Another Roadside Curiosity

From our travel to and from the Gulf Coast I encountered this.  

click on image to enlarge

Yup.  An old-school pay phone.  

You don't see these hardly anywhere anymore but sure as shoot here it was - at the entrance of a state of Indiana rest area along I-65.  What I didn't recognize was the telecommunication company provider.  Nope, not AT&T nor Verizon.  It certainly wasn't CenturyLink or Frontier Communications. That would be because all of the mainstay telecommunications companies know that coin-operated phones are obsolete.  A loss leader and a drain on profitability.

The phone said it belonged-to and was operated-by a company called GTL.  Completely foreign and unfamiliar to me I took a photo of it so I would remember the provider's name.  Here's what I found out.  

Global Tel Link (GTL) is a Virginia-based telecommunications company, founded in Mobile, AL back in in 1980, that provides Inmate Calling Services (ICS) for correctional facilities.  By 2015, GTL controlled 50% of the $1.2 billion inmate calling telecommunications industry.  

The FCC has reported that a 15 minute call thru GTL could cost something north of $17.  GTL will tell you that this is a consequence of securely monitoring the calls.  Or maybe it’s a nice price point for a profit making enterprise.  Either way I’m glad I didn’t pick-up this phone to make a collect call to the day job.  

Imagine that – an inmate phone in an Indiana wayside.  You can learn more about GTL here.