There is an article from Dow Jones Newswires (Wall Street Journal) dated Thursday 13-October-2011, regarding VeriZon being the last "Bell" telco to officially exit the payphone business. The full text of the article as it appears in the Wall Street Journal can be found at the following WSJ link:
There is a line in the article regarding Sprint having exited the payphone business when it spun-off Embarq in 2006. While that is true, Embarq did (at least at the time) inherit those once-Sprint-branded payphones. Here is the text of that reference, and my reply regarding that, and payphones service in recent years, in general:
Embarq _did_ acquire Sprint-LEC (legacy United/Centel) payphones in
2006 when Sprint "spun-off" legacy United/Centel LECs into Embarq. Those payphones were re-branded "Embarq". I remember seeing the Nortel Millennium "super" payphones in (most) Greyhound bus stations (at least those stations which were either Greyhound owned, or which Greyhound had the payphone contract with Sprint; some Greyhound stations are owned by the city or a local government agency, and that government agency has the payphone contract with someone else, such as the local Bell incumbent telco.) Greyhound contracted with Sprint as the payphone company for most bus stations, regardless of who the actual legacy landline telco is for that city. Those payphones were re-branded Embarq.I haven't been inside a Greyhound bus station since probably 2008, so I don't know if those Embarq-branded Nortel Millenniums have been re-branded CenturyLink since 2009.
CenturyLink has had AE single-slot payphones in its legacy CenturyTel service area, a good deal of which is not too far from where I live. However, private COCOT vendors have been MUCH more common in more recent years. There were at least TWO AE single-slot payphones I noticed, CenturyTel "c.o.switch and at&t/BellSouth-TOPS-ACTS controlled" payphones, one in Roanoke LA and another in Elton LA. Both were located right outside of the CenturyTel c.o.buildings, and in "egg-shaped" enclosures. The enclosures were still there a couple of years ago, but empty of their payphones. Both locations (Elton LA and Roanoke LA) are both one-time GT&E that were sold circa 1972/73 when GTE sold-off its Louisiana rate centers to CenturyTel.
I don't know if long-time CenturyTel still has other payphones in service though. Nor do I know if CenturyLink has continued with the once-Embarq (once-Sprint/United-and-Centel) payphones.
Qwest (US-West) sold off its payphone business circa 2004/05 to "FSH", but for some time, the payphones were still "branded" Qwest. There was recently (about two months ago) an article somewhere regarding once-time Qwest payphones (I think that FSH _and_ another company's name were mentioned) whose payphones in airports/etc. in legacy Qwest states, were over-charging for card/collect calls made from those payphones. I don't know if those payphones would still have been branded as Qwest when CenturyLink acquired Qwest earlier this year... if they were still Qwest-branded, even though FSH actually now owns the phones, are those payphones being re-branded as CenturyLink???
BellSouth was one of the first RBOCs to officially exit the payphone business, announced about ten years ago. The last one-time Bell payphones that I still saw in New Orleans were either removed completely, or else rebranded with the name of some COCOT owner, circa
2004.Apparently, SBC still owned payphones in states of legacy SW Bell (MO, KS, OK, AR, TX), Ameritech (OH, MI, IN, IL, WI), SNET (CT), Pacific Telesis (CA, NV), when SBC bought out AT&T in late 2005, renaming everything as "at&t" ILEC. I don't know how many such payphones were still owned by SBC/at&t. In 2006, I took several trips to Houston TX, passing through Beaumont TX and Orange TX, but all I noticed were COCOT payphones. At a hospital on Houston where I was visiting a relative, there were no payphones, but rather banks of "courtesy" phones, desk phones bolted to the table, in rows of (privacy divided) "carrels" with chairs, in the lobby areas on the main floor and near elevator/stairway landings throughout the hospital. I don't know if they were toll restricted or not. I forgot if you had to "dial-9" for an outside line (i.e., these courtesy phones were on the PBX or rather on a straight outside c.o.line). But you did NOT need to have 35c or
50c or whatever to make a local call. Toll-free numbers (800/etc) were all allowed, so collect, card, pre-paid card, etc. calls were all possible (if the phones might have been toll-restricted). The old blue Bell "credit" phones did NOT allow (free) local calls, but these courtesy phones in lobbies and elevator/stairway landings in the hospital in Houston, in 2006, did allow free local calls.SBC's at&t bought BellSouth in Dec.2006/Jan.2007. I was hoping that since SBC/at&t still had payphones, that MAYBE they could be re-introduced into BellSouth territory. But during 2007, I heard news that "at&t" was also going to exit the payphone business, and some news stories did mention that "recently acquired BellSouth" had already exited the payphone business.
Yes, VeriZon is the last of the RBOCs to formally exit the payphone business. (I wonder if Cincinnati Bell still has any payphones?)
