WV- a town w/ no payphone!
 

As probably one of the last people in central New Hampshire who does not have a cell phone, I found out today that there's no pay phones in Waterville Valley. For the majority of readers who presumably have a cell phone, this piece of info can be filed away under the "So what, no kidding, and who cares!" category in their brain but for someone who needs to make a call, a pay phone can be very usefull.

Anyway, if you read the motto on the top of their www.watervillevalley.org website, it says "The Town at the End of the Road," so maybe they should be changing that to a new motto that goes: "The town without a payphone-closest payphone is 13 miles away-down the road-back at Exit 28!"

What with a ski area, 1100 condos, 150 private homes, 18 clay tennis courts, a huge public ice arena, a town square with maybe 20 different business, and two hotels with over 100 suites in each; one could pretty safely think that Waterville Valley would also be home to at least one payphone........but no......there are NO PAYPHONES now, anymore, in Waterville Valley.

For people who still depend on using payphones, maybe they might start referring to Waterville Valley, as Watervile Valley, and just go someplace else!

For the record, up till very recently, the town had a total of two payphones; one in the town square next to the atm, and one up at the ski area, down in the basement, near the bathrooms. Go to either spot today, and all that's there is a wire hanging down from the wall plate and the two last payphones have been totally removed.

Will these two last payphones be getting re-installed at a soon-to-happen later date or what? I have no clue, but sure as heck hope that they do, just so that people looking for a payphone in Waterville Valley do not want to think of it as Watervile Valley. Thankyou and goodnight......duh!

Less, that's a tough problem when you have to call your mom for a ride home and you don't have a cell phone. Fortunately most kids have cell phones now, or have a friend with a cell phone that they can borrow to call their mom to come and get them.

Maybe one of your friends will let you borrow a cell phone to make a call?

Waterville Valley?
 

I thought this forum is about the Lakes Region area.

Anyway, FLL, many of us dropped our land-line in favor of wireless. No use having both service. The Wally World tracphone is cheaper than a land line account.

What say you?

Might not matter if there was a phone there...
 

...because many of the payphones I have noticed have had the handset ripped off, the entire cord missing, or push buttons destroyed.

Seems they can't be maintained in this day and age.:rolleye1:

no pay phones
 

FLL, I also lament the passing of pay phones. I do have a cell phone but seldom use it. Sometimes you're in an area with no signal, like near Sandwich. There used to be a pay phone at that gas station / C store on 25 ( Moultonboro I think). But I don't think it's there anymore. So are there any pay phones at all around the lake?

Yes indeed. It is sad to see all of the pay phones disappear. Vandalism is one reason.

Cell phones? Yes. Get a high priced Verizon plan or an inexpensive free Tracfone. But what if the battery goes dead? What if you drop it and it breaks? What if there is no coverage?

Some pay phones at airports don't even take money. Need a credit card I think.

Can you still make collect calls with a pay phone? Can you call collect to a cell phone?

It is fascinating to watch dinosaurs die. They cry and moan and whine but eventually they either adapt or die. :laugh:

I bet 8 out of 10 strangers would loan you the use of their cell phone to make a call.

What's an ATM? That's the next thing to go.

It all comes down to $$$
 

If there were money in providing pay phones they would still be around. Remember it all comes down to the bottom line. You can always get On Star installed in your car.:D

Crazy how things change....the other day I needed a new horseshoe and do you think I could find a blacksmith anywhere?? go figure !

I heard that the phones will be replaced with tele-transportation stations..:rolleye2:

Pretty sad that an emergency/convenience item that, costs "nothing" to produce, and, would be a VERY low maintenence item, if the people who were using them didn't abuse/vandalize them.

Sad view of the human element.

Hey FLL, you seem to be getting a bit famous. Don't forget us little people on your climb to local fame. :cool:

Here's a link for you..
 

http://www.polocenter.com/farrier/farrierusnh.htm#M

Back to our regular program.

Speaking Of Tracfone
 

Summer before last, we had a medical emergency at home while we were up at the lake. (Wolfeboro) We had to Fone Home..and we didn't have cell phones then. Wolfeboro Chamber of Commerce, in the old train station, had the only pay phone we could find, it was outside..but it didn't work. The lady in the chamber let us use theirs.

The next day we had our first Cell Phone, a Tracfone..from Wal Mart in Gillford. Tracfone in the lakes region uses Verizon. We lucked out, because Tracfone in RI uses AT&T. We've never dropped a call or had a weak signal. We get Double Minutes for the life of the phone every time we add time. We don't use the phone very often.

