Maker Faire Philadelphia 2024
PhilTel: Bringing back payphones without the "pay"
Home: PA, United States
PhilTel is an amateur phone collective in Philadelphia that is refurbishing and installing payphones, but making them free to use by harnessing the power of open-source software, commodity hardware, and Voice-over-IP services. No coins required!
https://philtel.org
Maker
Mike Dank
Mike Dank is the co-founder of PhilTel, a Philly-based phone collective aiming to install free-to-use payphones for all! He also helms Networks of Philly, an exploratory project to catalogue public networking infrastructure all around us, runs Dialup.World, a free-to-use dialup ISP, and organized the Philadelphia chapter of the 2600 hacker meetings.
https://famicoman.comWhat Inspired You to Make This?
As payphones are disappearing from everyday use, people who depend on them for their everyday needs are left in the dark. Aside from being able to benefit the local community and provide means of communication, the technical challenge of refurbishing and retrofitting payphones of different types and ages, then having them work with off-the-shelf hardware and open-source software was not only fun to undertake but proof that others can do the same in their cities easily and inexpensively.
