pay phone story

Payphone Story – illustrated international encyclopaedia of payphones

Polish Payphone- Urmet TPE-97/U Silver

The Urmet TSP-91, introduced in Poland in 1991, became an iconic blue payphone of the 1990s. Made in Italy, it used prepaid magnetic-stripe cards and sophisticated electronic monitoring. Despite widespread fraud and vandalism, the system proved successful. Most were withdrawn in 2004, with the last operating until 2005.

Name	Urmet CTP-I, popularly nicknamed the “Jajko” (“Egg”)
Date	2000
Manufacturer	Urmet (Italy)
Credit	For information and images on Polish payphones, special thanks to our friends at https://telesfor.org/
Links	Swedish Telia Egg Italian Urmet CTP-I Payphone The “Egg”

Urmet TPE-97/U Silver Polish Payphone

The Urmet CTP-I, popularly nicknamed the “Jajko” (“Egg”) because of its distinctive rounded casing, represented one of the final generations of public telephones installed by Telekomunikacja Polska (TP). Introduced in the second half of 2000, it was manufactured by Urmet and remained in service until the effective end of Poland’s traditional public payphone network in 2017.

Unlike most earlier Polish payphones, the standard CTP-I was a card-only telephone, accepting TP electronic chip cards. It used the SLE4436 standard for customer cards and SLE4406 for service applications, continuing the system already employed by the Urmet TPE-97. Its LCD screen provided operating instructions and call information, while dedicated function buttons supplemented the conventional numeric keypad.

Technically, the CTP-I was unusual within the Polish network because it operated over ISDN digital telephone lines. This allowed the telephone to communicate with TP’s remote monitoring system even while a call was underway, using the second ISDN channel. Operators could therefore supervise the condition and operation of individual machines more efficiently.

The CTP-I appeared in several types of street enclosure and became a familiar sight during the 2000s. A small number of coin-operated versions were also reported around 2007, although these appear to have been experimental or independently operated rather than officially supported by TP. Despite declining use, the rugged “Egg” survived alongside the eXanto until Poland’s remaining public payphones disappeared.