PhilTel is looking to install new (to us) payphones within the city of Philadelphia. Any payphone installed will be completely free-to-use, allowing the user to place calls within North America. Additionally, we would like to provide various experiences and services through the phones; these could be as simple as voicemail, fun as a phone number that randomly calls other payphones, or as complex as an integration with phone collectors’ networks to allow phone-phreaking and exploration!

Volunteer

PhilTel is actively looking for volunteers to help with both technical and outreach tasks. We are a completely volunteer-run collective operating in the Philadelphia area, and we need help to grow and evolve our network!

We’ve outlined some skills we are looking for below. This is by no means a complete list! We’re constantly learning new things and discovering new needs as we grow.

Tech Team

We are always look for technology-minded individuals to help us grow the payphone network and install/repair existing hardware. Even if you don’t have much direct experience with the technologies we are working with, we are happy to help get you up to speed! While we are hoping to have people who can physically attend meetups, workshops, and installations, there is also the possibility for remote work.

Here are some skills we are currently looking for:

• Experience with router firmware installation/config (OpenWRT, ddwrt, Tomato, etc.)
• Experience with metrics/monitoring (syslog, Prometheus, Grafana, etc.)
• Experience with VoIP, including SIP, ATA configuration, Asterisk
• Terminating ethernet or telephone cabling
• Payphone troubleshooting, repair, installation skills
• Telephone (land line) wiring and installation skills
• Basic/Advanced electrical skills (basic maintenance/troubleshooting, routing wires/circuits in-wall, bending/installing conduit)
• Building small-scale solar power systems
• Drilling into brick/mortar, using concrete anchors to mount equipment on masonry
• Running Internet/telephone cabling from home exterior to interior
• Experience with anchoring items to sidewalk, laying concrete, etc.
• Electronics prototyping, including soldering, breadboarding, work with microcontrollers
• Web development
• Visual Design (web & print)
• Data Visualization/Mapping
• Data Science / Data Analysis

If you are interested in getting involved with PhilTel, please fill out our Volunteer Sign-up Form!

Our Code of Conduct is available here.

Read more here.