VoIP brings back old-fashioned pay phones to rural Vermont (2025)
168 points by bookofjoe 5 days ago | 62 comments
  • singpolyma3 5 days ago |
    I wonder how this will work with the FCC's proposed regulation to require ID, address, and "alternate phone number" for anyone who make make a phone call.
    • macintux 5 days ago |
      That sounds alarming, but from reading more about it, it doesn't seem like it would be relevant to this, although in the long run it's certainly possible that calling from a payphone would never actually reach someone directly, being shunted to the "you probably don't care about this" purgatory voicemail.

      https://www.mintz.com/insights-center/viewpoints/2776/2025-1...

      But that would seem true today as well.

    • refulgentis 5 days ago |
      I appreciated the concern, but after looking into it, that’s much more than what the FCC has proposed.

      The “ID, address, and alternate phone number” idea is part of a proposed Know-Your-Customer rule for artificial voice service providers when they sign up or renew customers, especially to stop illegal robocallers from getting network access. It’s not a requirement that every person provide ID before placing each phone call.

      The call-branding proposal is separate: it’s about displaying verified caller name/branding information when a call gets top-level STIR/SHAKEN attestation.

      “ID required for anyone who makes a call” is doing a little too much work. The telecom acronyms are exhausting enough without adding extra panic. :)

      • singpolyma3 5 days ago |
        I didn't say every time they make a call. But everyone who is able to make a call. I don't see any reason a user of a payphone is not a customer of the payphone provider for example.

        We'll have to wait for the final guidance from the FCC, but as a telecoms provider I'm quite concerned about the direction.

        • refulgentis 5 days ago |
          May I submit you do see the reason, even, you named it? :) They are a user of a payphone, not subleasing a number that could be used for robodialing.
          • singpolyma3 5 days ago |
            And if they stand at the payphone and make scam calls for an hour and someone reports this and the payphone operator gets asked to identify this customer of theirs?
            • refulgentis 5 days ago |
              They’ll say “Well it’s a payphone” and the court will say “yeah obviously the rule wasn’t written for all callers it’s KYC for people who resale numbers” and then you’ll say “but TECHNICALLY” and the judge will smile and say sir we’re not in the habit of absurd maximalisms, your interpretation is at its face untenable, hence your interest in avoiding the consequences of it.
            • tardedmeme 4 days ago |
              Then a police officer can visit the payphone and find out.
              • singpolyma3 4 days ago |
                Indeed. Well let's hope
    • 2OEH8eoCRo0 5 days ago |
      Credit card only?
  • arbuge 5 days ago |
    > free-to-use pay phones

    Some redundant words there perhaps.

    • thaumasiotes 5 days ago |
      Why? Payphones have never been distinguished by the fact that you had to pay to use them. You also had to pay for the phone in your home.

      Payphones were distinguished by the fact that they were located in convenient public places, and if you needed to contact someone, you could use them. That's still true here.

    • dylan604 5 days ago |
      You could use a pay phone to call the operator. You can use it to make collect calls. Hell, if you were industrious enough, you could trick the phone into giving you a dial tone for free. The VoIP ones will probably be harder to trick though
    • unethical_ban 5 days ago |
      People know what a payphone is, and the service it provides. As he said in the article, he chose the payphone style for what it signals to people - that it is public infrastructure.
  • userbinator 5 days ago |
    This is an example of the few places where something like this is feasible.

    free-to-use pay phones

    What an oxymoron. I suggest the term "public phone".

    • runako 5 days ago |
      Look at the device in TFA. That's a pay phone, which is also a way of describing a specific range of hardware types.
    • PyWoody 5 days ago |
      Phones-formally-known-as-pay
  • ChrisArchitect 5 days ago |
    (2025) OP

    Prior to that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44188204

    See also:

    Futel (Portland, Wash. State etc) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42220598

    Philtel (Philadelphia) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33851030

  • jmux 5 days ago |
    dudes rock
  • bahmboo 5 days ago |
    How many phone numbers do you have memorized? These days I only know a few but I used to know dozens.
    • hdgvhicv 5 days ago |
      I know half a dozen. All from the 80s and 90s, and only two which actually exist today.

      Other than that I know mine and my wife’s.

      Oddly enough I knew a company which had a phone number which was two digits transposed from my home number - 818614. My number until about 1993 was 818641. Didn’t realise the company was still going until a couple of weeks ago when a lorry pulled up outside my window with the name and phone number on.

