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We have four pay phones available to the public in our arena. Do any of you still make pay phones available to the public — and if so, how many? Does anyone have house phones for the public to use with local calls-only access, as well as operator access to phone card calls? 

Christy Harris
Senior Vice President Operations
Qwest Center Omaha, Omaha, Neb.

Our pay phones were removed by BellSouth because they were barely used. We looked into replacing them but the cost was too much. We just let patrons use our house phone if they ask, and it really doesn’t happen that often so it’s never a problem. There’s always someone around with a cell phone to borrow! We would like to get a single-line house phone for patrons, though.  

Chris Cockrill
Facility Manager
Marina Civic Center
Panama City, Fla.


We had the same issue of the phone company wanting to charge us lots of money to keep the pay phones in. We bought fairly cheap phones, blocked the long distance and put them up as courtesy phones. Patrons love it and thank us for the great customer service move. Win/win! 

Joe Durr
Event Services Manager
Portland Center for the Performing Arts
Portland, Ore.


Believe it or not, we do still have one bank of pay phones per level here at the Pepsi Center in Denver. We used to have a significantly higher count, but about 60 percent were removed last summer when it was proving too costly to maintain them. Some of ours generate less than one penny per day.

Allison Hiscox
Director
Event Operations
Kroenke Sports Enterprises
Denver

We ran into the same issue here at the Santa Clara Convention Center, where we have had about 20 to 25 phones removed. We still have three pay phones in various parts of the facility. The phones were removed in stages starting about four years ago, and we haven’t had any complaints whatsoever. We do have courtesy phones.  

Ken Winland
Director of Engineering & Security
Santa Clara Convention Center
Santa Clara, Calif.
 

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