or an independent, can sell and place advertising on the sides of the enclosure. Oh, and the top, too.
Putting up a billboard on a sidewalk is just bout impossible, but pretending it's merely the outside of a payphone works.
Don't know if this would be practical for the original poster's area, but it might be worth a looksee.
Any accountant will confirm that the amortized cost of maintaining the phone there _was_ in fact, $69+ for each call made.
The "unit cost" for -anything- is the total cost divided by the number of items that that total cost bought. And is always expressed as an amount of money 'per {item}'.
Your 'stated as fact' assumption that such a statement 'implies' a particular billing-rate/structure has _no_ basis in fact.
This is correct.
Very unlikely. Classically the *vast* majority of pay phone contracts provided a pay-out *to* the 'location owner' from the phone operator, either in the form of a fixed amount per month, or a 'split' of the generated revenues (usually after a fixed amount, for 'operating overhead' went to the phone operator).
Some _government_ (and the occasional privately-funded "public-service" agency) agencies do this, on occasion. It is _extremely_ rare for a 'for profit' commercial entity do to so. A business almost invariably has employees, _with_ communications capability (either phones, or two-way radio by which they have immediate contact to a telephone-equipped employee), that are 'immediately' accessible to the public, for a true emergency (i.e. '911') communications need.
When one sees a pay-phone at any location, it is impossible to tell -- simply by examining the phone -- _what_ the financial relationship is between the phone operator and the location owner. I've never known a pay-phone operator to disclose which, if any, of it's phone locations were being 'subsidized' by the location owner. Generally, this information is available only if the location owner, itself, discloses it.
Los Angeles Union Station is a somewhat unusual situation in that it is, at least currently , privately owned. Does anybody know if there are pay phones at _that_ facility, and *IF* the phone operator is _paid_ to put them there?
I would guess that in most courhouses many of the people are familiar with the people and offices in the courthouse and when they want to use the phone and don't want to use or don't have a cellphone they just step into an office and ask "Can I use the phone??". Hence no reason to use the pay phone.
True. However, a pay-phone operator _is_ a businessman -- s/he's _not_ going to put in a phone at his/her expense where the demonstrated call volume won't cover the phone line charges, not to mention depreciation or maintenance/servicing costs on the equipment.
Mail bovine excrement applies. IF the courthouse is open, there are county employees around who already have phones. In fact, for -most- of the courthouse,` said employees will be -closer- to the scene of an emergency than _a_ pay phone is.
Even if that wasn't the case, the 'cost' of running an 'extension' off the PBX, is a _one-time_ expense of a few hundred dollars, at most, allowing several hundred dollars out of 'first year' costs for replacing damaged phone sets. Second year, after the one-time install costs have been amortized, the expense equivalent of that pay phone buys a new 'throw away' phone set every week or two.
***** Moderator's Note *****
Ah, but consider the environment: any phone accessible to the public in a court house will have to withstand punishment by those dissatisfied with the outcomes of their cases, and must also be hearing-aid compatible, have access to multilingual operators, and must offer access to any carrier.
--- On Wed, 1/19/11, Moderator wrote, in a note to a post by Robert Bonomi :
As far as people disstisfied with the outcomes of their cases, most courthouse have many other county offices, such as the county clerk, register of deeds, county assessor, county treasurer, possibly the sheriff's office (which has many civil, not criminal, functions), maybe the county agricultural agent* and the home demonstration agent* and probsbly a bunch I've missed.
Titles with a "*" have been revised in recent years in the name of political correctness, as well as the fact their functions have changed over the years.
$700/year, or so, pays for a *LOT* of non-ruggedized replacement phones.
Baloney. For a _PAY_PHONE_, some such rules may apply. There *no* such rule applicable to a simple 'house' "courtesy phone" extension made available for local-only calls. In fact, it can be placarded for 'emergency only' use, and be a hot ring-down to the county 'switchboard operator'.
BTW, the 'equal access' mandate for alternate carriers does -not- require that a phone offer access to _any_ (let alone every) carrier. If _all_ long-distance calls are blocked, the '_equal_ access' requirement is met, since all *are* being treated equally. :)
He's not going to know what the previous call volume was. He's going to look over the building, negotiate for a prominent location like near the front door, and make an educated guess about what future traffic might be. The phone in question was probably out of sight.
For an emergency, we don't want a phone that requires a working electrical connection or for the PBX to be up and running. You're not thinking about what should be provided for emergency reasons.
Also, we really don't want a phone that dials the police emergency number but nowhere else. People might need to make other calls.
The phone should have been charged to an emergency communication budget or something like that so it didn't wind up as low hanging fruit on the maintenance supervisor's budget.
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