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Definition: payphone


A public telephone on the street, in a building lobby or retail outlet that accepts coins or collect calls. There are very few payphones left in the U.S., mostly in small stores. Payphones were ubiquitous in every town and city before the cellphone became a universal phenomenon.




The Last Payphones in New York
There used to be as many as a million payphones in New York, but the last ones were removed in 2022. (Image courtesy of CNBC LLC, a division of NBCUniversal.)






Still in the U.K.
In 2023, this telephone booth was alive and well in London.





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