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AT&T SIH 2-3 Private Pay Phone Plus. Post-Divestiture.

Started by Fabius, August 10, 2018, 11:24:17 PM

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Fabius

Bought this at the recent ATCA show. I listed it in the Aug find of the month contest and was asked to start a separate post so people could comment on it. This pay phone was owned by RN communication of Port Huron Michigan and according to the Michigan Sect of state's offoce was voluntarily dissolved in 2007. Which must of been a time when these private pay phone companies were being hit hard by the wide spread use of cell phones.

I was hoping it would have been made by Lucent But it is marked Made in Taiwan. (Republic of China).

Mike's Vintage Telephone site says these had to be programmed by AT&T but it appears it powers up with a default program.

Anyone have one of these? 


From Wikipedia:
After the breakup of the Bell System in 1984, it was not long before independent stores selling telephones opened up. After that privately owned payphones hit the market. Sources differ as to whether the peak number of payphones in the United States was 2.6 million in 1995[21] or 2.2 million in 2000.[22] Since 2007, the number of payphones in the United States in operation has declined by 48%. In July 2009, AT&T officially stopped supporting the Public Payphone service. Over 139,000 locations were sold in 2009. At the end of 2012, the FCC reported the number of payphones at 243,487[23] generating $362 million falling to $286 million by 2015.[24] The major carriers, AT&T and Verizon, have both exited the business, leaving the market to be served by independent payphone companies.[25] An estimated 100,000 payphones in the US remain as of 2018, with roughly a fifth of them located in New York City. [26]


A Verizon payphone on a street corner in Silver Spring, MD
In recent years, deregulation in the United States has allowed payphone service provided by a variety of companies. Such telephones are called customer-owned coin-operated telephones (COCOT), and are mostly kept in as good condition as compared with a payphone owned and operated by the local telephone company.[citation needed] COCOT contracts are usually more generous to the landlord than telco ones, hence telco payphones on private premises have been more often replaced than street phones.[further explanation needed] One common implementation is operated by vending machine companies and contains a hard-wired list of non-toll telephone exchanges to which it will complete calls.[citation needed]

In the United States, a payphone operator collects an FCC-mandated fee of 49.4¢ from the owner of a toll-free number for each call successfully placed to that number from the payphone. This results in many toll-free numbers rejecting calls from payphones in an attempt to avoid this surcharge; calling cards, which require the caller to dial through a toll-free number, will often pass this surcharge back to the caller, either as a separate itemized charge, a 50¢ to 90¢ increase in the price of the call, or (in the case of many pre-paid calling cards) the deduction of an extra number of minutes from the balance of the pre-paid card.[citation needed]
Tom Vaughn
La Porte, Indiana
ATCA Past President
ATCA #765
C*NET 1+ 821-9905

Payphone installer

These turn up all over the place because there was a scam going on by several companies towards the end of the payphone era. the scam was own your own payphone route. Thousands of people fell for the scam. The company would claim if you paid them 5,000 a phone they would set up the route,install the phones and all you would have to do is pay commission and collect the route. Problem was they charged you 4 times the price of the phone. Then gave you crummy locations like a Chinese restaurant or a out of the way gas station. Whoever would agree to put in a payphone they would sign them up and call it a route. As a payphone installer we were responsible for installing the line for these payphones. We would go out and the owner of the route would have a attitude because he had been told that we would be angry because the route owner was taking away our business. So we were instructed not to talk to them at all about the loser location we were installing the dial tone for. You would show up at a location that the guy had been given and he would tell you this was his new business venture and how much money he was going to make. Some people poured there life saving into it. It was so sad and you couldn't say a thing. It went on for years. There were Ernest and AT&T private payphones used in the scam some protel. Finally after probably 10 years or more it stopped due to law suits. Since the money was gone already the scammers were gone also, the lawsuit turned to AT&T because they said the AT&T logo on the phone implied it was AT&T that was the company pushing the routes. Which was total bull crap. Well AT&T agreed to a meager settlement just to make it go away. That is why you now find AT&T payphone and Ernest phones in the box. That is also why AT&T removed the logo.  They were purchased for a route that never went in. When I had my private payphone business which still exists today I used to buy these phones up from folks all the time that got screwed for pennies on the dollars for parts.  I would listen to the sad stories of how they lost all their saving. It was really a crime. So when you find a Ernest or a AT&T phone in the box that is usually what happened. Now you know the rest of the story.

