The Freephones of Whidbey Telecom

by Curtis Vaughan

Were it not for 2600, I probably would have little interest in payphones.  Now, whenever vacationing, any stray payphone garners my full attention.  Whereas my travels almost never take me to exotic places, I'm sure most of the payphones I've discovered have already been featured in the magazine's inside flaps.

On a recent sojourn to Whidbey Island, just north of Seattle, an island across which surely many local 26-hundreders have wandered, I noticed some unique (at least to me) public phones.  Their most peculiar aspect was that they were unmistakably not pay phones, as there was no method by which these phones could extract a payment from the user.  No, these were truly public or, I'll venture to coin: freephones.

The first one I encountered was outside Langley City Hall.  Although a very unpresumptuous telephone, it included a telephone book!  An actual book with telephone numbers of local businesses and individuals, which is released annually.  I was perplexed.  Had I slipped into a TARDIS and been sling-shotted we into another time?

Later that day I found yet another freephone at the Langley docks.  This one, although denuded of a phonebook, enjoyed an appropriate seashell halo.  These and numerous other phones are the property of the island's own Whidbey Telecom.  In total, Whidbey Telecom reports that there are 34 such freephones.  According to an article from 2012, WT decided to repurpose many of the payphones into free phones for local calls.

Of course, I had to check whether these phone actually worked.  As I expected, when I tried calling my own cell phone (not a local number!), a recording explained that calls to mobile phones and numbers out of area could not be completed.

I was happy to find out that Whidbey Telecom intends to host a web page with a map of each freephone.  We can only hope they will also have pictures of each freephone as some are apparently quite unique.

For example, I only found out later that there is a phone booth in Langley that has been specially fitted with metal siding by a local metal works.  Look it up on the web at www.heavymetalworks.com/2008/07/phone-booth-make-over.html.

Pretty cool.