Dial H for history

The BBC reports on historic phone directories being put online. A wonderful read.

"The humble phone book, dating back to the Victorians, is providing a rich seam of social history. And as part of the boom in genealogy, back issues of phone directories have been scanned and published online in a venture between BT and a family history website.

Other Excerpts:

-- The honour for appearing first in the very first phone book goes to John Adam & Co, 11 Pudding Lane in the City of London.

-- Other entries making their debut in the early phone books were Alexander Bell - yes, he who invented the phone - and Keith Prowse. Yep, selling tickets.

-- It also shows how quickly the telephone spread. By 1914, the phone book was the largest single printing contract in the country, running off 1.5 million copies.

--Phone books give a snapshot through the following decades of the 20th Century of where people were living.

-- The re-published phone books stop at 1984, before the arrival of mobile phones and the proliferation of numbers and communications.

LOST ART Brazilian Pay Phones

LOST ART Brazilian Pay Phones. [via del.icio.us/regine]

Public use phones in Brazil exist since the 1920s, but the payphones known popularly as "orelhões" (literally, "big ears") were created in 1970 by Shanghai-born architect Chu Ming Silveira (1941-1997). Chu Ming was head engineer at CTB (Brasil Telephone Company) and created the first fiberglass design named CHU-1. These classic designs were first presented to the public in Rio and São Paulo in 1972.

Since then the design has remained vastly popular, but some touristic destinations in Brazil have created their own designs, some of which are presented on this page. The phones in this small gallery were photographed in: Porto Seguro (Bahia), Bonito (Mato Grosso do Sul), Palmas (Tocantins), Aracaju (Sergipe), Fortaleza (Ceará), and other cities throughout Brazil.

Amish and Mennonites build their own phone booths

As companies cut back on telephone booths, Amish and Mennonites are building their own, writes The Washington Post, in an insightful article on how these comunities are "cutting deals with new technology".

... "In the past several years, Amish and Mennonites - who still ride horse-drawn buggies - have quietly erected at least 12 hidden, private phone booths, posting them behind barns, in the woods and, in one case, inside a former chicken coop.

Called "community phones," they allow them to conduct business -- crucial to surviving amid the region's development pressures -- while holding on to prohibitions against home phone lines and cellphones.

Called "community phones," they are the latest example of how the groups in Maryland and elsewhere have been cutting deals with technology for the past century.

... The new phones hold advantages. The Amish and Mennonites don't have to carry around fistfuls of quarters or buy costly calling cards. Families divide monthly bills. Because the phones are hidden, locked and -- in the case of a metal chamber booth, which was fashioned out of a tank salvaged from a junkyard -- reinforced, the phones are less likely to attract vandals and drug dealers.

There are rules. Families can't post phones too close to homes, and they can't outfit them with amplified ringers that effectively would make them house phones. Some Amish don't cotton to voice mail, but Old Order Mennonites seem more accepting of the feature. For both groups, the idea is to limit forces they think will distract them from faith and family.

"The telephone, and the use of the telephone, is not something we're opposed to. We just don't want it to be the main part of our lives," said Ethan Brubacher, 31, a nephew of Elmer, who owns Quiet Valley Structures, a shed-building business in Loveville. "

The Payphone Project

The Payphone Project collects stories, pictures and phone numbers of pay phones from around the world. [via Street Use]

Picture Above: Payphone on Lake Victoria in Uganda using GSM Technology and Solar Power. Photo sent in by Craig Wheeler, Remkor Technologies South Africa.

Plan for free public phone booths in Maine

We've heard much about the demise of the phone booth all over the world due to the prevelence of mobile phones, but one US State has a good idea; Maine. The Boston Globe reports.

"A hearing on the proposal for public interest pay phones will be held Thursday before the Public Utilities Commission.

The growing popularity of cell phones has prompted companies to eliminate many public pay phones, particularly in rural areas. The companies say the phones get little use and it is costly to maintain and repair them.

But in some areas without good cell service, or in emergency situations, access to a public phone can be essential. Mobiles seem particularly vulnerable to crashing during crisis. The networks are also liable to be shut down to forestall the possibility of mobiles being used as bomb-triggering devices.

"A bill sponsored by Adams to authorize the rule change was enacted last session by the Legislature.

If the rule is adopted, municipal officials and the public could request public interest pay phones for certain locations, which might include bus stations, airports, highway rest areas, courthouses, post office lobbies, hospitals and medical clinics.

Callers could dial for free anywhere in the state, while out-of-state calls could be made using a calling card, credit card, prepaid calling card, or by making a collect call."

Picture from Payphones of the world

Related:

-- Finland to abandon its payphone business by spring 2006

-- Public Telephones Get the Call in South Korea

-- Slow demise of a very British icon

-- Korea. Mobile Phones Drive Out Street Phone Booths

-- Belgium to dismantle 4,000 phone booths

-- Phone booths in England losing their popularity

Slow demise of a very British icon

The news from BT that it plans to axe close to one-fifth of payphones in Scotland is the last phase of a rolling review that will eventually see around 10,000 payphones disappear across Britain in the coming 18 months, reports the BBC.

"In its heyday the red call box was a British icon as famous as the red double-decker bus, red postbox, or The Beatles.

However with the rise to prominence in recent years of the mobile phone, BT says there has been "a complete culture change in communication.

Over the last three years the use of public payphones has almost halved and revenue has dropped by 40%."

Related articles:

-- Mobile Phones Drive Out Street Phone Booths

-- Belgium to dismantle 4,000 phone booths

-- Phone booths in England losing their popularity

Belgium to dismantle 4,000 phone booths

Belgian incumbent telco Belgacom has announced it is to scrap roughly 4,000 of the country's telephone booths because so few people are using them anymore, according to DMEurope.

"With some 75 per cent of the population now using mobile phones, the company says that the number of calls made from phone booths has fallen by around 76 per cent since 1998. Belgacom says that only 14 per cent of its booths are profitable.

There are some 14,000 phone booths in the country, and the company has said that if mobile penetration rises to 80 per cent, a further 2,000 booths will be mothballed".

Related Article

-- Phone booths in England are fighting for their lives in what looks like a losing battle with the cell phones.

SMS for struggling payphones

Rival public payphones in Australia may be given a last breath of life with the addition of text-messaging capabilities and email-capable payphones, reports The Age.

Telstra has blamed declining numbers of payphones - 1373 were removed last year - on the increasing use of mobile phones but other research shows that two-thirds of payphone callers who have a mobile phone with them, will use a payphone to save costs".