BTW: We bought the phone anonymously. No name, address, contract, or signature required. Only our home area code to activate. (We did pay for it with a credit card). The first time I was running low on "days", our home LANDLINE rang with a recorded message from Tracfone reminding me I was getting low on days and needed to add more.

Somehow they found me. The next time I got special offers in the mail from Tracfone....to MY address...no name, just "Resident".

BIG SIS is watching. :D NB

take out
 

Less...I tried to order some take out food last summer...and could not believe that no lakes region restaurants accept smoke signals as a method of ordering. I was shocked. People used to communicate with these all the time. No smoke signals, no Chinese food. No pizza, No Lobster Rolls...nothing.
Geezze...I send out the signal anyway...but no luck.

As an aside...Imagine, now, in this germ crazy, wrap your kids in bubble wrap, world we live in. I would think many parents would tell their kids that touching a public phone is the same as smoking a ciggarette.
Those things could be pretty gross though.

I believe WV doesn't have the Wells Fargo delivery coach anymore. What's that you say? I went to the telegraph office and it too was closed.:D

Just so you know FLL, you do your pushups on a Wii or smartphone now.:laugh:

Telegraph?
 

Used to work for Western Union on teletype (TWX). When was the last time you saw a teletype writer? How about an operator at a cord board?

If the smoke signals don't work try the drums.:rolleye2:

FYI no pay phone in morse code
-. --- | .--. .- -.-- | .--. .... --- -. .

I think there are still a couple of pay phones on the Weirs right at the bottom of the Lobster Pound parking lot.

I dare say that 99.9% of the folks who can afford the pricy homes, condos, rentals and skiing at WV also scrape together their pocket change for a cellphone/trackphone.

So, someone in Waterville Valley without a cell phone for some reason like the battery dies, or it ran out of minutes, or it got lost, or stopped working, or never had one in the first place needs to drive 13-miles back to Exit 28 to find a pay phone? For a town that is a resort town, that just does not make any sense. Used to be the basement area at the ski area base lodge had a wall with about six different payphones, then it was reduced to three phones, then one, and now just an 18-guage, copper phone wire dangles from the payphone mounting plate.

Maybe a new phone will get re-installed by Fairpoint or some other company starting on January 1. That seems like a good possibility?

Anyway; back at Route 93-Exit 28, thirteen miles away, there's three working payphones; two outside the Waterville Valley Information Center, and another, a payphone booth outside the Mobil Gas. It's an aluminum, old stand-up style phone booth that looks like it's been there since maybe 1975 or earlier, and is in remarkably good condition, clean, and the phone works good. You can call anywhere in the U.S. for 4-quarters, or locally for 50-cents. Hopefully, the management at www.waterville.com will be reinstalling their two vacant payphone locations so that visiters to Waterville Valley will not have to travel 13-miles back to Exit 28 for a payphone.

Here's a plug for the Exit 28 Mobil Gas and their antique outdoor phone booth! Need to buy gasoline in the middle of the night? One of their gas pumps works 24/7 with a credit/debit card.

Sounds like a good plan to me.

I am sure it just isn't cost effective to keep a pay phone up and running for a couple of people. I am glad the government isn't subsidizing pay phones also. To me that would be another wasted government expense.

gift idea
 

Perhaps we can get FLL on of these at a good price.

Phone companies have, or are getting, out of the payphone business. Most of existing payphones are privately owned. The term COCOT stands for Customer Owned Coin Operated Telephone.

If you feel there is a demand for one in your area, buy your own and reap the riches.

www.payphone.com/Elcotel-Series-5.html

And what about public bathrooms?

FLL, put that out-house to work for you. :)

I found one
 

FLL found this one at a McDonalds in Greenland, NH. Maybe you can have Fairpoint move it to WV. Hope the photo came through.

LOL! My father worked PBX @ USGS back in the day. I can still see the rows and rows of what looked like mailbox's Jammed with hundreds of moving parts hammering like machine guns all day long. You could tell the number dialed by the position off the contacts LOL! Rows of batterys the size of garbage cans bubbleing away. At the time they had one rack of solid state equipment that they made fun of. Brings back good memorys of a time long gone...

