It used to be that in most every public place and on many street corners, you 'd find a pay phone. People would carry around a dime -- or in later years, a quarter or two -- just in case they needed to make a call.

But the fate of the dwindling pay phone suffered another blow last week when AT&T said it will quit that business by the end of 2008 because the phones aren 't making enough money.

"This is the right time for us to take this step on behalf of our customers, employees and stockholders, " said David Huntley, senior vice president for customer information services.

Independent providers are expected to pick up some of the pay phone service.

Nationwide, about 1 million pay phones are in operation today, down from 2.6 million in 1998.

AT&T has about 65,000 working pay phones remaining; a spokesman said he didn 't know how many are in Wisconsin. In January 2003, the company -- then called SBC Ameritech -- had about 14,500 pay phones in Wisconsin, about half as many as in 2000.

Verizon says it owns and maintains more than 600 pay phones in Wisconsin and TDS says it outsourced that service to another provider more than five years ago.

You can still find pay phones around Madison. There are a dozen at the Dane County Regional Airport and six at West Towne Mall, for example. Most often, though, it 's not the local phone service provider that operates them. West Towne 's pay phone service is handled by North Coast Pay Phones in Cleveland.

There are still well over 100 pay phones in Madison, and if you want to know where they are, there 's a Web site listing locations, at www.payphone-directory.org.

So if your cell phone can 't be found, you can always dig through your pockets, and make a call the old-fashioned way.

-- Judy Newman

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