Newest articles on The Sacramento Press tagged as "cell phones"

Photo essay: Payphones – A thing of the past ...almost

2012-01-13T07:14:09Z

Once upon a time, you could find a payphone on nearly every street corner. Since the advent of the cellphone, however, payphones have gone the way of the dinosaur – but the evidence of a once-abundant service remains in the graffiti-laden shells of former phone booths scattered throughout the city.

Sacramento is no stranger to abandoned, vandalized or otherwise dysfunctional payphones, which raised the question – who maintains the city’s payphones and is the number dwindling? The Sacramento Press sought to answer that question with a bit of history and photos from around the city.

Historically, payphones were owned and maintained largely by telephone service provider companies, such as AT&T or Western Telecom.

As cellphone use increased over the years, phone companies started taking payphones out of service because they were not as profitable.

Now, the majority of payphones are owned by independent vendors who contract with service providers for the phone service and then pass the cost – along with a profit margin – along to business owners who want to provide payphones as a service to customers.

According to Maurice Chaney, Economic Development Department spokesman, the city of Sacramento does not own or maintain any public payphones.

Terrie Prosper, spokeswoman for the California Public Utilities Commission, said Thursday there is no legal requirement in the state for a city to own or maintain payphones for its residents.

Since there is no ownership reporting requirement either, Prosper said, short of physically counting each one – it is nearly impossible to estimate the number of payphones in Sacramento today.

The total cost of installing a phone and booth is approximately $1,000 each, according to Interstate Telecommunication owner Sandy Clay.

Clay said Thursday that her company spends roughly 5 percent of monthly revenue on repair and maintenance costs of the 60 or so phones her company owns in Sacramento.

“The vandalism is the worst,” Clay said. “Well, that and stealing the whole phone. And it happens all the time.”

Payphones are typically placed at mini-marts or gas stations and at “mom-and-pop businesses” in areas where low-income residents don’t have home phone service or can’t afford cellphones, she added.

“A good (earning) payphone in a good location will bring about $200 a month from the coin box,” Clay said, “and maybe $50 a month from our portion of long distance charges.”

Revenue from payphones comes from the coin box on the phone itself and from surcharges on long-distance and 1-800 phone calls, Clay said.

Vendors seek out business sites that will get a lot of foot traffic and pay the business owner a percentage of their revenue as commission for installing a payphone on their property.

The vendor is responsible for installing the phone booth or stand, Clay explained, and for maintaining or repairing the phones and equipment.

If a payphone isn’t making enough money, or if the business owner no longer wants the phone on the property, the vendor is responsible for removing the phone and equipment.

Clay said that the payphone industry was booming a few years ago – then, along came cellphones, and everything changed.

“It was not a surprise,” Clay said. “We could see the writing on the wall when cellphones started becoming more popular.”

Clay said that, initially, cellphones were not much competition for payphones because cellphones were expensive, and not many people could afford them.

Over the last few decades, however, as cellphones gained in popularity and became less expensive to own, the need for payphones declined dramatically.

“We expected business to slow down,” Clay said, “but the technology really took off. We didn’t expect business to slow so fast.”

Melissa Corker is a staff reporter for The SacramentoPress. Follow her on Twitter @MelissaCorker.

Downtown burglar caught red handed

2010-12-28T16:13:24Z

Sacramento, CA | Downtown police on patrol catch a suspicious subject to find out he burglarized a local wireless phone store.

Late Monday night, downtown officers spotted a man running with a purse in his hand and a mask pulled part way over his face. Officers gave chase, the subject dropped the purse he was carrying and he was captured a couple of blocks away on the corner of L St. and 4th St...

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Texting Affairs Can Kill a Relationship

2009-03-06T01:46:10Z

Lately we have all been hearing about the dangers of cell phone texting while driving. People have been killed or seriously injured because of drivers’ distraction from the road. In fact a new law in California prohibits texting while driving because of such accidents. I for one have been guilty of this now criminal offense in the past, and must be very careful not to even think about doing it while I am behind the wheel.

Recently, I have become aware of a new danger inherent to texting. That danger occurs when a person finds out that his or her significant other, husband, wife, partner, or fiancé, has been texting someone else secretly.

Singer Chris Brown apparently had received a text from a woman he had a sexual relationship with when his girlfriend, singer Rihanna, who was also in the car with him, saw the text and hurtful words and violence began flying in the car. Texting while you drive can be very dangerous, but even more dangerous when your partner reads a text from another lover. Love letters are a thing of the past now that text messaging can be sent immediately to another person, even to someone in a relationship with someone else.

