After 129 years, AT&T is disconnecting its pay-phone business. Over the next year, it will phase out 65,000 pay phones in the 13 states formerly served by the local phone company SBC
Communications, which acquired the old Ma Bell in 2005 and took its name.
Since 1998, the number of pay phones in service has shrunk to about one million from 2.6 million, according to
AT&T. The main reason has been the proliferation of cellular phones, which were invented in the 1970s. AT&T said it will continue to sell wholesale pay-phone service to independent operators, and it
expects them to pick up some of its business. Verizon still operates pay phones in the Northeast, particularly in New York and Boston.
The first public pay-telephone station was set up
in 1878, just two years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the device. The first coin-operated pay phone was installed in Hartford, Conn., in 1889.
advertisement
advertisement
Read the whole story at The Wall Street Journal »