Who needs a fancy payphone, anyway?
Even in an age where the dial telephone has joined eight-track tapes and black-and-white TV in the museum of outmoded technologies, Northern Telecom’s Millennium payphone strikes a futuristic pose. Finished in flashy blue and silver and equipped with a bright blue-green fluorescent display, the Millennium practically oozes modernity. For those of us not rich enough to own a cellphone, is the Millennium just what we need to keep up with digital telephone technology when we’re away from home? Or are the Millennium’s snazzy new features an example of design overkill? Initial design work on what would become the Millennium payphone began six years ago, according to Doug Matatall, director of Millennium marketing at Northern Telecom. Consumers asked that the buttons on the dialing pad not be hidden under the handset as they are on the older Centurion model, so the Millennium’s handset was placed next to the buttons. People with tremors, cerebral palsy, and other motor impairments had diffic