      The other number I remember is my school number for some reason, I can’t think of ever have rung it. It’s still the same number today, 30 years later.

    • MrMorden 5 days ago |
      A few family, a few friends, some past work numbers, some of my phone numbers from a decade or two ago when I occasionally changed them, the Apple switchboard because I might have bled in six colors a long time ago, and of course Jenny because if not for her I'd have no clue whose phone number to give to the grocery store checkout system.
    • userbinator 5 days ago |
      More IP addresses than phone numbers for me, but around a dozen of each.
      • chadgpt3 4 days ago |
        Someone should make a payphone where you dial an IP address.
    • fragmede 4 days ago |
      Due to a failure of smartphone navigation UX, I know a bunch of addresses for work/friends/etc but very few new phone numbers. To learn an important phone number, someone told me to use that as my phone's lock screen/PIN.
    • vel0city 4 days ago |
      Easily half of the numebrs I still remember are numbers which are totally unimportant to me now. A Pizza Hut in a city I haven't lived in for well over a decade. A friend's home phone number that was disconnected when they moved many many years ago. My own home phone number growing up, long disconnected.

      Kind of interesting what just gets etched into your memory. I still remember an address of a house from when I was very small and have no other real memory of as my parents wanted to be sure I'd be able to tell people if I was ever lost.

    • alnwlsn 4 days ago |
      Do TV lawyers, roofing installers, or carpet stores count?
  • AussieWog93 5 days ago |
    One of the few good things that Telstra did in Australia was open up their whole old payphone network for free, nationwide.

    Apparently they're a genuine lifeline for people fleeing from abusive relationships; they need to leave their mobile behind to avoid being tracked.

    • bigstrat2003 5 days ago |
      I wish we had that in the US. Not due to abuse victims per se (though that does sound super useful for them), but just because it would be nice to not have to carry a cell phone to get ahold of people.
      • WarcrimeActual 5 days ago |
        The US is functionally a Third World country now. There are so many places worse than us that have so many better things. Anytime you see a little thing like this that is a good idea and helps people you can just assume that America would either fuck it up or just hate it because it helps people. Or because of the fact that they can’t ring every penny from the stone.
        • Spooky23 5 days ago |
          It’s hard to appreciate this until you spend some time elsewhere.

          I was in Barcelona for a few weeks for work. While I don’t want to pretend there are no problems, I can only say that life seemed better and happier than back home. I didn’t sense the cynicism that I’m used to. It was especially jarring considering that pretty much everyone is underpaid by American professional standards.

          That said, it’s anecdotal, I speak mediocre Spanish and toddler level Catalan, and my boss was paying the bill. But it was still striking to me.

          • KetoManx64 4 days ago |
            I image locals don't spend a lot of time discussing their hardships, political views and economics with the visiting gringos
            • mdhen 4 days ago |
              Gringos is not a term that Spaniards use. It's Latin American.
          • CalRobert 4 days ago |
            It varies. Obviously not Spain, but I lived in Ireland (a place Americans romanticize) for a decade and there was abundant cynicism. I got tired of mentioning ideas and plans to people and immediately hearing how they could fail. With friends from California (and Oregon) the response to "I want to build a house" wasn't "that will fail, here's why it's a bad idea, you will go bankrupt, only pros know how to do that" but "hell yeah I'll bring a nailgun!".
        • Telemakhos 5 days ago |
          Urban life in the US had decayed considerably over the past thirty years. Life in the suburbs, small towns, and countryside, however, is amazing. I have a house in the countryside and rent in a city in another state when I need to be in the office. In the city I have to step over addicts passed out and their trash; in the country I don't bother locking my doors when I leave, and I have cheaper, faster, and more reliable internet. You can't really compare "America" to another country, because the cities and other places have radically different standards of living.
    • HDBaseT 5 days ago |
      I remember reading some stats on the Telstra phone boxes, they help a lot of people in need. A ton of calls go to emergency services, government services, etc.

      I would be keen to know the total cost to run and maintain everything. There is a ton of boxes still around.

      • xattt 5 days ago |
        > A ton of calls go to emergency services, government services, etc.

        Is it common for providers to charge for emergency service access? I thought this was a given.

        • dwattttt 5 days ago |
          I believe emergency services calls are free. The cost being talked about is the maintenance cost to the provider.
        • toast0 5 days ago |
          My voip line has a charge for (e)911. I can pay $1.50 per month or $75 per call.

