Speaking of trends, it’s been a while since most of us fished dimes and quarters out of our pockets to make a call on a pay phone. In fact, look around you: seen a pay phone lately, with or without a booth around it? There aren’t many of them left, and on islands the number is about zero.
Clearly cellphones have changed everything, and the chances there will be a cell phone in the vicinity, if not in our hands, when we need a phone are pretty good. But the demise of the pay phone is a loss for isolated places like islands, where it’s conceivable that an emergency could arise before those affected could find a phone.
So when Cliff Island found itself pay phone-less recently, its residents raised enough trouble to attract the attention of two legislators and the Public Utilities Commission, which now has established a “public interest pay phone” program for those places that can prove a need.
Deregulation indeed has its limits — no one’s talking about a pay phone on every corner, but requiring the phone company to maintain one on a small island for emergencies is simply good public policy.