New Eircom Phone Boxes around the place?.

Albert X

Are Eircom still required by comreg to have payphones ? If not I'm surprised they haven't closed them all down.

SpaceTime

Albert X wrote: »

Are Eircom still required by comreg to have payphones ? If not I'm surprised they haven't closed them all down.

Yeah its part of their universal service obligation (USO).

corktina

I asked an old person (honest) and button B was to reclaim your cash on an unconnected call. You pressed button A to connect when the party answered.

Judgement Day

corktina wrote: »

I asked an old person (honest) and button B was to reclaim your cash on an unconnected call. You pressed button A to connect when the party answered.

Many public AB boxes were cash machines too! I remember violently kneeing one when it wouldn't return my money, and was rewarded by an avalanche of refund change that had been held back by a wad of toilet roll pushed up the B slot.

ardmacha

a picture, for the immature and forgetful


you prepaid for dialled (i.e. local) calls, and pressed button A when they replied, or B to get your money back if they didn't.
for operator calls you bunged in the loot, each coin made a different sound and then pressed button A.

manual areas had one of these, you just bunged in the loot when the operator asked you to.


As for the toilet roll pushed up the chute, anyone with half a clue checked for this, a bit of wire would hook same and relieve the stuffer of his or her ill gotten gains.

SpaceTime

and of course, the coins were similar size to a dinner plate and could be used as cheap substitutes for olympic medals.

Hotblack Desiato

I remember seeing A/B payphones, but the first one I ever used was the type you put the coins into a ramp on the top and they went in one by one as you ran out of time.

The A/B payphones hung on for years in pubs, hotels etc.

hfallada

I think they look horrific particularly in Dublin 2. Even in China or Philippines I didnt see a single pay phone

SpaceTime

I wish Smart Telecom would remove the ripped-apart phone boxes that they have around parts of Cork City centre. Many of them don't even have the payphones attached to the kiosk anymore - just a bunch of phone wires dangling inside (including a set right opposite the main gates of UCC in what's otherwise a very nice victorian area)

They've a few pedestals that are there for at least 15 years and are totally bashed to bits and no longer have phones. They're just eyesores and ought to have been removed long ago. If anything they're just making Smart's branding look bad! (even if it's now Digiweb)

At least eircom maintains whatever payphones they have remaining.

Some crowd in London abandoned loads of phoneboxes in the 90s too and it took the best part of 15 years to get them removed many are still standing and they're just hideous looking with bashed up old orange phones inside that haven't worked in years (if not decades).

petronius

Had an odd situation whereby my sim card wasnt working for dialing out! yet i could connect to the internet via wifi - had to call a land line
was looking for a phone box - do you think i could find one No - was wondering if there is an online map for the locations of boxes, i know if you have a phone why would you need to locate a phone box but strangely it was the case

bk

petronius wrote: »

Had an odd situation whereby my sim card wasnt working for dialing out! yet i could connect to the internet via wifi - had to call a land line
was looking for a phone box - do you think i could find one No - was wondering if there is an online map for the locations of boxes, i know if you have a phone why would you need to locate a phone box but strangely it was the case

If the internet was working on your phone, then you could have used Skype Out or a similar VoIP app to call a phone.

SpaceTime

petronius wrote: »

Had an odd situation whereby my sim card wasnt working for dialing out! yet i could connect to the internet via wifi - had to call a land line
was looking for a phone box - do you think i could find one No - was wondering if there is an online map for the locations of boxes, i know if you have a phone why would you need to locate a phone box but strangely it was the case

I'm a bit confused.

WiFi isn't anything to do with your SIM card.

Ericom are desperately trying to get rid of payphones as they cost a lot of money to maintain and they're making almost no revenue out of them in most cases.
There's no online map, as there's nobody using them. I don't think it's a high priority for anyone to spend time and resources on.

They're removing any with average daily usage under 1 minute per day.
(That's 37% of the remainder!)

Only 92 of them actually are 'economic' to operate! The rest make a significant lost and just cost us all money via our line rental bills.

Victor

Incomplete, but www.openstreetmap.org has some phone boxes marked, .e.g here: ther eis one marked south west of the junction: http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/53.33260/-6.26492

I wonder how whole the accounting is in that calculation. Many phone boxes are carrying advertising and have Wi-Fi antennae for their own customers. The location marked above still has 4 kiosks - if they were making no money, that would have been reduced to one a long time ago. ComReg hasn't objected to reductions in the number of phones, but the number of locations.

SpaceTime

They're already completely gone in an increasing number of countries. Belgium for example has none anymore.