Save the pay phone - a suddenly endangered species

His bill requires that pay-phone providers notify the state if they plan to remove a phone and allows residents to petition for phones in places that would otherwise be unprofitable - from island communities, to battered women's shelters, to dock landings. In the first year, $50,000 of support would come from the state's Universal Service Fund.

Peter Reilly, the Maine spokesman for Verizon, a major phone-service provider for the state, says the business has grown more competitive and having the phone companies pay for PIPs could mean less profit, and therefore fewer phones, in the future. "We can't subsidize those [pay phones] that are not carrying their own weight," he says. "It's a rare occurrence when someone who needs [a pay phone] can't find one that's convenient."

For those who have seen such rare occurrences, however, pay phones can be vital. Last year the phone on Cliff Island, Maine, an hour's ferry ride from Portland, was pulled because it wasn't generating enough revenue.

Jane McClarie Laughlin, president of the Casco Bay Island Development Association, witnessed an accident on the boat dock last summer. Someone happened to have a cellphone - but coverage is so spotty that a connection is no guarantee. "People think that there aren't any isolated places anymore," she says. "But there are."

Elizabeth Ostrander, hanging up a pay phone receiver outside a Portland movie theater, says she owns no cell. "I'm very dependent on pay phones when I come here [to Portland]," says the resident of Eastport, on the northeast tip of Maine.

In 1996, the FCC put states in charge of setting up and funding PIP programs. Mr. Jortner says that at least five other states have moved to put similar programs in place. It's a number that many expect will grow if pay phones keep disappearing - although those without phone connections may be the least aware of their options. "I think there is a lot more dissatisfaction than the complaint ratio would suggest," says Jortner.

In New Hampshire the legislature set up a PIP program, which will take effect in July. It couldn't come soon enough for Mike Lewis, proprietor of the Stinson Lake Store in Rumney, N.H., who has let customers use his phone in a pinch ever since the pay phone was removed. "They have no heart," says Mr. Lewis of the phone company's decision. When his store is closed, "people have to go door to door trying to find people who have a phone."

There are others who insist that the pay phone is not a dying breed.

Mark Thomas, a New York pianist who runs a website (www.payphone-project.com) to help people track the locations of pay-phone numbers, says that as long as people need them, pay phones will endure - and that they should not be required to be profitable any more than streetlights are.

Says Mr. Thomas: "Those things are lifelines to some people."

Page: 1 | 2