North County : 10-Cent Era Nearly Over for 346 Pay Telephones

On Dec. 7, the days of cut-rate calls from pay telephones will end for residents of portions of northeast Orange County. There are only 346 pay phones left in Southern California on which it only costs a dime to call home. Those phones are in Orange, Placentia, Yorba Linda and Anaheim Hills. But by midnight on Dec. 6, they will be adjusted to require 20 cents for local calls, a Pacific Bell spokesman said Friday.

Under state law, the telephone companies were not allowed to increase the price to 20 cents until the phones were coverted to allow a free 911 call for emergencies. About 10 days after the state Public Utilities Commission’s June, 1984, decision, 17,854 of Orange County’s pay phones were converted. When Orange County’s final holdouts are changed next month, the Bell spokesman said, it will be the first time since 1953 that the price of a call has changed in the area served by the 346 phones.