It’s no secret that mobile phones have decimated the popularity of landline phones, and for good reason, too. Why choose a phone that can only stay in one place, provides no protection against spam calls and can’t do anything else besides calling?
For the longest time, the landline phone was everywhere. Your house had one – two if you were spoiled – your job had several and schools were filled with them. And don’t forget about payphones either, because those were on every corner at one point.
Point Park was no exception to this rule, either. According to the Pay Phone Directory website, which lists former pay phone locations all around the world, Lawrence Hall alone had 17 pay phones when the university was still a college – the old Pittsburgh Playhouse in Oakland even had one.
What happened to all those phones? Simple, they became obsolete as soon as cell phones dropped in price enough to be affordable by most people. According to Slate Magazine, the number of pay phones in the U.S. peaked at 2.6 million in 1995. In 2018, that number was down to 100,000.
Additionally, the Washington Post reported in 2023 that less than a quarter of people in the U.S. still own a landline phone. Even then, the modern landline phone is not the same as the phones of the past.
These days, most landline phones work through the internet – this is why cable companies used to beg people to bundle home phones with their internet and cable plans. The more devices hooked up to the network, the better.
Is this bad? Not quite, but the sound quality of a true landline phone still on the Plain Old Telephone System (POTS) line doesn’t have that same type of muffled compression internet phones do. This doesn’t mean an old home phone will sound like you’re talking to a caller as if they’re right next to you in real life, though.
Why does any of this matter? Well, even after their fall in usage, landline photos used to litter Point Park’s campus. Almost every floor of every building had a working phone that you could use to dial extensions – the red phones being used to call Point Park Police, for example. Many of these phones are still technically around, however the piece where you talk into and listen to the other person has been ripped out of most of these phones.
It’s unclear where these phones will go, but it’s understandable why this happened. Most people on campus have their own phones, and if they’re in an emergency that prevents them from using a cell phone, the campus emergency boxes with camera systems can be used.
But what isn’t understandable is the fact that there is at least one landline phone left on campus that works just fine. Despite being caked in dirt and dust, the red phone behind the security desk in Academic Hall works just fine and sounds like it is still on a POTS line.
If you want to feel nostalgic for an era you probably did not experience, there’s a phone on campus that encapsulates it. Talking on one of those old phones is surprisingly fun and tactical, especially since nothing is more satisfying than slamming the handset onto the phone when you’re angry at a caller.
Don’t do that to the phone in Academic Hall, though. What you can seem to do, though, is call people on it and have them call the phone. Its mechanical bell ringing sound is unmistakable – every person your parents’ age will likely turn around to try to figure out who is calling.
And it’s just you, being silly with that old phone that still works for some unknown reason. Who’s paying the bills on it, anyway?
