Within the past year, every now and then I run service calls to locations where there is no cell phone service and a land line @ the local 7/11 is all that is available.
In 1998 or so I was driving around Atlanta, GA, as a contractor for Sprint PCS. My job was to verify that the power company had set our meter and that our equipment had power. I was supposed to call back to the office a couple times a day to tell them what I found, ask questions, etc. After a week of plopping down quarters I went and got my first cell phone, with Bellsouth Mobility because we were helping Sprint get their network launched. We had pretty decent coverage inside the interstate loop and then for 30-40 miles along the interstates outside the loop with around 500 towers when the network launched.
Airport in Jordan, 2009. Called my wife to let her know the snappy plane I hopped in Germany actually made it! Worse yet, that plane was luxury compared to the one I hopped from Jordan to Baghdad!
Just because we can remember when you had to watch a rerun of Star Trek to see anything like that, that doesn't make us antiques!
Seriously, the last time I used a payphone was about 3 years ago in Evansville after discovering that I did not have my cell phone and had to call a truck stop in Cape Girardeau Missouri and had it confirmed that I did in fact leave it hanging on the hook in the restroom (I was very tired and afraid of dropping it in the john, so I hung it up while, well, patronizing the facilities).