Lisa Hancock replied:
There were two stages of payphone deregulation.
The first was with Divestiture, which was announced by AT&T in Jan.1982, to become effective with Jan.1984. A provision of the MFJ or whatever opened the door for private "COCOT" payphones. State regulatory agencies would still regulate *TELCO* owned public phones, but they now had to
*allow* some form of competition from private payphones, under tariffs or at least some form of loose "guidelines".And then twelve years later, with the 1996 "Telecom Bill", even telco- owned payphones were now fully deregulated. The Feds said that State regulatory agencies could no longer even regulate the rates or terms that telco (ILEC) payphones would comply with in that state. Many independent telcos, but even at least one BOC, BellSouth, began to completely change the interface of their telco-owned payphones w/r/t the rest of the telephone network. While the payphones were still telco-owned, they were now interfaced with the central office (and subsequently would appear at a LEC TOPS or AT&T OSPS Operator console) as if it were a "COCOT". The central office switch no longer directly handled coin-disposition. The LEC TOPS or AT&T OSPS no longer had "ACTS" over the "COCOT-ized" telco-owned payphone (Automated Coin Telephone Service).
However, there *WAS* a provision in the 1996 "Telecom Bill" that allowed for "public need" payphones and locations, such as rest stops, lonely stretches of highway, transit stations, public libraries, and so forth. If Telco wanted to remove payphone service from such a location, they could NOT just unilateally remove that phone. They had to have some kind of notification process or whatever, since it would have usually been on "government/public property".
IANAL, and I don't know if the local or state (or federal) government agency in charge of that highway, rest stop, transit facility, government building, etc. could have "forced" telco to retain the payphone at that location or not -- all I know is that with 1996's changes to 1984, there was some kind of a provision for "public need and necessity" payphone locations if telco wanted to completely remove the payphone at that location. And even with 1996, Bell or the incumbent independent is still considered a "default provider/carrier of last resort" if the private competitive "marktplace" fails to properly provide. However, many incumbent LECs, both Bell and independent, have completely WITHDRAWN from the payphone business, so if there *IS* some kind of power a local or state (or federal) govrnment body has regarding "public need/necessity" payphone locations, what COULD be done (if anything could be legally done anyways), IF that incumbent telco is no longer providing payphone service whatsoever!
Of course, governments can always do whatever they want, depsite things like "that constitution" notwithstanding! And the goverment doesn't need "dollars" to do it -- only some kind of show of force!
- Anthony Bellanga