When was the
last time you used a pay phones? How often you have used a pay phone in the
last year?
Typically
a payphone is a coin-operated telephone located
outdoors for public use. They are placed in a telephone
booth or a privacy hood, designed with coin slot for inserting
money (usually coins) or have magnetic swipe for making payment using credit
card, debit card, or a telephone
card. There
is also the Prepaid Calling
Cards to facilitate calls by first calling the Toll-free telephone
number, entering the card account number and pin,
then the desired connection telephone number. An equipment usage fee may be charged as
additional units, minutes or tarif fee to the collect/third-party, debit,
credit, telephone or prepaid calling card when used at payphones.
How
the pay phone or public phone system is built to connect one another during
calls are made? The system is called public switched telephone network (PSTN), which is the aggregate
of the world's circuit-switched telephone
networks that are operated by
national, regional, or local telephony operators, providing infrastructure and
services for public telecommunication.
The PSTN consists of telephone
lines, fiber optic cables, microwave transmission links, cellular networks, communications satellites, and undersea telephone cables, all
interconnected by switching
centers, thus allowing any telephone in the world to communicate with any
other. Originally a network of fixed-line analog telephone systems, the PSTN is almost
entirely digital in its core and includes mobile as well as fixed telephones.
The
PSTN adheres to the standards created by the ITU-T
(International Telecommunication Union-Telecommunication)1. These standards allow different networks in
different countries to interconnect seamlessly. The E.163 and E.1642 standards provide a single
global address space for telephone numbers. The combination
of the interconnected networks and the single numbering plan make it possible
for any phone in the world to dial any other phone.
In Britain during late 1990s, the Government backed service
provider has seen a declined in public phones usage. This is due to the mobile
technology that is taking place among the users. More decline in popularity of
payphones is most obvious in Jordan during 2004, it became the first country in the world not to have telephone
booths generally available. The mobile/cellular phone penetration in that country is so high that telephone booths have
hardly been used at all for years. The two private payphone service companies,
namely ALO and JPP, closed down, and currently there's no payphone service to
speak of.
In some countries, there are few private service providers
that still provide pay phone services however for a limited number and or order
basis. In the US today, APCC Services, a subsidiary of the
American Public Communications Council, Inc., is the premier provider for
billing and collection services of dial around compensation for independent
payphone service providers (PSPs) and local exchange carrier (LEC) payphone
service providers 3. These independent Payphone Service Providers (PSPs) operate some
450,000 of the nation's 1.5 million (according to industry
sources) payphones. They range in size from small providers who own one or
two phones to a publicly-traded company that operates about 70,000.
Q1. If you were to
ask your self when was the last time we
all used payphones (public phones), we could not recall exactly when. But those who were the students in the
universities during 1997 to 2002 who also been studying abroad, remembered well
that how to use and very frequently. Those during those years, the moment we
graduated and entered working life would definitely use mobile phones. Since,
then payphones are hardly seen around and in Malaysia we could not be bothered
to find or even use pay phones.
Q2. If you needed to
use a pay phone, would you know immediately where one was located?
In Malaysia, most of us have been using mobile phones. Due to
the intensive mobile technology developed, most mobile providers such as Maxis
and Celcom provide stable and good coverage network. This has increased the use
of mobile users. Hence, public phones now are rare to find even in public
places like train or bus stations.
Q3: When was the last time you used your cell phone? How
often you used your cell phone in the last day?
The last time pay phones were seen was during late 90s (about
1997) and it is about this time that the last time I used the pay phones. I did
not use pay phones much as I and most of us subscribed to the fix-line on
rental basis. Only when I was out and
about.
References
3. http://www.apcc.net/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=39
