Sole Survivor on the Streets of Portland

09 Jan 2025

We announce without joy that the only public telephones, pay or otherwise, on the streets of Portland are now operated by Futel. If you can’t use a Futel phone, you will have to enter a building and go to Union Station, or a hospital lobby, or find another solution. There are probably other indoor locations, surely one remains in the airport, but the knowledge is esoteric. There used to be lists of payphones out there published by geeks like us, but they’re so scarce now, nobody can bear to maintain them.

The last collection out there was at MAX stations, each of which had a payphone, but the contract ended and TriMet wasn’t willing to pay enough for a maintainer. The corpses of WiMacTel still litter the city. Rumors can be chased in the suburbs. On the streets of Portland, only Futel survives.

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