Quick telephony question: how can calls from payphones to (888) 683-6697 be toll-free for the caller? I’m Japanese, so I may be missing something, but I don’t understand the mechanism that makes this free (or low-cost enough) to run as a free service.
Payphone Go
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Re: Payphone Go
#62Quick telephony question: how can calls from payphones to (888) 683-6697 be toll-free for the caller? I’m Japanese, so I may be missing something, but I don’t understand the mechanism that makes this free (or low-cost enough) to run as a free service.
the owner of the (888) 683-6697 line pays for incoming calls
Re: Payphone Go
#63I've been peripherally involved in an early stages effort to build something similar for the entire nation (https://reportapayphone.com/), and became aware of this just recently. It's a really great example to aspire to, in terms of the level of polish. I do find the time limiting odd; our goal is to identify as many payphones as possible this way.
Unfortunately the state of payphone-related records is extremely poor, with many ostensibly-active PSPs having quietly gone out of business, other PSPs reorganized without reregistering, and states themselves keeping PSP records very poorly. Throw in small-scale COCOT operations and the result is that there really isn't any authoritative database of possible payphones, so this website's map is going to be missing some. It will also include many that are nonfunctional, as today's PSPs seem to do close to zero maintenance and out of service phones stay that way for years.
Some of the nation's largest PSPs have become ghosts, with the phones still operating and able to accept payment, but the PSP completely unresponsive to efforts to contact them. It's a very strange afterlife.
Re: Payphone Go
#64Please consider extending the game at least by a couple weeks! I’m very curious what percent of all California payphones could be captured with an extended game. I know the game’s phone number isn’t free but I’m sure it could be largely covered by donations. Without even going and playing the game yet, it’s already let me understand more of the local geography. Lots of small nursing homes, behavioral institutions, an…
Landline phone calls should just be free at this point. Put like 0.0001% of mobile profit into a fund and surely you can maintain the existing POTS payphone base. POTS-quality voice is like a rounding error in bandwidth, but we're saddled with POTS-era costs for connections.
You are underestimating just how many people that are out there that want free long distances calls lol. I worked at a phone company and this was a never ending persistent security issue. There are lots of tricky ways to get someone to pay for your long distance call. If the pay phone was free then the local provider would be on the hook for those calls.
Just block long distance calls right? If it was that simple it would not be a persistent issue.
Re: Payphone Go
#65This is really cool, I wonder if it would be doable in other countries? In particular UK?
Re: Payphone Go
#66Damn this needs building for the UK payphones there are a dying breed too and they used to be everywhere
We actually ran something similar in the UK a couple of years ago but had to shut it down due high costs.
However we recently figured out how to do it in a way that won't bankrupt us, so keep your eyes peeled over the next few weeks...
Re: Payphone Go
#67This is really cool, I wonder if it would be doable in other countries? In particular UK?
See my comment elsewhere in this thread...
Re: Payphone Go
#68That is super fun, if I had a motorcycle in Cali, I would so do this!
Re: Payphone Go
#69Re: Payphone Go
#70Quick telephony question: how can calls from payphones to (888) 683-6697 be toll-free for the caller? I’m Japanese, so I may be missing something, but I don’t understand the mechanism that makes this free (or low-cost enough) to run as a free service.
Most countries have some numbers with receiver pays or reverse billing as a feature. Sometimes called 'free phone'.
My research says Japan has several prefixes, 0120, 0800, 0088, 0531, although not all phone numbers in these prefixes are available to all callers.
In the US, holders of a toll free number pay their carrier a per minute rate (sometimes with billing increments of 1 second), as well as a fee per call from payphones.
The per minute pricing is pretty reasonable typically one or two cents per minute; I think the per call cost from a payphone are more significant, although I don't see this listed by most providers; I seem to recall it being pretty hefty (and some toll free numbers would not accept calls from payphones as a result), but maybe changes in the network and intercarrier billing have resulted in a smaller fee or it's just not relevant to most people because payphones are hard to find.