Playa Phone

For the week of Burning Man most years since 2014, a phone booth has stood on the dusty street corner in front of the Temple of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in Black Rock City, Nevada for anyone to use.

If someone knew the number of a friend or loved one, they could’ve called almost anywhere in the world for 5 minutes for free. Or you could’ve called it and someone walking past might’ve picked it up.

The booth is packed up now, but it’ll be back next year.

Did you get a call from (775) 557-4848?

You were called from a friend, loved one, or maybe a random stranger at Burning Man who was walking past our phone booth and decided to dial you.

Add Playa Phone to your contacts so your phone recognizes it when the booth is back next year.

How does it work?

This is an ordinary phone booth that I’ve replaced the internals of to not accept payment and to make phone calls over the Internet. There’s a lot more detail on the how it works page.

Read SFGATE’s story about the phone for more information.

There’s also a Reddit announcement where others have shared their experiences and I answered questions, and a Hacker News post where I answered more technical questions.

Usage stats

For 2026 the booth was setup from Sunday, August 30 around 1pm to Sunday, September 6th at 6am, but was broken for a little over a day starting Thursday afternoon.

Due to the widespread publicity, it was overwhelmed with incoming calls, receiving 33,400 total. Only 1,270 (3.8%) calls were answered for a total talk time of 44.5 hours, 1,600 (4.8%) weren’t answered within 6 rings, and 30,500 calls (91.3%) got busy signals or other errors. Of the 7,200 unique phone numbers that tried to call, only 970 (13.5%) were able to actually talk to someone.

There were fewer outbound calls this year, presumably due to the booth being busy with incoming calls. There were 1,140 outbound calls to 650 different numbers in 30 countries, for a total talk time of 26.1 hours.