AT&T announced it is getting out of the pay phone business, looking to sell every last one of its remaining 65,000 pay phones over the next year or so. The carrier hopes to sell many of them to independent operators. Many stories today are questioning whether or not this is the death of the pay phone business. The business certainly has shrunk, from 2.6 million pay phones in the U.S. in 1998 to just 1 million now, and total number of calls annually has fallen from 3 billion to 1.6 billion. However, while AT&T, Qwest and others have hung up on pay phones, Verizon Communications continues to operate about 225,000 pay phones --but, of course, as the pay phone operator in New York City, Verizon is required by law to provide Superman with a place to change into his work clothes.
For more:
- read this story in The Dallas Morning News