Guy in rural Vermont installing free public pay phones

[thewayne]

(Is rural Vermont redundant? I've never been there.)

Patrick Schlott is an electrical engineer and encounters cellular dead zones regularly while driving through work. So he gave himself a hobby and a calling.

He's buying pay phones from Ebay and Craig's List, restoring them, setting them up to make VOIP calls over the internet, and installing them in towns throughout rural Vermont, letting anyone make free calls to anywhere in the US and most of Canada. And thus far, paying for all of it out of his pocket.

I just now checked Ebay, and a push-button pay phone is running typically $100-300+.

These aren't going just anywhere, but into places like libraries, schools, etc. And they're getting used, and proving useful to drivers who have car breakdowns, students who need to call their parents, etc.

Very cool project!

https://www.npr.org/2025/08/04/nx-s1-5484013/engineer-restores-pay-phones-for-free-public-use

Comments

[silveradept]

That seems like an excellent thing for someone to do, and to turn those pay phones into free VOIP calling keeps them alive for longer and doing what they do best. I wonder what the connection fees are for the calls, though. There probably isn't any place any where that offers a free connection to POTS from the Internet. Hopefully if donations are needed, the residents where the phones have been installed will be able to help with some of the costs. Or the places where they've been installed will, since they're getting plenty of use.