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[–] 161 points 1 year ago (23 children)

in australia they’re still everywhere because when i government sold our state telco they mandated that they maintain the pay phone network at reasonable prices

that doesn’t sound particularly comment-worthy on its own so here’s the cool part: turns out collecting coins is more expensive than the money they got from it so they just stopped charging and now all our pay phones are not only still everywhere, but entirely free and have free wifi embedded in them

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  • [–] 33 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    Nope that was comment worthy without the other half.

    However the second part is super rad in a way only people who grew up with the word “rad” can really understand. Or whatever the Aussie equivalent of 90s slang for “cool” would be.

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    I'd be shit out of luck using a payphone in today's world.

    I don't remember anyone's phonenumbers except my teenage girlfriend's family, because while she has changed her phone number, the mother and brother were just 1 number off so I remember them, especially because the first 7 numbers are same as mine.

    But aside from that, idk, maybe my own mother and brother.

    But I haven't learned a phone number in fucking decades.

    Pretty cool though as you know they're there, so either you can use the WiFi with your own device or just remember a few numbers in case you run out of charge.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    yeah - i mostly see them as a public good for low income or homeless people… it allows them a lot of different places they can place free phone calls… perhaps not ideally as private as you’d like to deal with medical or social security things, but services exist for that too - just pay phones are everywhere

    also i guess for calling 000 (our 911)

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Ironically, for homeless people a smartphone is a great investment, since the web allows finding support services and such stuff. But free wifi from the booths is probably great. Idk where they're charging the phones, though — perhaps at sympathetic businesses.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    absolutely correct! i used to work for a not for profit that built a big service search engine (largely used for crisis helplines, medical referrals etc) and released a phone app specifically for help finding homeless support services

    there are power points in maccas, food courts, libraries, and even randomly dotted around cities outside for maintenance

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    You haven't learned new numbers in decades but you have a teenage girlfriend?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    I'm surprised that they didn't just embed a card reader in the phones.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Still not really feasible. The card charges on a $0.20 call would be "unreasonable".

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago* (2 children)

    Depends on how you define unreasonable….

    We still have some really cheap parking meters. For example to keep people from using the library parking lot all day, there is a meter and 2 hour limit. It’s only a quarter for half an hour or maybe even an hour.

    But who carries quarters anymore? There’s an app for that. You can pay by app. Each quarter has a quarter surcharge. I think that’s unreasonable and refuse but a lot of people are ok with it. I say “100% fee is unreasonable” but they say “25¢ fee is cheap and convenient ”.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I have seen payphones around... like, at all. I've seen the iconic bright pink lit up tops and wifi symbol so I can attest that they are indeed still around, but it's very uncommon to see them. There's not a whole lot left and to say they're "everywhere", I mean... I haven't been interstate for a while but, what part of Australia are you in that these are a common fixture for you?

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