A friend of mine, whom I will call Larry for this article, shared with me the heartache he recently endured when he discovered that his steady girlfriend of two years was having some sort of texting relationship with another man in Arizona. Larry shared with me how this whole thing came to light and the trust issues it has raised in his mind and heart. I told him that I would write an article for the readers at Sacramento Press and then have those who read the story share their thoughts and maybe their "text affair" stories as well.

His relationship with this woman started just about two years ago when he signed up on Match.com. It wasn’t long after he joined that the woman in question “winked” at him through the Match website. Winking at someone on Match.com is a very casual way to start the ball rolling. When you get a wink you can either reply back and say, “Thank you but I am not interested,” or wink back, or even email.

So they began their relationship through this online dating service, which in my opinion is a great way to learn about someone before making any plans to spend any significant time together on a real date, which can sometimes become the longest minutes of your life.

Everything was going pretty good for Larry and his Match.com connection. About ten months after they first met, his girlfriend was talking about changing cell phone providers because of cost, and Larry mentioned to her that he could add a line to his service and that would be the most economical way for her to do so.

So they added a line for her on his service. Every month the bill came, Larry paid it and his girlfriend would pay her share. It was all good. Larry never looked at the bill because he knew approximately how much it would be even before it came in the mail.

Then on February 13th, the day before Valentine’s Day, Larry and his gal were together; it was about 9:30 p.m. or so and a text came over on her phone. Larry jokingly asked, “Who is texting you this time of night?” His gal looked at the cell phone and said, almost defensively, “It is probably one of my girlfriends replying to my Happy Valentine’s text to them.” No big deal, Larry believed her, and why not? Isn’t that what women do with each other? Anyways, he didn’t have any reason not to believe her.

About a week later, the newest phone bill arrived in the mail. It was a little higher than Larry expected it to be so he very carefully went over it. As he went down the bill in the section that covered his girlfriend’s calls and text messaging, he noticed a number appeared that was from the Phoenix area. Again, not a big deal -- until that same number appeared as a text that came in on February 13th at 9:30pm. Not just once, but a series of texting back and forth, to and from that Phoenix number.

So Larry did a little Internet homework to find out if the number was from someone he knew, as he was aware of most of his girlfriend’s friends and business partners because he and his girlfriend talked all the time, and there was little unknown between the two of them.
His search came up with a business in Phoenix, Arizona. Larry determined that whoever owned the business was also the owner of the cell phone that was texting his girlfriend. Not only that, but after looking at the bill, his girlfriend never texted any of her friends on February 13th, and none of her friends texted her either. Something was not coming up straight.

Larry began to get a sinking feeling in his stomach. He was beginning to wonder who is this person that texted his girlfriend, and why was she so secretive about it that night?

So Larry began pulling up old cell phone bills online, and sure enough, this person in Phoenix was in constant contact with his girlfriend and she was in contact with this person as well. The whole time she had been on Larry’s phone bills there were calls and text messages made to and from Phoenix.

Larry decided he was going to ask his girlfriend about this number. He told her the truth how he saw that the phone bill was higher than normal and he saw that there were many calls and text to and from this mystery number and that this mystery number was the person who had texted her on February 13th at 9:30pm. She blew it off that this was a business acquaintance of hers, no big deal.
When Larry mentioned that the phone bill did not show any text to and from her friends that night, she stated that she said she had emailed them or something like that.

Larry then asked her who it was in Phoenix that was texting and what was this person’s name? She said she wasn’t going to tell him the person’s name and asked him to drop the subject. It was just a "business deal that had gone bad" she said, and she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Larry didn’t want to create a jealous argument over something that might have been nothing, so he let it go. In the back of his mind he began replaying the incident of the first text on February 13th, and the excuse his girlfriend made up and the fact that she didn’t want to talk about it.

Then it occurred to him that his girlfriend made a business trip to Phoenix about a year and a half ago and that he never saw any business come from that trip.

Larry also mentioned to me that about that same time he had received a text from his girlfriend that seemed random, it said “yum yum”. That is all it said. He hadn’t even sent her a text prior to it. Even at that time he wondered who was this text meant for, because it was just too random. He called his girlfriend and asked her what that text meant, and she just said “just yum yum.” That was odd, Larry thought.

Today, he is in a quandary. He loves this woman. He has invested a lot of time, energy and money into this relationship and does not want to jeopardize it for the sake of his own runaway imagination or false accusations.