VeriZon, being the merger of Bell Atlantic/NYNEX and what-remained-of GTE/Contel at the time (2000), there were both WECO and AE single-slot payphones that were being rebranded "VeriZon" in 2000 and 2001.
VeriZon has retained the "Bell" logo in many legacy landline telco functions, such as repair trucks, payphones/signage, hard-hats on repair men, etc. This applied not only in legacy Bell Atlantic/NYNEX territory, but also in some GTE/Contel territory, both in PA/VA (which are otherwise Bell Atlantic), as well as in OTHER states (i.e., Florida, Texas, California). I was told that VeriZon's logo _with_ the
1970s-era "Bell" logo was added to payphones/signage in old GTE/Contel states on AE single-slot payphones, certainly PA, VA, FL, TX, CA. But I wonder if other states had the "Bell" logo for VeriZon added as well to their GTE-AE payphones and other now-VZ telco things? (And what about Hawaii, the Dominican Republic, etc back at the time? Of course, VeriZon sold once-GTE in Hawaii to the Carlyle Group in 2005, once-GTE in Saipan/Mariana Islands to a new Philippine-based PTI in 2005, and once-GTE in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico to American Movil in 2007-or-so. But where GTE-AE payphones in those locations added the "Bell" logo to the VeriZon logo in the early 2000s as well?).I also understand that in PA and VA, VeriZon would sometimes replace AE payphones in legacy GTE/Contel areas with WECO single-slot payphones, since VeriZon had those states as well being the RBOC Bell Atlantic. I don't know if WECO payphones ever began to replace AE payphones in other GTE/Contel states that became VeriZon in 2000.
In 2009/10, there was the great "purge" of legacy GTE/Contel by VeriZon, in states OTHER than FL/TX/CA and PA/VA (legacy Contel in Knotts Island NC also retained by VeriZon), sold to Frontier. And legacy BA/C&P-WV (including Crows-Hematite VA) was sold by VeriZon to Frontier at the time as well. I wonder how many WECO (WV) and AE payphones existed in these other states as VeriZon payphones? Did Frontier acquire them? Does Frontier still have them? What about other Frontier areas that were Citizens or Frontier/Rochester Tel? I assume that Frontier (Citizens, Rochester, etc) have used AE single-slot payphones -- Citizens (prior to being acquired by Frontier) did acquire a great deal of GTE-including-Contel that GTE chose not to retain during the 1990s-era.
And then VeriZon sold off NET&T in ME/NH/VT to FairPoint in 2007/08. I wonder if remaining VZ/NET&T WECO payphones were acquired by FairPoint at that time?
Windstream (Alltel) acquired a great deal of once-GTE-and-Contel that GTE chose not to retain during the 1990s, and that VeriZon sold off in the early 2000s. I assume that Alltel acquired the AE single slot payphones of once GTE-and-Contel. Valor itself was created in 2000 to acquire old GTE/Contel in Texas, New Mexico, and GTE in Oklahoma that VeriZon chose not to retain. Windstream was formed in 2006 by the merger of Valor and the landline side of Alltel. BTW, in 1999, Alltel acquired Aliant/Lincoln Tel & Tel in Lincoln NE (which I assume used AE single-slot payphones), and in 2009/10, Windstream acquired Iowa Telecom which was formed in the early 2000s to take over GTE and Contel in Iowa that VeriZon chose not to retain. I wonder how much Windstream still has of payphones?
Throughout the later 1980s and continuing, more and more once-telco- owned payphones were replaced with private "COCOT" payphones, but even those are disappearing as well.
But even telco payphones have mostly abandoned traditional TOPS/OSPS "ACTS" control, as well as c.o.switch-control for local coin calls, and basically made their payphone internal operations and interface with the rest of the network like a "COCOT/private" payphone.
AT&T-LL eliminated OSPS ACTS control for coin-paid inter-LATA (and some intra-LATA) and international calls back circa 2002/03. SOME remaining ILEC payphones were still c.o.controlled and had TOPS-ACTS control for coin-paid intra-LATA calls, but were now turned into "hybrid" operation, where internal chips were also added for inter-LATA coin-paid calls (since ACTS no longer existed within AT&T-LL OSPS).
I rarely ever have had the need to use a payphone in more recent years. But in the old "Bell" days, and even when COCOTs first began coming out in the later 1980s and throughout the 1990s, I used payphones a LOT more than after 2000 or so. I also would find payphones, especially telco-owned c.o.switch/ACTS-controlled payphones, quite useful when visiting places on trips out-of-town, to determine the type of local dialing/trunking/switching/etc. used in that place!
And it is quite a shame that payphones are disappearing or turning completely into COCOTs. There are still going to be times when one needs to find a (working and non-cheating) payphone to use! And to think that payphones were SO commonplace not that long ago!
Mark J. Cuccia markjcuccia at yahoo dot com