The devices allow users to surf the Web, receive and send e-mail and even make online purchases for about 25 cents a minute. Internet terminals may be the most promising. The some 5,000 now in use should grow to 18,000 by the end of the year and 165,000 by 2005, Mendelsohn estimates. Robin Harris, president of Robin Technologies, a pay phone operator in Rockville, Md., said he recently agreed to place ads on 300 pay-phone enclosures. At Elcotel Telecommunications, a pay-phone manufacturer in Sarasota, Fla., sales have fallen about 20 percent a year for the last three years, said Dan Fragen, senior vice president for sales and worldwide marketing.
Customers can even make credit-card purchases.
Joshua L. Kwan contributed to this report.