Tue, Jan 7th 2003 4:06pm

Making Pay Phones Pay

A couple weeks ago we had an article about the death of the pay phone. Now, Fortune is talking about why companies that run pay phones should be turning them all into WiFi hotspots. The infrastructure is there (or almost there...) to just turn the phone lines into DSL broadband lines, and add a WiFi router. Most payphones are in high traffic public areas, which are perfect for hotspots. Already, Bell Canada is doing this with some of their pay phones. The problem, though, still comes down to business model. It's still not convincing that companies will be able to make enough money off of commercial WiFi hotspots when there are an increasing number of open, free hotspots.

Add Your Comment

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here
Name
Email	Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
URL
Subject
Comment	this is for spambots, do not use this
Options	Plain Text HTML Save me a cookie

Plain Text: A CRLF will be replaced by break tag, all other allowable HTML is intact
HTML: No formatting of any kind is done without explicitly being written in
Allowed HTML Tags: <a> <blockquote> <hr> <tt>

Blog From Your Camera Phone >>

<< Customer-Owned Networks

Search Techdirt Wireless

And now, a word from our Sponsors..

Subscribe to the Techdirt Wireless Newsletter

Making Pay Phones Pay

Add Your Comment

Techdirt Wireless Email Newsletter