Pay Phones Still Exist!
But do we still need them? And do they actually work?

By Cody Derespina

Ilya Kuznetsov, a Russian tourist, ducked into a phone shelter on East 86th Street and performed a 20th century ritual. Pressing his fingers firmly against a bank of square metallic buttons, he placed a call.

Barely a week into his U.S. visit, Kuznetsov discovered that calling his girlfriend in Moscow from a street phone was more cost effective than using the cell phone he’d carried with him from half a world away. “I have to call her as often as I can,” said Kuznetsov, bemoaning the roaming charges that accompany the calls he places on his cell phone. “The cheapest way to do that is to use a pay phone.”

Kevin Knox, a Bronx resident, works as a messenger in Manhattan and touches base with his company about 16 times a day from pay phones. His messenger service provides him with a toll-free number that allows him to avoid running up his cell phone’s day-time minutes while checking in with the company.

Though Knox and Kuznetsov pick up the yellow plastic receivers for different reasons, both men find them absolutely essential. Many New Yorkers do not. And therein lays a debate over the future of the New York City pay phone: An outmoded relic to some, but to others an essential monument to convenience and security in a world now ruled by cells, satellites and cyberspace.

Community boards often lean toward the elimination of pay phones because they’re unnecessary and an eyesore.

“It’s an issue that has been troubling for the Community Board for quite awhile, and more so as time goes by,” said David Liston, chair of Community Board 8. “We see more and more of the pay phones and the need seems to be less and less.”
Board 8, which covers the East Side from East 59th to 96th streets, has been debating the pay phone issue for years. In December 2000, it obtained a list of applications for 1,000 new pay phones from the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications. Many board members opposed the installation, citing space constraints on the already crowded sidewalks of the Upper East Side. Some were wary of the motives for installing the phones, claiming that their primary use was to generate ad revenue. A number of pay phones, especially those which are banked together, have ads displayed on their exteriors.
Years later, the arguments against the proliferation—or in some cases, the existence—of pay phones remain the same.

“If the city were to say, ‘We’re going to sell billboards on 86th Street,’ people would go bonkers, it would never fly,” Liston said. “This is a way to accomplish that goal: You slap up a couple pay phones and you have a billboard.”

But Nicholas Sbordone, director of external affairs for the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, thinks the ad complaints are a little overblown and notes that many sidewalk pay phones don’t even have advertising.

There are two types of pay phones regulated by the department: Those within six feet of the building line and those beyond that boundary, referred to as curbside. Only those curbside phones, in a properly zoned area, can legally carry advertisements. Phones attached to subway egresses, inside parks or on private property are not regulated by the department and often do not have ads, according to Sbordone.

Regardless of their numbers, it’s clear that the revenue generated by ads is what drives profits from city pay phone operations.

The city receives only one quarter of the total net ad revenue from pay phones, but it still made $13.8 million last year. That means that the total ad revenue from pay phones amounted to more $50 million. And that’s just from the 35 organizations the city has contracts with, discounting the locations that don’t fall under the department’s umbrella.

New York also brings in almost $4 million from franchise commissions, as well as just over $600,000 from long distance calls and permit filing fees.
But ad revenues aside, the New York City pay phone business has been slowly dwindling.

Over the past eight years, the city has cut one-third of the more than 30,000 phones in place in 1999. The city plans to review its approach to sidewalk pay phones as the current franchise contracts move toward expiration in 2010.
When asked why so many pay phones are still operable, considering the widespread use of cell phones, Sbordone said, “At some locations they can provide a useful amenity for pedestrians.”
Heather Wilner, manager of media relations for Verizon, called the installation of advertisements on pay phones an “innovation” that’s helped to keep the devices afloat. Verizon owns about 25,000 pay phones throughout the five boroughs, a figure that encompasses both regulated and unregulated phones. Verizon also makes up about 35 percent of the total number of regulated pay phones in New York City, according to Sbordone.
Wilner declined to disclose how much the company makes in ad revenue.

Liston says that when he does actually pick up a pay phone, there’s often something missing: a dial tone.

“We’ve noticed an alarming trend that more and more of the phones don’t seem to be working,” Liston said. “When you see three in a row, and on the back of the three you see a huge ad, and you see that some or all of them aren’t even working, it’s painfully evident what’s going on here.”

But a recent informal survey of the Upper East and West Sides showed a majority of telephones in reasonable working condition. Although Verizon only owned about half the phones in the survey (79 out of 160), they were responsible for 70 percent of faulty devices.

Although the city oversees the pay phone sites, inspecting them and levying fines when appropriate, the responsibility for the cleanliness and upkeep falls to the companies that purchase the space.

Liston said he found the poll surprising and encouraging, and he also suggested that the results might have simply been a lucky coincidence for pay phone operators.
“To me, anecdotally, that’s remarkable,” he said.

When told that only a handful of people were actually seen using the 160 phones during the survey, Liston said that might be an even bigger issue.

“Even if all of them were working, you have to ask why we need them,” he said. “If they were really serving a purpose in a city as busy as this, with as much pedestrian traffic as we have, one in four or one in five would be using them.”
Verizon’s Wilner said that pay phones are still a vital resource for millions of people.

“Consider times when a cell phone or another means of communication isn’t available, like during the blackout in Manhattan during the summer of 2003 when people lined up to use pay phones,” she said. “Pay phones are used by everyone from tourists to people using calling cards to people who don’t carry cell phones to those who may forget their cell phone at home to someone whose cell phone battery has died.”

Robert McCrie, professor of security management at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said there are also security concerns that continue to make pay phones a necessity.

“For most of the past several generations, the wire telephone was an important part of the city’s security infrastructure, and that’s because we could call police,” said McCrie, who noted the significance of being able to reach 911 at a moment’s notice. “While the need for this has vastly decreased because of the expansion of cellular phones and mobile phones, there still is a need for these telephones.”
Liston said he is equally concerned about safety issues that arise from putting those same phones on the street. Pointing to heavy pedestrian traffic, sidewalk cafés and other pavement fixtures, Liston said sidewalk space is precious, even without allocating several feet for pay phones. He wonders when people are going to be pushed out into the street by the lack of room.

Community Board 7 Chair Helen Rosenthal, whose Upper West Side district has no shortage of pay phones, proposed a compromise.

“If you’re serious about it and you’ve really made a thoughtful decision about it and we need them for security, I would embed them in the bus stops, and then you’d sort of take care of that problem,” she said.

Meanwhile, some companies are abandoning the pay phone industry all together. Last month, AT&T announced that it was pulling its services out of the 13 states—New York not among them—where it currently has pay phones.
“Usage and revenues had declined sharply in recent years, so it was a business decision,” AT&T spokesperson Seth Bloom said. “It’s a competitive market and another company is likely to pick up those phones where demand exists.”
The company is scheduled to complete its pullout by the end of 2008.

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