Pay Phones Become Voice and Data Terminals

Public pay telephones are in a slump. Local calls from pay phones have dropped 30 percent since 1998, according to 10Meters.com. As a result, BellSouth is phasing out support to 143,000 public pay phones, and Bell Atlantic pay phone revenues have dropped 24 percent in two years. With a boom in wireless and cellular phone users, public pay phones could become extinct.

But they are still necessary. In 1991, a study of New York City's 59 community districts revealed that in eight of those districts, more than 20 percent of households were without telephone service. And in 1999 over 1 million 911 calls were made from the city's public phones.

New York City has decided to take turn the declicing use of public pay phones into an opportunity. The city will franchise pay phones, and convert them to public data and voice terminals. These touch-screen-based hybrid devices will continue to offer standard telephone service, but will also provide broadband Internet connectivity for such functions as e-mail, access to government Web sites, and online transactions and purchasing. In addition, PPT kiosks may carry advertising in some areas.

Organizational Cooperation
Transforming the formerly unregulated PPT industry to a city-regulated franchise operation involved over 20 city agencies, bureaus and commissions, 59 community boards, over 30 business improvement districts (BIDs), and nearly 160 original registry PPT vendors. The franchise contract imposes obligations above those exacted by the Municipal Administrative Code and local law. In addition to exacting and ensuring a baseline acceptable operational performance for a single PPT (e.g., for appearance, operability, "911" access), the franchise also mandates aggregate performance levels for each franchisee's PPTs. A continuous regimen of inspections has been established to verify adherence to these required performance levels. Unique six-digit medallions are being affixed to PPTs by franchisees for identification.

It is anticipated that 1,000 inspections will be conducted weekly, for approximately 100 items, so handheld devices will be used. The handhelds will eliminate paper-based front- and back-end data entry and will house the entire PPT record repository, updated via daily wire-line downloads. Each device will transfer its accumulated inspection records via end-of-day wire-line uploads.

Eventually, wireless transfer will occur within an architecture that provides appropriate end-to-end security, authentication and robust operation. The application software and the ruggedized handheld hardware will further accommodate 1-D medallion barcode scanning and the incorporation of digital photos that can serve as evidence to enforce appearance-based violations. GPS coordinates can also be added to verify that a PPT has not been moved to another location.

Future
The mandated PPT regulatory environment currently has nearly all approved franchises in effect. The core IT infrastructure is robust and continually expanding in function and scope. Aggressive enforcement and the timely dissemination of information will be further enabled through the planned use of handheld devices, an existing intranet, and the agency's Web site.

Valuable city assets are being leveraged to generate revenue streams that sustain the regulatory infrastructure, further enhance public safety and enforce high levels of public service performance. Wireless, fiber-optic, video and other technologies offer a formidable repertoire of service product options.

Will PPTs disappear from city sidewalks altogether, or will they find new life as a platform for delivery of online information and services? New York City's residents, commuters and visitors will soon help answer that question.



Technical Sidebar
The Public Pay Telephone Information System (PPTIS) comprises a client/server architecture in which the Powerbuilder 7.0-based application is resident on each user's local drive. The Oracle 8i database of 130 tables runs on an NT-based server. Synchronization of the applications' objects is achieved via an application server ensuring that the latest program objects run in each user workstation. An online "Help" menu-based change request subsystem ensures that all problem and enhancement requests are acquired, categorized, evaluated, assigned and implemented. Thus, change requests are not only managed carefully, but are also utilized to monitor, evaluate and set quality goals in accordance with common maturity model (CMM) practices and procedures.

The upcoming implementation of handheld-based inspection record acquisition will be effected via a dedicated server that will aggregate daily inspections and forward them to the PPTIS production server at end-of-day. Master updates of the production database will be transferred to the inspection server at start-of-day. For security purposes, the inspection server will have a "double door" relationship in regard to the production server and the handheld devices.

Currently, PPT location data is periodically forwarded to the DoITT Web site for public dissemination. Powerbuilder window objects and even the entire application can be made available internally on the agency's intranet for full viewing and printing via a standard browser. Planning is under way for PPTIS to access an enterprise GIS base-map repository that will allow street-based, city-owned or authorized assets to be assigned coordinates with an accuracy within two-feet. The planned upgrade to an existing wireless application server is designed to provide CORBA-facilitated interoperability of CE C++ handheld application objects with legacy Powerbuilder objects and envisaged future Java PalmOS implementations.