There is another spin possible on the reasons for replacement of pay phones with credit card phones. In Canada all new credit card phones are also able to take phone cards (which are anonymous). Using a prepaid phone card permits full anonymity. But what it also permits is metered local calls. This infrastructure would be more familiar to someone from Europe where metered local calls are the norm. Paris make the change to phones that *only* take prepaid phone cards (thus fully anonymous) obstensibly because people were breaking into phones for the money. Prepaid phone cards avoid this. James Why should my long distance calling subsidize your local internet access? ;-) ---------- From: "<pstira@escape.com>" <pstira@escape.com> Sent: Friday, September 06, 1996 9:54 AM To: unicorn@schloss.li Cc: vznuri@netcom.com; cypherpunks@toad.com Subject: Re: What is the EFF doing exactly? Not just DC and Chicago, I'm afraid. If anyone around NYC noticed, there are less and less payphones, and all new ones installed, just about, are those yellow credit card phones. Not all of them, but it's now one for one, at least.