I don’t blame him. But on the same note, he feels that there were too many calls and text messages to just ignore. He doesn’t want to continue to invest in this relationship only to find out down the road that his girl has been having some sort of fling all along.
What does Larry do? I am usually pretty good at giving relationship advice and I have my ideas about this situation, but my thoughts are coming from a man’s point of view. I am hoping that women who read this will respond from a woman’s point of view and give Larry some insights.
Please help Larry sort this out and make a wise decision.

Chime Overload

2009-02-07T10:49:41Z

OK, so I’m a bit of an online junkie. If I’m at home, I’m either at my computer or I’ve reluctantly given in to the need to sleep or take care of other bodily needs. I used to be like this with TV: Ten years ago I had 3 VCR’s wired in series and never quite understood the question “What did you watch last night?” just as whoever asked it didn’t really understand when I responded with “Errr…everything.”

So now I’m online at almost all hours and that means that I typically have 12-15 browser windows open and probably have 7-8 incoming avenues for communication available at any time. Or 9-10 if you include my phone, which generally gets forgotten when I’m at home and fixated on the 22” cantilevered monitor on that swings out over my giant buttoned-back recliner (think Matrix meets an old school gents club, with the cleaning skills of a frat house membership).

At any given time (and that includes when I’m not here, much to the consternation of friends) I’ll be logged into AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, office email, Yahoo! email, Facebook and Facebook IM, myspace and myspace IM (which only one person I know uses, but he uses it a lot), and a couple of dating sites (let’s not go there this time – that’s a whole different story, for a different day and a different ratings standard). This of course results in assorted problems like arranging the real estate on the screen so that messages don’t interrupt the latest bathroom cover track playing on youtube, remembering bizarrely phrased and vowel-free screennames of somebody I chatted with once several weeks earlier while the Ambien was kicking in, and avoiding replying to the wrong person (damn you pop-up windows!) or while inadvertently still in caps lock (no, I was working on something else, I’m not mad – and it’s not always about you).

But it also means that I’m inundated by a ridiculous assortment of chimes and beeps. Everything has its own sound and there’s no apparent logic to any of it. And not just the direct sounds, like an incoming message on myspace IM, but also the secondary alerts like Yahoo! Messenger making sure that I know that I have an incoming email in my Yahoo! inbox pointing out that somebody (probably the vaguely remembered at best, Ambien fueled chat participant) just left a new and inscrutable comment on my myspace profile.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining – I wouldn’t want to miss these incoming nuggets of personal updatery, it’s just that I’m chime-illiterate or web-tone deaf or something. My monitor squeals at me (I’m not really the separate speakers type) and I have to visually scan the screen, in the absence of a (damn!) pop-up, for a tab or a minimized window on a toolbar somewhere might be flashing. Hoping that it isn’t just some tiny message in the corner that’s going to disappear again before I can even refocus my attention from the latest insights from the worlds of inhabitat.com or Rotten Tomatoes, Wikipedia or the urban dictionary (seriously, how did I survive before the interwebs?). Indeed, a friend just sent me three lines of text (via one of the undisclosed dating sites) and I was so deep in my sweet and sour pork Panda Feast revelry that for a moment I thought my tire pressure must be low or perhaps my microwave was irritated by more than a minute of inactivity. (Thank you flashing tab for saving me yet again.)

This tonal disorientation extends to other settings. I am not, for the most part, a competent user of specifically designated ringtones. Even before “my cell” was my phone and not just a night’s accommodation after an evening of too-drunken revelry (or when wireless was a classier way to refer to a radio), I was confused by ringtones. In grad school at Clemson, “The Harvard of the South!” (which always made me wonder if you could buy “The Clemson of the North!” shirts in Cambridge), I never figured out the difference between off-campus calls and on-campus calls. This was, apparently, an innate skill for everybody around me but persistently eluded me for three years.

I now miss text messages completely because I have the even more confusing array of sounds on my Storm (The World’s First Touchscreen Blackberry! – I think it’s in my contract that I have to type that) disabled. And don’t get me started about the significance of differently shaped envelope icons!

And none of this is made any better by how directionally challenged I am by some sounds. Not only will I turn the wrong way, against the rotation of the swiveling heads in a crowded room, but I expect a speeding ticket when a fire truck runs a light on a nearby cross street (which may of course have as much to do with the likelihood that I’m speeding as my aural deficiencies). And, yes, I’m the guy who attempts to answer my phone when yours rings, even though mine doesn’t play Single Ladies and you’re riding in the fire truck.

Note: Not only have I been barraged by assorted sounds while I type this, even at 2am, but I just encountered my first AIM avatar that actually laughs creepily when the user types “lol” – LOL.

All of which leads me to the next obvious questions: Why would I want Twitter, what does it sound like, and will it annoy me while I’m eating the rest of my Panda Feast?