Today's NYT has an article on PayPhone salons that offer phone booths to their customers. They buy the long distance connection in bulk and resell them to the customers so the customer doesn't have to pay the high payphone charge. They're quite common in poor sections of town. The article mentions that the phones can be problematic because drug dealers can use them to avoid phone taps, but it seems to conclude that this is a small price to pay for bringing the connection to the poor. Most customers use the service to call their home country and speak to relatives. I thought it was interesting that the danger of untraceable drug dealers popped into the reporters mind when they were researching the article. After all, they don't tend to mention illegal problems when they speak about used car dealers or other services. -Peter
The article mentions that the phones can be problematic because drug dealers can use them to avoid phone taps, but it seems to conclude that this is a small price to pay for bringing the connection to the poor. Most customers use the service to call their home country and speak to relatives.
This is getting quite irritating. Drug dealers have as much right to use a pay fone as the next person until they are proved guilty in a court of law.
-Peter
participants (2)
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Peter Wayner
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Timothy Newsham