Dorri Partain
Managing Editor

We’ve all done it at one time or another- rushed out the door and left our cellphone behind, leaving us unconnected and inconvenienced. No way to call or text, let alone entertain ourselves by taking photos or watching videos. In that one moment, when you realize you’re phoneless, you panic- that convenience of always being able to communicate is momentarily gone and your thoughts immediately ask, “Now what do I do?”

In my latest instance of this scenario, it was important for me to be able to call home as soon as I arrived at my destination- but I couldn’t. Decades ago, this wouldn’t have been a problem. I wouldn’t be dependent on a cellphone, making sure the battery was charged or if I had service bars.  I would simply find a public payphone and make a call- there’s a whole generation of us that remember a life sans cellphones.

With the popularity of cellphones and the increasing amount of features and conveniences they provide, the pay telephone has virtually become obsolete. With the cost to maintain a device that increasingly saw little use by the public, phone booths were removed or at least stripped of their equipment, leaving behind odd relics to the days of yore.

In the early days of telephony, phones were devised for home or business usage. But just as today, travelers found that having a telephone accessible to make a call would be a highly convenient option. Inventor William Gray devised and patented the first pay telephone in 1889. His Coin Controlled Apparatus for Telephones (US #408,709) was the first of 20 patents Gray devised to improve the public payphone, setting off the installation of phones across the country, from locations in cafes, restaurants, gas stations, movie theaters, hospitals and more.

Some businesses even offered “courtesy phones” that customers could use to make short calls at no charge.

Until cellphone technology took over how we communicate, the public payphone made sure anyone away from home could call home or call for assistance, at one time for as little as a dime. These days, many of us can’t even recall the last time we used or even saw one, except maybe at an antique mall.

Progress in technology is great, but what happens when you need a back up communication plan? Turns out that Australian communication provider Telstra provides free public phones. In 2021, instead of removing all the payphones, Telstra converted them to free phones, with several offering Wifi hotspots as well. This nationwide Universal Service Framework maintains a line of communication for emergencies, during natural disasters or service outages, citing that providing free service as more cost effective than removal and just good publicity.

Perhaps American phone companies could have been more forward thinking, like Telstra. While leaving a phone behind or misplacing a phone only causes a temporary loss of communication for one individual, what if something larger happened and none of our expensive devices no longer worked? One small thing that makes me a dinosaur in today’s world is that, GASP, I never disconnected our home’s landline. It’s been our safety net when batteries are low or service is bad and everyone has access to it.

With my latest situation of needing to make a call but not having my cellphone, the business I was patronizing understood my emergency and allowed me to use their phone, a landline, in a separate room for privacy- just like the old days. In any emergency, I hope that customer service always stays a constant convenience.