GoKawiilRemember pay phones? Those relics of telecom’s distant past were once everywhere—on many busy street corners, in bars and restaurants, even built into airliners’ seatbacks. Now, an engineer in Vermont is aiming to give the old-fashioned device some present-day relevance.
Patrick Schlott, 32, is an electrical engineer by training who works at the South Burlington, Vt.–based eVTOL maker Beta Technologies. Inspired in part by the free-phone projects Futel and PhilTel, he’s restored and installed free-to-use pay phones at over half a dozen locations across Vermont. With Schlott’s phones, users can make coinless calls anywhere in the United States or Canada—with each phone routing its calls through local internet connections via a simple Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) gateway.
Schlott recently spoke with IEEE Spectrum about the rugged charm of old tech, public phones in a private world, and the joys of reverse engineering.
IEEE Spectrum: How did you get the idea to convert old phones into free-to-use public pay phones?
Patrick Schlott: In early 2023, I was visiting my parents’ house, and I found an old piece of phone equipment in the garage. It was basically a hook switch and a handset. I’m a big enthusiast of old technology, so I thought maybe I can get the rest of the parts and make it into a working telephone. Around the same time, a friend who works in IT said there are these gateway devices that convert a digital VoIP telephone line to analog. At the time, I was living in Tunbridge, Vt., with my now wife. I thought it would be great to have a phone for people to use out there when there’s no cell service.
Spectrum: How did you decide where to install your first phone?
Schlott: My wife and I frequented the North Tunbridge General Store, and in early 2024, I approached Mike Gross, the store owner, about this project. I explained if he just gives me internet, I’ll provide the phone, pay for the service, and make sure the network is secure and that phone traffic is encrypted. And he was like, “I don’t know that I would want people messing around with the phone on my porch after hours.” But his wife, Lois, who’s a co-owner of the store, was like, “Oh, that would be great because people’s cars break down sometimes, and we get people asking to use the phone occasionally.” Also, around this time, there was a woman at a campground who had a dispute with her partner and ended up walking 10 or 15 miles to the store. She really could have used a phone. A couple of weeks later, I went to the store, and Mike was like, “So, I’ve been thinking about your phone project—let’s do it.” In March 2024, that first phone went in.
What Is Needed to Convert Old Phones?
Spectrum: What went into converting old phone parts into a working phone?
Schlott: Phones used to operate on two types of telephone lines: ground start and loop start. Ground-start phones expect a ground-start circuit; you can’t just plug a regular landline into these phones in 2025 and expect them to work. Not a lot of people have landlines these days, but if you do, it’s a loop-start line. Basically, it’s an electrical circuit—a loop. The phones I work with are designed for a loop-start telephone line. With the loop start, the technology that makes the phone work is called an ATA or analog telephone adapter. They’re also referred to as SIP [session initiation protocol] gateways or media gateways. These gateways connect to a VoIP telephone system. I pay for VoIP phone service, and I use the ATAs to connect right to the provider. It’s like you’re getting a landline over the internet and then connecting it to a pay phone that operates like an analog telephone.
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