Pourme

Tom, when you posted that phone in the FOM I felt there was a story to go along with it.

Thank you,  Payphone installer for proving me right! ;) That was interesting, politics in play!

Benny
Benny

Panasonic 308/616 Magicjack service

Fabius

Quote from: Payphone installer on August 11, 2018, 11:23:14 AM
When I had my private payphone business which still exists today...

Tell us about your private payphone business. How does a private payphone business survive in the age of cell phones?
Tom Vaughn
La Porte, Indiana
ATCA Past President
ATCA #765
C*NET 1+ 821-9905

Fabius

Quote from: Pourme on August 11, 2018, 01:04:11 PM
Tom, when you posted that phone in the FOM I felt there was a story to go along with it.

Thank you,  Payphone installer for proving me right! ;) That was interesting, politics in play!

Benny

I'm working on another story with this paystation. You'll notice on the instruction card the company name is listed on the right of the card. RN Communication, Port Huron, Michigan. A search on line with the Michigan Sect of State has the company listed. The last annual report filled with the State was in 2004 and in 2007 the company filed for voluntary dissolution. The information from the State gave me the owner's name and a couple of addresses to check out. Using Google I found him on Linkedin where he lists himself as a professional electrician and his listing does show he owned RN Communication. I am also on Linkedin but to send him a message I would have to sign up and pay for their premium service. I could not get is phone number thru Google as all the so called directories charge to give out numbers. But I did find his home address so I will write him and ask for information and to contact me.

Does anyone know of an on line directory where I can get his number without paying?
Tom Vaughn
La Porte, Indiana
ATCA Past President
ATCA #765
C*NET 1+ 821-9905

trainman


Markgregory

Wow, a simple posting about an odd ball payphone  turned out to be quite an interesting story about business fraud. As a retired financial fraud investigator from Florida, I can tell you this kind of scam takes many forms.  One similar to this involved candy vending machines that you would buy from the scamster and he would set up a route for you with your machines. You would allegedly become wealthy by filling the machines with candy and then simply collecting the coins depositied in them. Yeah, right. Overpriced machines, dumb locations and very little business. I had a cousin who signed up and he got ripped off. Tried to warn him, but no he wouldn't listen. Also saw similar scams involving raising and selling earthworms and  rabbits and other weird business opportunities. However, the really big losses I investigated came from the sale of fraudulent and unregistered securities in all kinds of fake companies. These scams cost investors thousands to millions. So sad. The world is full of thieves.

The happy ending to this particular story is that the new owner of this phone has a neat collectible and an interesting story to go along with it.  Mark

Key2871

These payphone plus sets need programming before it will work. Not to mention the 24 volt AC power cube wired into the set.
I remember Paul V had a bunch that he couldn't get to work.
He sent me a couple key pads and chassis, I retro fitted them with ITT tone pad and network, and you couldn't tell it had be modified. He sold those in phones, and sent me more to retro fit. So somewhere there's about ten or fifteen AT&T H series with those guys to make them work.
I bought six of these, used from Florida, two worked pretty well out of the box. They were programmed for decent class of service. A quarter for three minutes, etc.
But then I had some one "tweek" the programming only screwed it up big time.
KEN

Payphone installer

The private payphone plus will work out of the box. If yours does not it is not out of the box. The most common problem is a bad transformer. They are very simple to set up and get going as long as the transformer is good. It will work in default every time. The only exception to this is the military version. I installed and repaired them for years. Paul V's were purchased fro AT&T and were all military and also bad. They in my opinion are one of the best working payphones for a collection.