BellSouth To Exit Pay Phone Business.

BellSouth announced that in a continuing effort to focus on strategic business objectives, the company has made the decision to exit the payphone business.

The company will begin transitioning out of the business immediately and will complete the transition by December 2002.

BellSouth is notifying the public and payphone location providers nearly two years in advance to allow sufficient opportunity for the identification of other technologies, or the selection of an alternative provider from the scores of independent payphone providers in the southeast.

“This decision will allow BellSouth to focus on its core broadband, Internet and digital network offerings, as well as domestic wireless data and voice business and Latin America,” said Charlie Coe, President of BellSouth Network Services. “BellSouth has carefully evaluated the market trends in the payphone business which indicate that our customers are opting for the new technology options we provide, including wireless telephones and interactive pagers,” Coe continued.

BellSouth has approximately 143,000 payphones in the southeastern United States. The payphone industry experienced declines in payphone usage for a number of years, but since 1998 usage levels have decreased dramatically. In addition, the payphone industry has had to contend with decreases in the rates long distance carriers pay to payphone service providers for 800- number and other “dial-around” types of calls.