Payphone
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A payphone (also called a public telephone, phone box, or phone booth) is a telephone installed in a public place for use by the general public. In the context of Payphone Tag, the term refers specifically to payphones operated by Telstra on its public telephone network in Australia.
Telstra payphones
Telstra is the primary provider of public payphones in Australia. Since 2021, all domestic calls from Telstra payphones have been free of charge, requiring no coins or phone credit. Payphone Tag is built on this free-call infrastructure, making the game free to play.
The current standard unit is the Telstra Smart Payphone, a touchscreen-equipped unit capable of voice calls, SMS, and TTY messaging.
Other payphone operators
In the past, other companies also operated public payphones in Australia, including PayTel and TriTel. As these companies are now defunct, their payphones are inoperable where they still exist. Telecom Australia (a former name of Telstra) also produced payphones for private operation — for example, in sharehouses. Neither defunct-operator payphones nor privately operated payphones are part of Payphone Tag.