Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!telecom-request From: johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us (John R. Levine) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Pacific Bell "Airport" Credit Phones Message-ID: Date: 11 Apr 91 15:45:14 GMT Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Organization: I.E.C.C. Lines: 45 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 285, Message 1 of 10 In article is written: > I was at Oakland International last week, and took a closer look at > the Pacific Bell "airport" payphones. ... My experience with those phones while waiting for a plane at San Jose one day is that half of them don't really work. That is, they can't read the stripe on any of my credit cards. > And since when did Pacific Bell get in the business of accepting major > credit cards for phone calls, anyway? Many BOCs have card reader phones, though none anywhere near as space age in appearance as Pac Bell's. Ameritech has a model that replaces the dial pad on a regular WECo payphone with a thing that has a touch pad, a card reader, and some other buttons used to select your favorite carrier. The coin slot works, too. In other places there are some coinless models that have a long card slot down the right side through which you swipe your card and buttons at the bottom. These phones are all programmed differently. For example, US West phones accepted non-AT&T calling cards such as MCI and Sprint's long before the ones around here (NYNEX) did, even though they're physically the same. (You could dial the call yourself, but that's much less fun.) All of them let you charge long distance calls to bank and T&E cards, and they all do so with a flurry of DTMF digits. They handle various telco calling cards pretty reasonably. For example, when I used my Sprint FON card at O'Hare earlier this week, as soon as it read my card it dialed three digits, presumably a speed dial code for Sprint's 800 access number. Then it waited while I dialed my number, and dialed the card number when it heard the burst of dial tone prompt. For an AT&T or LOC card, it does the same thing except that it doesn't dial anything before you enter your number. All in all, it's slightly faster than dialing by hand, assuming I'd have to get the card out of my wallet anyway to read the number. (Hey, I have five different calling cards and I can't always remember all the numbers.) Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us, {spdcc|ima|world}!iecc!johnl