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Comment by AussieWog93 | Hacker News Reader

One of the few good things that Telstra did in Australia was open up their whole old payphone network for free, nationwide.

Apparently they're a genuine lifeline for people fleeing from abusive relationships; they need to leave their mobile behind to avoid being tracked.

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I remember reading some stats on the Telstra phone boxes, they help a lot of people in need. A ton of calls go to emergency services, government services, etc.

I would be keen to know the total cost to run and maintain everything. There is a ton of boxes still around.

> A ton of calls go to emergency services, government services, etc.

Is it common for providers to charge for emergency service access? I thought this was a given.

I believe emergency services calls are free. The cost being talked about is the maintenance cost to the provider.

My voip line has a charge for (e)911. I can pay $1.50 per month or $75 per call.

Since my local police department has no direct dial number, non-emergency calls are routed through 911; that's pretty unusual, but I don't want to pay $75 to call police non-emergency, so I pay the $1.50.

I've never seen emergency calling broken out on my bill from an ILEC though.

How often do you have to call the police?

I call 911 about every 6 months for non-occupational related incidents. Usually random arson incidents I come across (?), watching drunk people drive through folks mailboxes and get stuck in ditches, and medical events.

I could imagine paying the $1.50 because in an emergency I don't want to be second-guessing whether it's worth $75 to call the cops.

Had to do it several times to talk to a detective about an identity theft case. (Which ultimately went nowhere... local PD was interested, Oakland, CA PD where an apartment was rented with my information doesn't care; federal agencies only seem to care for statistical purposes)

Also have had to make a few calls to the fire department, 911 is more convenient, but I could find another number if I was going to pay $75.

> Since my local police department has no direct dial number

There should be a local PSAP ("public safety answering point") forwarding number available somewhere. Your E911 provider will have that information buried deep within itself, since it has to know where to physically route your call.

Have you tried reaching out higher up to say your local sheriffs office to see if you can get the local PSAP number?

I'm kinda annoyed NENA keeps this gatekept slightly. https://www.nena.org/page/PSAP_Registry_home

I have the PSAP for the county 911 dispatcher, because it was publicized when CenturyLink had broken 911. Which I guess I could use to save $1.50/month. But i still have to ask the 911 dispatcher to transfer me to the PD.

Interesting. In my area, the dispatchers are not unified either. There is an initial “greeter” who then forwards you to the relevant department.

The costs are offset by the fact of the boxes providing free advertising for Telstra. That's the main reason they keep them operational.

Telstra also provides WiFi access points to the proximity of many of their phone booths, which is very cool as well.

In my country we don’t have operational phone booths any longer, and haven’t had them for many, many years. They even went as far in my country as to dismantle and remove all of them save for a few that are still around for sentimental reasons but also not operational.

That and most of the pay phone booths are now free public WiFi hotspots.

Do you know why they did this? I wonder if they worked out that the advertising space was more valuable than retiring the service, or some other reason

Getting the correct keys to pay phones in the US seems to be a challenge.

I wish we had that in the US. Not due to abuse victims per se (though that does sound super useful for them), but just because it would be nice to not have to carry a cell phone to get ahold of people.

The US is functionally a Third World country now. There are so many places worse than us that have so many better things. Anytime you see a little thing like this that is a good idea and helps people you can just assume that America would either fuck it up or just hate it because it helps people. Or because of the fact that they can’t ring every penny from the stone.

It’s hard to appreciate this until you spend some time elsewhere.

I was in Barcelona for a few weeks for work. While I don’t want to pretend there are no problems, I can only say that life seemed better and happier than back home. I didn’t sense the cynicism that I’m used to. It was especially jarring considering that pretty much everyone is underpaid by American professional standards.

That said, it’s anecdotal, I speak mediocre Spanish and toddler level Catalan, and my boss was paying the bill. But it was still striking to me.

I image locals don't spend a lot of time discussing their hardships, political views and economics with the visiting gringos

Gringos is not a term that Spaniards use. It's Latin American.

It varies. Obviously not Spain, but I lived in Ireland (a place Americans romanticize) for a decade and there was abundant cynicism. I got tired of mentioning ideas and plans to people and immediately hearing how they could fail. With friends from California (and Oregon) the response to "I want to build a house" wasn't "that will fail, here's why it's a bad idea, you will go bankrupt, only pros know how to do that" but "hell yeah I'll bring a nailgun!".

Urban life in the US had decayed considerably over the past thirty years. Life in the suburbs, small towns, and countryside, however, is amazing. I have a house in the countryside and rent in a city in another state when I need to be in the office. In the city I have to step over addicts passed out and their trash; in the country I don't bother locking my doors when I leave, and I have cheaper, faster, and more reliable internet. You can't really compare "America" to another country, because the cities and other places have radically different standards of living.

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