          Since my local police department has no direct dial number, non-emergency calls are routed through 911; that's pretty unusual, but I don't want to pay $75 to call police non-emergency, so I pay the $1.50.

          I've never seen emergency calling broken out on my bill from an ILEC though.

          • saltmate 4 days ago |
            How often do you have to call the police?
            • Computer0 4 days ago |
              I call 911 about every 6 months for non-occupational related incidents. Usually random arson incidents I come across (?), watching drunk people drive through folks mailboxes and get stuck in ditches, and medical events.
            • CalRobert 4 days ago |
              I could imagine paying the $1.50 because in an emergency I don't want to be second-guessing whether it's worth $75 to call the cops.
            • toast0 4 days ago |
              Had to do it several times to talk to a detective about an identity theft case. (Which ultimately went nowhere... local PD was interested, Oakland, CA PD where an apartment was rented with my information doesn't care; federal agencies only seem to care for statistical purposes)

              Also have had to make a few calls to the fire department, 911 is more convenient, but I could find another number if I was going to pay $75.

          • kotaKat 4 days ago |
            > Since my local police department has no direct dial number

            There should be a local PSAP ("public safety answering point") forwarding number available somewhere. Your E911 provider will have that information buried deep within itself, since it has to know where to physically route your call.

            Have you tried reaching out higher up to say your local sheriffs office to see if you can get the local PSAP number?

            I'm kinda annoyed NENA keeps this gatekept slightly. https://www.nena.org/page/PSAP_Registry_home

            • toast0 4 days ago |
              I have the PSAP for the county 911 dispatcher, because it was publicized when CenturyLink had broken 911. Which I guess I could use to save $1.50/month. But i still have to ask the 911 dispatcher to transfer me to the PD.
              • xattt 3 days ago |
                Interesting. In my area, the dispatchers are not unified either. There is an initial “greeter” who then forwards you to the relevant department.
      • askvictor 4 days ago |
        The costs are offset by the fact of the boxes providing free advertising for Telstra. That's the main reason they keep them operational.
    • ctaloi 5 days ago |
      Getting the correct keys to pay phones in the US seems to be a challenge.
    • softveda 5 days ago |
      That and most of the pay phone booths are now free public WiFi hotspots.
    • QuantumNomad_ 5 days ago |
      Telstra also provides WiFi access points to the proximity of many of their phone booths, which is very cool as well.

      In my country we don’t have operational phone booths any longer, and haven’t had them for many, many years. They even went as far in my country as to dismantle and remove all of them save for a few that are still around for sentimental reasons but also not operational.

    • anitil 4 days ago |
      Do you know why they did this? I wonder if they worked out that the advertising space was more valuable than retiring the service, or some other reason
  • Frank-Landry 5 days ago |
    I went to school with Patrick and I live a couple towns over from him. He knows his stuff that's for sure.
  • linsomniac 5 days ago |
    I should add a VoIP pay phone to my Little Free Library. A friend reported a pay phone in a dumpster near work and I was, at the time, feeling like I should rescue it, but I have too much stuff as it is.
    • rahimnathwani 4 days ago |
      Wouldn't you worry about someone using it to make abusive calls that are then blamed on you?

      I guess you could make it so that the person receiving the call hears a message saying this is a payphone.

      • linsomniac 4 days ago |
        I would, but I would hope that having to physically be at my house would help reduce that issue.
  • FlyThruTheSun 4 days ago |
    Wow this article really gave me flashbacks of payphone phreaking back in the day to call my mom for permission to go somewhere.
  • gyulai 4 days ago |
    What's the law these days in Vermont / the U.S. around anonymous use of the phone system? Are anonymous burner SIMs still allowed?
  • bobowzki 4 days ago |
    Fun! I just put together my own phone exchange at home using Asterisk. It can be challenging to configure but LLMs can help a lot with this in my experience.

    https://github.com/ast/wjmasterisk

  • doublesocket 4 days ago |
    I had an idea years ago to hook up a bunch of old payphones on the playa at burning man. Solar powered and connected over VoIP on a mesh network. Sadly never got to make it happen but would have been a fun art project.
  • MikeRichardson 4 days ago |
    You used to be able to connect Google Voice to a specific brand of ATA (and existing connections still work); that would have been perfect for something like this.