Single-Slot Payphones

Single-Slot payphones can be separated again into two further classifications: Coin line (or “dumb”) phones and COCOTs (Customer-Owned Coin Operated Telephones or “smart” phones).

Coin Line Phones

Coin line phones (Also known as LEC, or Local Exchange Carrier phones ) are phones that were operated by “the telephone company” and used a phone line specially provisioned for payphones. Call cost (also known as call rating) as well as coin collection/return actions were performed at the Central Office and the payphone was little more than a terminal with no intelligence of its own, hence being called “dumb.”

There are 3 large players in this category in North America: Western Electric (also called Bell, or WECo), Automatic Electric/GTE (also called AE), and Northern Electric/Northern Telecom (also called Nortel). Though these phones were created by different companies, they function similarly.

COCOTs (Customer-Owned Coin Operated Telephones

COCOTs on the other hand could be operated by anyone and utilized normal subscriber phone lines. Since someone operating a COCOT didn’t have the backing of a traditional telephone company, the payphone itself needed to perform all of the call rating and coin collection/return logic itself. These phones have what are essentially small computers inside them that handle all of this logic, hence being called “smart.”