Vermont engineer revives pay phones with VoIP for cell-dead rural towns

Beta Technologies engineer Patrick Schlott has installed seven free-to-use pay phones across rural Vermont, routing calls over local internet connections through analog telephone adapters (ATAs, also known as SIP gateways) that bridge vintage loop-start handsets to a VoIP provider. The first unit went up at the North Tunbridge General Store in March 2024 after a stranded hiker incident highlighted the need; subsequent installs have landed in libraries, schools, and town halls, with more queued.

The project leans on the visual language of old Western Electric and GTE hardware—people recognize a pay phone as public infrastructure they can use without asking, unlike an ambiguous courtesy phone. Schlott has wired in shortcut codes (211 for United Way, 411 for directory, 988 for the suicide line, 0 to a softphone on his own cell) and registered each install with E911 so emergency calls pass the correct address to dispatch.

Demand is driven by two converging factors: Vermont’s coming September 2026 school smartphone ban, and persistent cell-service gaps in rural areas. Schlott funds the roughly few-dollars-per-month-per-line service through donations and personal money, sources phones cheaply off Craigslist and Marketplace, and deliberately leaves coin mechanisms intact to keep the hardware friendly to phreaking hobbyists.