Payphones have been, for quite a long period of time, the only means of communication available in public places. However, the development of pre-paid calling cards or cell phones almost rendered them obsolete in many cities around the world, the few remaining having more of a decorative purpose than a practical one. Nevertheless, it would seem that one company has decided to bring this concept back to life, and created a brand new series of such devices, this time VoIP empowered.

Thus, Tongya, a joint venture company between Taiwan and SAXA (former Tamura) in Japan, has developed the VoIP Coin Payphones, devices which can be placed in public places and used with various VoIP services for a price (paid in coins). As mentioned before, this device uses a very interesting coin mechanism, which is capable of distinguishing 8 types of coins based on the diameter, thickness and material. Moreover, the phone offers some pretty useful function keys, as for example voice amplification, language choice, redial or follow-on-call.

Considering its intended purpose, these things have been built to last, with a very rugged external metal casing, but it has one (major) problem: the fact that it doesn't work below 0 Celsius degrees. However, it supports a wide variety of VoIP call control protocols, like SIP (RFC-3261) or H.323 V4 or MGCP, and sports an echo cancellation function, as well as an LCD screen for displaying the dialed number, coin value, remaining credit, reminding messages, self- diagnostic messages and revenue information. The device has about the same size as a normal payphone, measuring 529 mm x 276 mm x 235 mm and weighing around 23 kilos and will surely become quite popular as VoIP services are being used on an increasingly larger scale.

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