Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Pay phones prove value in disaster
If you’re at a payphone, chances are you are not in Tamarac, which has just four of them left.
And if you’re either in Weston or Singer Island, the chances are even slimmer. They have just two pay phones each, according to the pay phone company that provides South Florida with all but a handful of its pay phones.
It’s an obvious consequence of the technology that’s put cellphones in the hands of 83 percent of American adults. This near-extinction in cities populated with tens of thousands might not seem worthy of even a footnote, but then photos in the wake of Hurricane Sandy’s devastation showed lines
at pay phones snaking down East Coast city streets.
The superstorm that some estimate killed more than 100 people in the Northeast also felled one quarter of the nation’s wireless network that makes cell phones work.
Pay phones, long forgotten, became a go-to destination.
Broward County’s EmergencyManagement Director Chuck Lanza says he hates to think whatwould happen if the cellular network completely failed because of a hurricane or other disaster.
“For us to do a work-around of that is almost impossible,” Lanza said. “All we’d have left is face-to-face communication.”
Pay phones have proven to be better at standing up to high winds than cell phone towers and operating without any external electricity. But the pay phone industry itself is on life support.
The number of pay phones in Florida peaked around 120,000 in the late 1990s, according to Bruce Renard, director of the Florida Public Telecommunications Association. And, at the state’s last count —August 2011 — there were 7,000 left. And it’s getting smaller every day, to hear the industry’s representatives tell it.
“The business will die unless we are allowed to supplement it with advertising (on pay phone kiosks) or get government subsidies,” said Michael Kohner, director of operations for First American Telecom, the state’s largest pay phone provider.
Kohner said one commissioner for the City of Miami wants to eliminate telephone advertising kiosks. For Kohner, the photos in Hurricane Sandy’s aftermath prove pay phones should be allowed to get the advertising money or government funding: “Even though they are an older technology , they are reliable technology— an important safety net for all of us.”
No one keeps track of pay phone locations anymore — the Public Service Commission stopped that six to eight years ago, according to Cindy Muir, spokeswoman for the commission.
In Broward and Palm Beach counties, 541 pay phones are provided by First American Telecom. Counting where the other ones are is near impossible. Kohner said that his company’s phones are generally in good working order: 1,100 total phones inMiami-Dade, BrowardandPalm Beachcounties are maintainedby four fulltimers and one part-timer.
Although it varies by provider, First American, the area’s largest, charges 50 cents for a call across the street, or the country. One buck buys 3 to 10 minutes of an international call, although it can be more expensive, dependingonthe country, or if you’re calling a cell phone number.
Some of the 85 companies that the Public Service Commission lists as providing pay phones can’t be reached byphone. One provider’s number leads to a bail bonds company in Gainesville and receptionist there said the business does not contain a pay phone.
Our Lady of Lourdes Academy in Miami-Dade is listed as another provider of pay phones, but Olga Martinez, the high school’s spokeswoman, said she’s not sure if the two phones by the cafeteria are even working.
“I’ve never seen anyone on them and I’ve been here10 years,” she said.
Superman’s changing room might disappear from the landscape entirely and industry representatives say it’s because the government has chosen to subsidize cell phones. “Lifeline” started 25 years ago, providing a subsidy for low-income families to get a phone connection at home, but rules were loosened in 2005 that allowed wireless companies to get these dollars.
Hence, the number of Lifeline subscribers has increased from 6.8 million in 2004 to 17.1 million in 2012, according to the Federal Communications Commission.
Florida gothammered earlier than most because it is where TracFone rolled out their product that can be entirely subsidized by the government’s Lifeline monthly payment, state industry officials say.
“They definitely took a lot of folks who hadbeenpayphoneusersandturnedthem into subsidized TracFone users,” said the state telecommunications association’sRenard.
Mark Wigfield, a spokesman for the FCC, said Lifelinewas not meant to be the death knell for pay phones at all. To qualify for the $9.25-a-month subsidy, Lifeline recipients’ income must be low enough to qualify for food stamps — a number that has increased in recent years.
“The concept behind Lifeline has always been that access to communications at home is useful to low-income families,” he said. “You use it for emergencies, to stay in touch with your job and family.”
First American’s Kohner said that his company’s data show that pay phones are, even more, the go-to for emergencies. In Miami, 911 calls from pay phones nearly doubled in the last five years, to 7,780 in fiscal year 2012, he said.
They can also be converted into Wi-Fi hotspots, as New York City has done in a pilot project. Using a smartphoneor tablet, customers can get on the Internet for free up to 200 feet away from a pay phone that has been converted to a hotspot.
Bill Johnson, director of Palm Beach Emergency Management, said he’s not worried about the dearth of pay phones in a catastrophic situation. Stronger cellphone towers and cellular networks can be brought in on trucks if the towers fall.
He does remember, though, in Hurricane Andrew that the pay phone at the gas station near his house in Country Walk was the only one working. But you could only talk and listen on one end of it, he remembers. “There’s been a lot of hardening of the [wireless] infrastructure since then,” he said.