Suddenly, a red Chevy pickup pulls up and Tommy Long drops two quarters in the machine to call a friend. Living in the country on Texas 36 near The Grove, he was in town to pick up a prescription. Long gave up his cell phone a few years ago. He uses pay phones on his occasional trips to Temple.
In this era of wireless communication, some folks still make phone calls the old-fashioned way - a dime at a time, make that two bits. Correction, the man on the bike said he lost 50 cents.
Jason Russo, network administrator with G-Tel Enterprises in Houston, sells more than 300 different models of pay phones and ships them to more than a dozen countries. He says pay phones still fill a niche for low-income neighborhoods, even if there is a stigma they’re dirty and unreliable. Prices start at about $200.
In December 2008, when AT&T announced they were hanging up on the pay phone business, the company said the number of units had declined nationwide from about 2.6 million phones in 1998 to an estimated 1 million. Russo says that number has dropped to about 700,000 today.
“Back in the heyday, you could throw a phone up anywhere,” Russo said. “You saw three, four phones at one C-store ... because people had their pagers on and they were getting beeped and there were no cell phones around and they were pulling over calling people back.”
Temple pay phones today are mostly owned by out-of–town companies, called independent payphone providers. Russo said they typically secure an agreement with the property owner who pays then a share of the profit, if there is any.
He said a Houston pay phone provider dropped from 88 to eight units.
“At a time, you could stick a phone practically anywhere,” Russo said. “Now it’s only the most profitable ones who are going to stay in business.”
The Texans Texaco on Interstate 35 in North Temple lost its pay phone. Co-owner Corey Westmoreland said the IPP pulled it because it wasn’t making money.
But the Quix chain of convenience stores keeps at least one at each of their stores. They get a commission from the owner, but that revenue has dwindled within the last year. Nevertheless, marketing coordinator Amber Claburn said they would keep phones at the stores.
Russo said it was an unfair characterization that pay phones were tools for drug dealers, noting that era passed in the 1990s.
He said sometimes pay phones are provided as a public service.
“Hospitals are going to have them just as a convenience. Whether or not they’re going to turn a profit from them really doesn’t matter,” Russo said.
But not at Scott & White on South 31st Street in Temple. Scott Clark with the hospital’s media relations said the vendor who owned the phones took them out several years ago because they were not making money. Clark said he knows of no complaints regarding the pay phones’ absence.
Temple Mall is down to one pay phone. It stands like a lone sentinel in the walkway next to a kiosk that sells wireless phones.
On Thursday, a half-dozen shoppers leaned over the counter, keeping the Verizon staff of three busy. A woman with a cell phone pushed against her right ear scooted past the pay phone without a glance.
And back at the Valero store, the man on the bike returned with two more quarters. This time he got through.
Pay phones must be registered with the Public Utilities Commission of Texas.
