alt Hacker NewsThis is amazing and has me wishing we had pay phones again.
Maybe they could come back and offer "free" service in high-density areas and fund via pre-roll ads or something. But perhaps the culture of remembering phone numbers is too far gone and it's easy enough to find charging.
Thank you for making and posting about this!
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Payphones in Australia have free national calls.
Telstra, the formerly state owned incumbent telco is obliged under their universal service obligation to provide a certain number of payphones, but it costs more to collect the coins than the phones earn in revenue.
NYC has something just like this - https://www.link.nyc/home.html
Here in Australia our once public phone company, telstra, have converted many phone boxes to be free to use and also provide a small wifi AP.
I think I've heard of at least a few groups dropping free-to-use phone booths in rural areas without much cell service, sans any form of revenue.