By Kate Halbleib
Believe it or not, I didn’t always have a cellphone. In fact, I was rather late in jumping on the”cellular bandwagon”. You may be asking “Kate, howdid you ever make phone calls without a cell phone?How could it be possible?” Well gang, I often use*gasp* a pay phone. A pay phone?
Yes, the gloriousyet nearly forgotten invention that lets you “reachout and touch someone”, for a nominal fee of course.
When I was a kid, a call from a pay phone was 25cents. One shiny quarter was all it took. Then, muchto the dismay of everyone, the cost jumped to 35cents. (Two coins! How will we ever adjust?!) Andnow, in case you haven’t noticed, the cost of onephone call from a pay phone has skyrocketed to 50CENTS!!!! Don’t believe me? Take a look at any payphone. The cost has gone up a whopping 100% since mychildhood.
Well, let’s contemplate this for a minute.Everybody and their Mama has a cell phone now. Thismust mean that the regular phone companies are losingmoney, thus we have a jump in the price. But is anentire 15 cents extra for every call really necessary? Are the phone companies losing THAT much money? Whatare they doing with this extra 15 cents? I figure that in the long run, my $39.99 a monthcell phone bill will cost me a lot less than makingall of my “away from home” calls on a pay phone. Plus in case you didn’t know, most pay phones are totallygross.
They usually have gum stuck in the earpiece,or worse, something undistinguishable. Shouldn’t thephone companies provide some kind of regular cleaningservice for the pay phones using our extra 15 cents acall?
Our generation can probably deal with theincrease, but there’s one generation that shouldn’thave to: the elderly. A lot of people have cellphones, but most 80 year old grandmas don’t. Theyhave to deal with the increase more than we do. And,although its kind of off the subject, stamp priceincreases suck also. Stamps were a quarter when I wasa kid too.
Now they’re 34 CENTS! That’s an extra 9cents that my grandparents have to pay just to send mea birthday card. Most of our generation uses emailmore than we send letters, but most of the elderlydon’t. Next thing you know, people are going to startcounterfeiting stamps because they are so expensive.
Ok, back on track. The phone companies areshooting themselves in the foot here. They areincreasing the price because there are too many cellphones. Well, what they probably didn’t think of isthat the increase could drive people who don’t have acell phone to get one. Then they will lose even moremoney. Its a vicious cycle, folks.
Maybe it willcause the phone companies to get what they deserve. Ididn’t need their grimy old pay phones anyway….
Kate Halbleib is a sophomore communications major and
columnist for The Cardinal. Contact: kate_halbleib@louisvillecardinal.com
