Lisa Hancock replied:

> As I understand it, pay phones are deregulated. Thus, I know of no
> way a govt could force a carrier to provide pay phone service.
> However, if the govt was willing to pay enough $$$, I'm sure something
> could be worked out.

There were two stages of payphone deregulation.

The first was with Divestiture, which was announced by AT&T in Jan.1982,
to become effective with Jan.1984. A provision of the MFJ or whatever
opened the door for private "COCOT" payphones. State regulatory agencies
would still regulate *TELCO* owned public phones, but they now had to
*allow* some form of competition from private payphones, under tariffs or
at least some form of loose "guidelines".

And then twelve years later, with the 1996 "Telecom Bill", even telco-
owned payphones were now fully deregulated. The Feds said that State
regulatory agencies could no longer even regulate the rates or terms
that telco (ILEC) payphones would comply with in that state. Many
independent telcos, but even at least one BOC, BellSouth, began to
completely change the interface of their telco-owned payphones w/r/t
the rest of the telephone network. While the payphones were still
telco-owned, they were now interfaced with the central office (and
subsequently would appear at a LEC TOPS or AT&T OSPS Operator console)
as if it were a "COCOT". The central office switch no longer directly
handled coin-disposition. The LEC TOPS or AT&T OSPS no longer had "ACTS"
over the "COCOT-ized" telco-owned payphone (Automated Coin Telephone
Service).

However, there *WAS* a provision in the 1996 "Telecom Bill" that
allowed for "public need" payphones and locations, such as rest stops,
lonely stretches of highway, transit stations, public libraries, and so
forth. If Telco wanted to remove payphone service from such a location,
they could NOT just unilateally remove that phone. They had to have some
kind of notification process or whatever, since it would have usually
been on "government/public property".

IANAL, and I don't know if the local or state (or federal) government
agency in charge of that highway, rest stop, transit facility,
government building, etc. could have "forced" telco to retain the
payphone at that location or not -- all I know is that with 1996's
changes to 1984, there was some kind of a provision for "public need and
necessity" payphone locations if telco wanted to completely remove the
payphone at that location. And even with 1996, Bell or the incumbent
independent is still considered a "default provider/carrier of last
resort" if the private competitive "marktplace" fails to properly
provide. However, many incumbent LECs, both Bell and independent, have
completely WITHDRAWN from the payphone business, so if there *IS* some
kind of power a local or state (or federal) govrnment body has regarding
"public need/necessity" payphone locations, what COULD be done (if
anything could be legally done anyways), IF that incumbent telco is no
longer providing payphone service whatsoever!


Of course, governments can always do whatever they want, depsite things
like "that constitution" notwithstanding! And the goverment doesn't need
"dollars" to do it -- only some kind of show of force!


- Anthony Bellanga

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