Standing halfway inside one of the five booths across from Chat's in the HUB-Robeson Center, Maggie Wallace looked at the payphone with dismay.

She was the first visitor in several hours to the lonely booths, which stood empty as countless students walked by on a busy afternoon, chatting on their cell phones.

Losing hers put Wallace (senior-English) in a situation that students rarely find themselves in these days -- she had to use a payphone.

With no landline phone in her residence, Wallace bought a calling card from a convenience store. But, she said, the cashier had trouble figuring out how to activate it and when Wallace got to the phone booth, she didn't know how to use it.

"I was like, 'how do you make a collect call?' " Wallace said.

Payphones are becoming increasingly archaic to a population armed with cell phones. Over the past decade, nearly one million payphones in the U.S. have been removed, according to the FCC. Meanwhile, cell phone use has skyrocketed.

In Pennsylvania, only 62,000 payphones remain. Although the FCC does not maintain records on a smaller scale, State College payphones seem to be falling victim to the trend.

Ernest Dabiero, State College purchasing director, said the borough currently maintains just one payphone, located in the State College Municipal Building, 243 S. Allen St.

Even though losing a cell phone can happen to anyone, payphones do not seem to be missed, Dabiero said.

"We have not had requests from citizens, and we have not had requests from companies to put them in," he said. "I think that because of the explosion of cell phones, we just don't have that great of a need anymore."

The borough formerly had a contract with a phone company to maintain five payphones in the borough, he said.

"When that contract expired five years ago, it wasn't renewed," he said. "I don't think they're still in those locations, and they may have been pulled."

A phone booth next to the Greyhound Bus Station, 152 N. Atherton St., was one of those formerly maintained by the borough, he said. Though it is still in operation, the dirty, dilapidated booth has certainly seen better days.

A few other payphones remain scattered throughout the borough, mainly attached to the sides of buildings, but others have been removed, including the legendary booth on East College Avenue that also dispensed condoms.

Though competition from wireless phones and other communication methods such as the Internet has caused a decrease in payphone use, there is a need for them, Verizon spokesman Lee Gierczynski said. The company operates all the payphones on Penn State's campus.

People may need access to a payphone because they don't have a cell phone, their cell phone battery may be dead or they may simply have no phone available to them, he said. Four percent of Pennsylvania households do not have access to a home or cell phone, according to the FCC.

"There's always a segment of customers that rely on payphones," Gierczynski said.

Payphones also offer free 911 service, even when power is out. However, State College Police Lt. Dana Leonard said cell phones have become the "preferred mode of communication" in an emergency.

"More than half of our calls from 911 are from cell phones instead of house phones nowadays," he said.

In an effort to maximize payphone use, Verizon tries to place payphones in transportation centers and other high-traffic areas, Gierczynski said. At least 150 calls must be made from a payphone each month for it to be profitable, he said, or it is removed.

"If there's a location that doesn't make enough to cover the calls, a business can pay [to maintain it]," he said.

Hal McCullough, owner of Café 210 West, 210 W. College Ave., said the bar used to have three payphones, but the last one was removed about a year ago.

"We fought to try to keep the last one, but eventually, [Verizon] took it out," he said.

The bar was given the option of paying for the phone to keep it, though Verizon would have kept the revenue, he said.

Almost all McCullough's patrons have cell phones now, he said, but on occasion a patron will ask the bartender to use a phone.

"If somebody truly needs a phone, we just pretty much give them a cell phone," he said.

Millions of calls are still made on payphones every day in the U.S., Gierczynski said.

"I think we continue to see a downward trend in payphone usage," he said. "But it's going to be a viable business in the future."

Some companies are looking to revolutionize the payphone business to increase its viability. Freefone, a Canadian company, is looking to install payphones on college campuses that offer free local and limited long distance service to students, said Gerry Marshall, company spokesman.

The phones, currently installed at 28 Canadian universities, create revenue through advertising displayed on a screen at eye level. The units are "very heavily used," Marshall said, with an average of 300 to 600 calls being made daily.

This spring and summer, the company is looking to expand to 400 U.S. universities, mostly in the Philadelphia, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles areas, he said. Penn State is also a target, he said.

But for the time being, it seems unlikely traditional payphone use will increase. And Wallace hopes she will never have to use one again.

When she was finally able to make that collect call, she asked her mother to send her a new cell phone, she said.

"So I won't be using [payphones] very much longer," she said with a laugh.