Lisa Hancock snipped-for-privacy@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
When was the last time you saw 1+ coin service from those Verizon coin phones in New York City? AT&T Long Distance discontinued 1+ sent-paid coin from traditional telco CO controlled payphones during 2002/03.
As Joe mentions, in Qwest (legacy US West, an RBOC) territory out west, the Nortel manufactured "Millennium" smart "super" payphones, with card swipes, touch-a-carrier buttons, LCD displays, etc. allow sent-paid coin toll calls outside of the LATA, but these "smart" or "super" payphones are NOT traditional CO controlled payphones. Instead, they have smart-chips inside, similar to private COCOT payphones.
Many RBOCs have been retro-fitting traditional "looking" payphones originally made by AT&T's Western Electric, and many independent LECs have been retro-fitting their traditional "looking" Automatic Electric payphones and Northern Telecom traditional Centurian payphones, with internal "smart-chips". Sometimes these phones act completely as a private "COCOT" payphone. Other times, they can act as a "hybrid", where local and telco-handled intra-LATA toll coin service is handled more or less traditionally, by the telco central office controls as well as the telco's Operator switch, usually a Nortel TOPS, sometimes a Lucent OSPS, but then inter-LATA coin toll calls would be handled strictly by the internal "smart" chips.
When internal "smart" chips handle the 1+ and maybe even 011+ IDDD coin sent paid service, it really doesn't "matter" who the LD company carrying that call happens to be. It could even be AT&T, but it isn't being handled by AT&T through their Operator OSPS switches in the way they used to prior to 2002/03. It is rather handled as any "standard non-coin" 1+ call would be handled, only that the internal smart chips quote, count, collect, etc. the coin deposits, just like a private COCOT payphone would do.
And those VZ payphones in NYCity -- what are you defining as Long Distance? If the call is multi-zone or intra-LATA toll, VZ could still be handling those calls in the "traditional" sense, by the CO as well as by their Operator TOPS switch, for coin-paid calls to Long Island
516 and 631, Westchester 914 and other upriver counties in 845, Byram and Greenwich CT 203 which has been VZ/NYTel for decades, and even "corridor" intra-LATA calls to VZ/NJBell for a handful of nearby Jersey counties across the Hudson River.The latter is similar to your southwestern New Jersey / southeastern Pennsylvania corridor option that VZ Bell Atlantic (NJBell, Bell of PA) has provided when AT&T and the BOCs were separated with the 1984 divestiture.
But for inter-LATA toll 1+ coin calls (outside of that limited NY/NJ corridor), AT&T won't handle those types of long distance calls anymore, at least not in the "traditional" 1+ coin way of doing things. If VZ payphones can still be used to place such calls, then it is being handled by some kind of internal COCOT-like "smart" chips, regardless of who the actual LD carrier happens to be. And its also possible that VZ had completely retrofitted their traditional "looking" payphones to be completely operated as if it were a COCOT, with internal "smart" chips, even for local, multi-zone, intra-LATA toll, NY/NJ "corridor" coin calls, as well as inter-LATA and possibly even 011+ international coin calls.
Incidentally, I think that a lot of foreign countries around the world have had their payphones operate by internal "mechanical counters" for decades. This would be a predecessor to the COCOT-like internal "smart chips" that have been used in the US with COCOTs since the early and mid-1980s, and even in Canada with Nortel "Millennium" super payphones, and also Canadian COCOTs since the late-1990s. I don't think that most "other" countries ever really had true CO controlled payphones in the way the US and Canada had known them. And even in the US and Canada, telcos in smaller towns and rural areas used to have "post-pay" coin service even in recent years as well!