Friday, July 28, 2006

Pay Phone Digital Signage

As many of you know, pay phone usage in the United States is suffering. With cellphone ownership increasing, the demand for pay phones has decreased to the point where operators are removing pay phones that aren't making money.
"If a pay phone isn't covering its costs, we take it out," said Jim Smith, a spokesman for Verizon, which operates more pay phones in New York than any other company. "Toward the late '90s, the wireless phenomenon really got some momentum. That really put the squeeze on the pay phones."
This begs the question:

Do pay phone locations have the infrastructure needed for digital signage?

Undoubtedly, some pay phone locations that are being removed offer great locations for digital signage. We'd like to hear your thoughts.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Payphone usage continues to declined as mobile phone penetration grows. However, the "real estate" occupied under a site contract has become increasingly more valuable for static advertising and for its infrastructure. Digital signage appears to require and could benefit from both.

Outdoor payphone enclosures provide eye-level mini-billboards. Many major advertisers like AB, Bristol-Myers, Delta, Ford, GM, Nike, and others usage payphone enclosure advertising to target specific demographics.

Whether installed indoor or out, a payphone could potentially download content overnight or in off hours using its analog line. Many payphone installations have spare pairs of Cat 3 to Cat 5 cabling from an interior equipment room for support of local content servers.

I have long maintained that a 9 inch wide self-contained display mounted just above a payphone at eye level could deliver a potent message to callers and passers by. Several attempts have been made to use payphones as an advertising vehicle. The most serious investment was by Nortel.

Approximately 1 million payphones are installed in the US, so there are still opportunity for a creative digital signage provider.

Anonymous said...

I like the digital signage solution offered by AV Planners - Digital Signage

tim warrington said...

With the wiring these phone have got it would be easy to setup a digital signage network for all of them, this would be a very valuable digital signage network.

Las Vegas Signage said...

Digital signage can help increase a brands visibility, campaign awareness and ultimately increase levels of user participation. If a brands objective is to engage with recipients by sending out a video or a computer game to users handset via Bluetooth a digital sign could be used to prompt the recipient to ensure that their Bluetooth is enabled.