Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • At some point, it's not gonna be about the payphone because, who cares, we don't need those quarters.

  • We're on Wi-Fi right now.

  • [In 2004, there were 25,000 payphones in New York City.]

  • [Today, CBS Outdoor maintains 3,200.]

  • So right here what we have is the collection of many of the phones we've taken out over the past two years.

  • Right around this level is where it starts to corrode, this is usually due to both humans and dogs urinating frequently on the pedestal.

  • In some of these other units we've installed angled shelves on them so that it actually falls onto the ground or more hopefully onto their own feet.

  • So, then they learn a lesson not to urinate on the phone.

  • [The payphones generate $40,000 to $60,000 per year in coin revenues.]

  • So we get to a phone.

  • The first thing we do is check to make sure it works.

  • We dial 0, we make sure the handset works that you can hear it you blow into it.

  • And then you make a phone call just to make sure that the call goes through.

  • And the coin gets collected into the machine.

  • This right here we got about twenty or thirty dollars in here.

  • The weirdest thing I've ever found in a payphone was a used hypodermic needle.

  • Not so weird but definitely unsanitary.

  • I've also once found old baseball cards jammed in here.

  • Like old old baseball cards, so you'd think that someone would hold on to those.

  • For some reason they decided not to... the phones really do take on the personality of the neighborhood.

  • Sometimes you would find like over here like someone was giving out guitar lessons or something.

  • And you know it's actually I feel bad. You know... getting rid of it. It's graffiti, but a lot of times I like to leave it, cause it does... it gives a little bit of a personality.

  • "Ain't nothing changed except after we die, we return to life, back to the money..."

  • You gonna give yourself a headache trying to figure out.

  • [In 2012, phone operators added Wi-Fi hotspots to 10 phones.]

  • So it's just like in your home you know you have a modem and a router.

  • But here it's a little more meat to it.

  • And people they end up logging in, they probably don't even know it comes from a payphone.

  • It's a beautiful thing.

  • You can see right here, free Wi-Fi Van Wagner.

  • That's us.

  • That's coming from right here.

  • - [CBS Outdoor s exploring ways to monetize its Wi-Fi via sponsorships.] - The future of these phones is not the phones.

  • It's the infrastructure.

  • If you have electricity and internet inside the payphone, you can do anything.

  • [Today CBS Outdoors has 35 Wi-Fi-equipped phones, and more are planned.]

  • There they are.

  • One night's work, what would you say the total take is, Philip?

  • I'd say it is about twelve hundred dollars.

  • Yeah, I would go with the... I would say you're comfortable with that.

  • At some point it's not gonna to be about the payphone.

  • Payphone may actually even be free calls because, who cares, we don't need those quarters.

  • We're on Wi-Fi right now.

  • Looks like we've got a bag of dog shit... Oh, just an empty bag.

  • That's the thing those people walk by and I got like, "Ah, payphones! They're taking videos of payphones. They've never seen a payphone before."

  • Guy has no idea there's Wi-Fi coming out of here.

At some point, it's not gonna be about the payphone because, who cares, we don't need those quarters.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it