Engineer restores pay phones for free public use : NPR

Patrick Schlott finds himself in a cellular dead zone during his drive to work.

“You go down the road, you turn the corner and you’re behind a mountain and you’ll lose cell coverage pretty fast,” he says.

The electrical engineer says poor reception is a common frustration for residents of Vermont’s Orange County. To address this issue, he’s providing his community with a new way to stay connected.

Schlott has taken old pay phones, modified them to make free calls, and set them up in three different towns across the county. He buys the phones secondhand from sites like eBay and Craigslist and restores them in his home workshop.

With just an internet connection, these phones can make calls anywhere in the U.S. or Canada — no coins required. And Schlott covers all the operating costs himself.

“It’s cheap enough where I’m happy just footing the bill,” he says. “You know, if I’m spending $20 a month on, say, Netflix, I could do that and provide phone service for the community. And to me, that’s way more fun.”