[LINK] Free Payphones

Roger Clarke Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au
Tue Aug 3 16:34:39 AEST 2021


> On 3/08/2021 2:00 pm, Stephen Loosley wrote:
>> While last year’s tally of 11 million phone calls, at 50c each, would have brought in $5.5 million, Mr Penn declined to disclose how much free public calls would cost Telstra, other than to say it wasn’t “an enormous amount” to bring new life to an “iconic” asset.

On 3/8/21 3:52 pm, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
> I wonder what it costs to maintain public pay phones? Not having a
> device that collects cash must simplify the whole installation.

Best of all, not having to pay people to go around the now-sparse
population of machines, extracting the rubbish that very strange people
shove into the slots.

I understand people not trusting 'authority'.

But treating a service-to-me-and-people-like-me as the symbol of
authority, and therefore to be beaten up and bruised, ain't smart.


Each device might need some retro-fitting to enable it to keep working
despite the coin-entry being jammed.  (Wouldn't it be nice if <flag-fall
= zero & per-minute-rate = zero> meant that the telecomms functioned
irrespective of a jammed coin-collector.  20-20 hindsight is great!).


-- 
Roger Clarke                            mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au
T: +61 2 6288 6916   http://www.xamax.com.au  http://www.rogerclarke.com

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA

Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law            University of N.S.W.
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University



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