Dan Radel

Asbury Park (N.J.) Press

ASBURY PARK, N.J. -- They're planted on sidewalks, bolted to buildings, but many of them serve no purpose.

At street corner after street corner, receivers have been ripped off the wire; in one, a stone was jammed into the coin release slot. What vandals aren't destroying, nature is slowly claiming with rust.

"They're like sculptures, relics. There's one up there but it doesn't work," said Gary Brewington, a crossing guard for the Asbury Park school district, pointing to a public payphone on Main Street.

Once the only way to make a call on the street, payphones are now a casualty of the cellphone era. Brewington estimates there are about seven payphone stanchions on Main Street that don't have working phones.

In most cases the phones have been removed from the housings and what is left is just shells of their former selves.

Asbury Park is not alone in New Jersey. Go to just about every town at the Jersey Shore. You'll find them next to a liquor store in Manasquan, a bank in Ocean Grove, at a strip mall in Long Branch.

The question is: Who owns them and are they are ever going to come get them?

"I have no idea," said Brewington.

These abandoned payphones do have owners, though. There are several independent companies that are operating or operated payphones here: ETS Payphones Incorporated, Integrated Utilities, NewTel Payphone Operations and Pacific Telemangement Services.

ETS Payphones however, is out of business and according to a 2006 article in the Atlanta Business Chronicle, the owner of the Georgia-based company was sentenced to 13 years in prison for a $400 million dollar payphone fraud scheme.

That company has at least one payphone falling apart in the area: in front of a check cashing business in Long Branch. Just who's responsible for that phone now has city officials scratching their heads.

"That's a good question. I don't know," said Howard Woolley, business administrator for the city of Long Branch.

The state Board of Public Utilities said the onus is on the payphone provider to come get any phone where the service has been cut off. The removal of the phone must be done so that the street, sidewalk, building, or any other structure where the payphone was located is restored to its exact condition prior to the payphone's installation.

Muncipalities can seek assistance from the board for abandoned phones, said BPU spokesperson Rebecca Schwarz

According to the American Public Communications Council, Inc., a public communications trade association, independent payphone companies got into the business after the Federal Communications Commission broke up the Bell System monopoly on payphones in 1984.

Then, by the 2000s, when communication companies like AT&T and Verizon were pulling out, those companies began buying up their properties.

"We have not been in the payphone business for years. I'd say our last property was two years ago." said John Bonomo, spokesperson for Verizon. "We gradually sold them off."

Bonomo said the reason Verizon got out of payphones is fairly obvious.

"Society has changed. It's become more reliant or dependent on cellphones," he said.

PTS bought up Verizon's New Jersey property in 2011. Mike Zumbo, president of Pacific Telemangement Services, a privately-owned public communications company based in San Leandro, Calif., said they entered the payphone business on the West Coast in 1985. Today they have about 40,000 payphones in 42 states, including 6,500 payphones in New Jersey. More than 300 of them are in the 732 area code.

"There's still a need for public payphones across the country," said Zumbo said. "A good example would be Hurricane Sandy because Sandy knocked down the cell phone antennas. The landline was the most reliable."

PTS has expanded into WiFi communications but Zumbo said they are also the largest payphone provider in the country.

"Five years ago I thought it might have diminished sooner. But one of the problems not solved is areas where cell phones and WiFi can't access — the payphone remains the simplest mechanism for communications."

There are those like Zumbo that believe payphones still have a use in society.

"I still think it's a decent public utility. Maybe that's why they have them in public transportation stations," said John Kaplow, 60, of Asbury Park. "They are good for emergencies. There are a lot of people who don't have a lot of (money) and they don't want to pay a monthly cell phone bill."

People continue to plunk quarters into payphones at hospitals, train stations and airports, convenience stores — places where there is a high volume of foot traffic.

"A payphone needs to make 100 calls a month, about 3 calls a day to pay for itself," said Zumbo.

If it doesn't, Zumbo said they will ask a municipality, a transportation company or a business to pay a subsidy or they will have to yank the phone. NJ Transit is one of the companies that does pay a subsidy to Zumbo on some of the phones located at their hubs.

"PTS has a monthly revenue threshold for each payphone and if it is not met they will remove the phone unless we pay a monthly fee to keep it. They have kept some on our property per our request, for our customers' convenience and for access to 911 services," said William Smith, a public transit spokesman.

But they have also had some abandoned phones as well, like the one at a New Jersey Transit Train Station in Long Branch, transit spokespeople have said.

"The phone stanchion in question has been inactive for quite some time and we are requesting that PTS remove it," said Smith.

Zumba said the company's practice is to remove inactive phones. "We usually come get the whole system. We're not 100 percent perfect, there are cases where we may have missed one," he said.

Payphone properties peaked in 2000 when there were about 2 million payphones. Zumbo believes there are only about 100,000 payphones now, closer to the 1902 level.

"Payphones will continue to last for a little while longer," said Zumbo. "They'll continue to dwindle but there is still a need."