When I managed a local general-aviation airport some years ago, we had a similar problem. The FAA required even the smallest public airport to have a means for a pilot to contact them. (I've been out of the business for more than ten years, so I don't know if the requirement still exists.) That always translated to a pay phone. I built a new terminal and in making arrangement to extend the City's PBX to the airport for the first time, I learned the cost of the pay phone. I don't remember the number, but it was as shocking as Davidson County's experience. With the PBX we were able to simply install an extension that allowed 800- and local calls, but not LD. Everyone was happy and the cost was almost nothing because it shared a line with something else in the building.
Years ago, most businesses had a pay phone for visitors and for employees to make and receive personal calls. Making companies were very strict about employees making even local calls from their business lines, though others were more flexible.
In my area, the cost of a business local phone call is one message unit, about 7 cents, and has been that for decades. In the early
1970s seven cents meant much more than today. In itself it wasn't much but it would add up in volume.
Also, with privately owned PBXs it's cheaper to have more extensions, so one can be assigned to visitors and not tie up someone's desk phone.
Today, many companies have a telephone extension in the receptionist area and visitors are welcome to make local calls from it. Other companies wouldn't mind if a visitor made a brief local call from someone's phone. That's obviously cheaper than paying for a pay phone that is rarely used.
But the need for public pay phones hasn't gone away completely. Our local public library got rid of its pay phone some years ago. Then they found a bunch of kids asking the librarian to use a phone to call home for a ride, and they couldn't allow that. Most kids today have cell phones, but not all.
I will note that many people are quite generous in lending their cell phone to a stranger if the need arises. For example, at a train station if someone goes about asking for change for the phone, someone will offer use of their phone. On a train, if there is a delay people will gladly share their phone to a stranger so they could call home.
In the case of the court house, I wonder how they'd accomodate a visitor who needed to make a phone call and didn't have a cell phone. Sometimes such places have strict rules against using the phones and the visitor would be turned away.
On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 12:24 PM, Lisa or Jeff wrot e:
:
It wasn't all *THAT* long ago. I started work for a company in Florida in 1992. There were pay phones in the hallways and we were instructed to use them for any personal business, the phones on our desk were for business purposes only. Of course that was widely ignored and the only time I ever saw the pay phones being used was when a hurricane was approaching and the PBX was tied up and people were forced to use the pay phone.
I left that company in 1998 and if I recall correctly most, if not all, the pay phones were gone.
In many places most business service is flat rate, and there is no incremen tal cost to the business for letting a visitor use the phone. As someone h as noted, may businesses have a phone out for the use of visitors.
I still see quite a few pay phones being used, although not nearly as many as in the past.
I worked for Bell Labs before Divestiture. We were allowed to make personal calls from our desks, even long distance. Of course, we WERE the phone company, so maybe that made a difference.
Several times in my career, I visited AT&T Long Lines transmission main stations. The station supervisor would tell us that if we wanted to make a call home to our family, it was OK to use a particular phone. It went directly into the toll switch, bypassing any accounting. But then again, they WERE the phone company.
Dick
***** Moderator's Note *****
ITYM "A particular 17C board".
Unless, of course, the toll switch was SxS and it was a dial phone ...
You'd lose. Companies with that kind of policy -- no personal calls from the work phone -- _also_ didn't let employees go make personal calls 'on company time; you could only use the pay phone during a 'break'. Thus, there was -no- company time 'lost' by the employee walking to/from the phone.
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