Not only a phone....but it even looks like it has Phone Books. :) NB

WE found two in North Conway this weekend, both working and with phone books, I did not use them because I havea cell phone and yuck, but I did pick them up to see if they worked and they did

The problem is that the few remaining users don't spend enough to maintain the network, much less make money on it. In the capitalist system that means no more payphones. I think AT&T got out of the business in 2007.

But there are still advocates for the payphone, I just don't think they have much chance.

http://www.consumer-action.org/coali...ublic_communi/

I have noticed a growth in the emergency phones though, but I think they just go to a call center.

How about this? Did you know the Town of Center Harbor has a Fairpoint payphone that looks to be in excellent condition in their town athletic facility that includes a softball field and two tennis courts. It is just a simple payphone that's attached to the outside of a storage shed, and YES, it works just fine even though one would need to walk through some very light snow cover now, to get to it.

So, how about that interesting piece of local payphone info? Is this fascinating or what!:D:laugh:

Talk about a sign of the times.....just noticed that the outside pay phone attached to the Fairpoint Communications local switch panel concrete shed building that's immediately next to the Cattle Landing town dock is no longer there. So apparently, it is either out for repair or maybe Fairpoint went and removed it due to insufficient revenue or something.......I have no clue......but it is a little unusual for the phone company to remove a public pay phone like that from the outside of its own building.....doncha think?

Meanwhile, the Center Harbor tennis courts still have a Fairpoint pay phone, attached to the outside of a town shed which works just fine......thank you very much Centre Harbor plus the town needs to come up with some money and go get those two tennis courts totally resurfaced with new rubberized asphalt in a two-tone color design!

What I don't get is how the shopping center in Center Harbor gets away with having no pubic bathroom, and actually as far as I know there is no public town bathroom in Center Harbor (unless you are lucky enough to get into the beach house). What's up with that?

There's a port-a-potty in the back parking lot behind Heath's - maybe that's how?

Laconia vicinity
 

How about that? I knew of a guy that had to call his probation officer from a land-line phone. He drove around Laconia looking for a pay phone because a cellular call is not acceptable. He went to the police station and they confirmed there are no public phones. He was able to use the lobby phone to make his call.

When I was a kid, I had to use the pay phone from the little league field to contact my parents. Looks like today every kid has a cell phone!

That potty USED to be there, for years, but not in the last few that I am aware of. Center Harbor needs to step up to the plate and provide year round public (and accessible) bathrooms.

For what it's worth, which is probably not too much, the Center Harbor tennis courts have a porta pottie from May through October, as well as the already mentioned pay phone.

Ever been to the $5.45 all-you-can-eat, Monday thru Friday, multiple pizza and salad bar buffet at the Laconia Pizza Hut on Union Ave, across from Amerigas and Mike's Car Care? Well, the Pizza Hut parking lot is home to a Fairpoint telephone booth; a vintage circa 1965, all aluminum and glass stand-up booth with a sliding door and everything is in terrific condition including the pay phone.

I always take a close look when driving past to see who could be using it, and wonder why they may be on a pay phone like that?

2013 Update..."Getting Here"...
 

I called AT&T for a new phone book—they said "What?"

:confused:

(They've discontinued them).

However, AT&T would send me a "Real Yellow Pages" directory. (No "White Pages")

Ten days have passed without any directory in sight.

:rolleye1:

As for phone booths, they appear in duplicate on Virginia-area Interstate rest-stops. (Could be useful information when "Getting Here").

(With directory covers intact!)

....as far as i know....the Centre Harbor softball field and two tennis courts area are home to the last working pay phone in the area......pretty close to the intersection of Route 25 and Route 25B ..... in case you are looking for a payphone????



.....here's a big round of applause and a big thank-you to all the Center Harbor property tax payers for paying the Fairpoint monthly phone bill to maintain what may be the last working pay phone in the lakes region...thanks again!

Back when I flipped burgers...
 

We had one or two pay phones at each location. There was a modest revenue stream from them. The contract required a revenue threshold be met before any money came to me. Early in the program the money, paid quarterly, covered a nice dinner out. Later, it might have funded a few dollar menu choices. In my last few years it went to zero and then the phones disappeared.

Similar, but different...

In our early attempts to meet our customer's wifi needs we were force fed (from big brother) a fee based wifi system. In the "drink the Kool Aide" meeting announcing the program, we were promised a revenue stream from people logging onto the system.

The results? Not a penny of revenue...duh! Once the wifi competitive set became more clear a nifty (read: expensive) new system was required so we could give away the wifi we could not sell.

Technology marches on...