What's a public pay phone worth? What's it worth when cell phones don't work in the area, and people who use the phone, often do in times of distress? Those are questions residents in two New Hampshire communities are asking as Verizon begins to remove pay phones that aren't profitable enough. NHPR's Dan Gorenstein has more.
Michael Lewis owns the Stinson Lake Post Office and General Store in Rumney, which until a month ago also boasted of a public phone.
7:28 we are very remote, we are way off the beaten path, you have to understand that. Cellular phones don?t work here, you have to go six or seven miles into town.
Lewis says a pay phone has been right next to Stinson Lake in the middle of the White Mountain National Forest for 70 years. The owner thought enough of the phone booth that when the old AT and T steel structure began deteriorating; he designed something, he says, many up North are familiar with.
9:17 it looks like an outhouse? With a sign that says ?F-O-N-E? made of wood, with a slanted roof, and a half moon on the door.
Verizon pulled the phone just a month ago. The company says it wasn?t making money. The Rumney police chief, Rolf Garcia, hopes some kind of compromise can be reached. Garcia doubts if the phone was ever profitable, but that doesn?t mean it wasn?t valuable.
1:45 ?that phone has been a lifeline, and has been used in the past to make emergency phone calls of people nearly drowning at the lake, lost hikers, people who don?t have phones.
Verizon spokesperson Erle Pierce sympathizes with those who may be in distress and need a phone. But he wonders how often that actually happens?
2:28 everyone, quote unquote, hates to see that phone go, but ?no one? is using the phone. Yes, there?s the case of the broken down motorist?once or twice a year. So what?s the value of the phone there?
3:36 I see these emergencies occur.
Stinson General Storeowner Michael Lewis.
?I just feel that this is an essential item, most people know about it, and most people know where to run if they have an emergency.
Verizon?s Pierce says it isn?t like the company is sneaking out in the middle of night and removing phones. The company notifies storeowners that for $65 dollars a month, the phone can stay. If owners aren?t interested, the phone goes, because says Pierce, Verizon doesn?t want to pay for the service.
14:00 why would any business continue to sell a product that month after month after month is costing you money to have there?
Pierce says 5% of Verizon?s 55 hundred pay phones in New Hampshire are generating an average of less than $30 dollar a month. He says the company can?t afford to keep those 300 phones in operation.
:20 there was a time when we considered local telephones services such as pay telephones as more than a money making business. It was sort of a public trust.
That?s David Butler with Consumer?s Union, the non-profit publisher of Consumer?s Report magazine. Butler says that the notion of pay phones as a public trust changed with the 1996 Telecommunications Act.
? The fact is, for private telephone companies, service to rural areas is a money losing proposition. There aren?t a tremendous amount of money making incentives to keep them in rural markets other than the few regulations in place.
Kate Bailey is the director of telecommunications for the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission. And she says the Federal Communications Commission has established safetynets for such problems.
9:33 they wanted to make sure everyone had access to a phone, so they set up this idea of the public interest pay phone, in the absence of someone paying for the phone, it wouldn?t exist. Federal law put in a safeguard, that if competition fails, that people still have access to phones.
In New Hampshire, the PUC can designate some phones as serving the public interest if they meet certain criteria. No phones are yet so honored, but people in South Ackworth have petitioned the PUC for the first public interest designation in the state.
Again, Kate Bailey with the PUC.
7:13 We had a hearing on Ackworth phone on Monday, and established a two-phase process. The first phase is if the staff investigation of phone meets the criteria of the definition, and then the second step, if it meets those criteria, a proceeding to determine how to pay for public phones.
Bailey says since no phone has the public interest designation, the state still has no process to pay for them. But last year the legislature passed a bill that allows for the creation of a universal service fund that could pay for such phones. Bailey says the PUC will be taking up both issues in the coming months. A decision on the South Ackworth phone is expected sometime this summer. Rumney residents are reportedly considering a petition of their own. For NHPR News, I?m DG.
