smartcard payphones

This question may not be as relevant these days with widespread use of cellphones and the decline of payphones, but why aren't smartcard payphones used in the US like in Canada and Europe? It would seem more convenient to consumers to just pop in a phone card instead of carrying lots of change (or dialing long PIN card numbers) as well as convenient for phone companies with not having to collect the coins, etc.

Reply to
Mel3k
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You just answered your own question. Payphones are now rarely used, and are outrageously expensive.

Another missing piece is that prepaid phone cards did not become common in the US until sometime in the 1990s. Prior to then, "phone cards" in the US meant a telephone credit card, which basically meant a 4-digit PIN associated with your home phone number that allowed you to charge a pay phone call to your home number.

Put another way, The Telephone Company in the US never got in the prepay phone card business; consequently never saw much of a need to make payphones be capable of reading cards.

It was (as is the case today) private companies that got in the prepay phone card business. By then, The Telephone Company had ceased to exist, and its successors were aggressively getting out of the payphone business. Other private companies started getting into the payphone business, but they were generally different companies from the prepay phone card companies.

All of these factors conspired together to preclude, in the US, the phone card culture found throughout Asia and Europe.

Most prepay cards in the US are used for long-distance and international calls, and since they use VoIP technology they greatly undercut the normal pricing for calls from their home or cell phone. As a result, that is what most people use prepay cards for; as a replacement for toll call service (local calls from your home phone in the US are usually free).

There is no way that service at that pricing can be economically offered from a payphone, and generally there's a very high setup charge if the call is made from a payphone.

-- Mark --

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does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum.

Reply to
Mark Crispin

You evidently have not been around that much or gone to a variety of places. Smartcard phones such as the Millennium (formerly manufactured by Nortel and now manufactured by QuorTech is a phone that accepts coins, "smart cards" and credit cards with magnetic strips.

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Deployed by Verizon, Ameritech, Qwest and others.

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Reply to
Joseph

There indeed are payphones that accept smartcards. Just because you've not seen them does not mean that they don't exist! Been to most any airport recently? Most airports have Millennium pay phones which do coins, smartcards or credit cards.

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Reply to
Joseph

Yes, it would be more convenient, but the payphone industry in the US isn't set up to be convenient. :)

There are a couple of reasons why payphones don't accept smart cards in the US:

  1. The obvious: cell phones are becoming more and more ubiquitous. EVen people who normally don't use cell phones, or have poor credit can obtain one for reasonably cheap through a prepay reseller.
  2. The less obvious: payphone vendors in the US became largely privatized (hence the advent of Customer-Owned Coin-Operated Telephones, or COCOTs) ever since local baby bells began to drastically reduce their payphone footprint. And those private payphone vendors got greedy and unscrupulous. Many have made arrangements with bottom-shelf long distance companies (known as "Operator Service Providers") to charge exorbitant rates for collect and long distance calls, and pocketing a cut of the hefty profits made. As such, it behooves COCOT vendors to see to it that callers user the OSP they have contracted with, and to make it as difficult as possible (as the law allows, and sometimes they might even break the law) to use the carrier of your choice.

In short: using another carrier's prepaid calling card eats into the COCOT's profits, and they'd much rather you dial 0+ to complete your call. So why install a card reader?

In my opinion, payphone vendors can really only blame themselves for the demise of payphones. I remember a time when I would see a self-important business person talking on their cell phone next to a bank of payphones, and laugh, knowing it would be so much cheaper to use the payphone. Now, in the rare instance I see someone fumbling for a calling or credit card to make a payphone call, I'm more inclined to let them borrow my cell... even if it's in the middle of Arizona and I'm roaming on Cellular Express at $2.95 a minute. :).

Reply to
Isaiah Beard

Where do you buy a telephone smartcard in the US? I've never seen one for sale. And considering how few phones take them, why bother?

I think the reason that smartcards never went anywhere is that we have such a well developed industry for cards where you call an 800 number and punch in a code. They work from any payphone.

In Canada, the ILEC phones all take smartcards and charge a reasonable price. If you use a smartcard in a Bell phone for a local call, it only deducts a quarter.

Reply to
John R. Levine

From a Millennium phone there's a preprogrammed key that you pusht that will connect you with a place where you can buy them.

How is that more convenient that putting in a smart card which will deduct the cost of calling and leave a balance on your card?

Well, that's the local calling rate. The local calling rate in most places in the US is either 35 or 50 cents. That amount is deducted from your card when you call if you are using the smart card.

The ILECs in the US figured since revenue was down because of cellphone use that it made more sense to charge more so people would use the service even less. I'm not sure what the logic in that was, but that's what happened.

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Reply to
Joseph

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