Playa PhoneHow it works
For the week of Burning Man most years since 2014, a phone booth has stood on a dusty street corner in front of the Temple of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in Black Rock City, Nevada for anyone to use for free. In 2024, we also started advertising the number for people to dial in to maybe talk to a random Burner who picks up.
Why a phone booth on the playa?
In 2013 I had a small child at home and wanted to call from the burn. When I tried to use Wi‑Fi in the 9 o’clock plaza, another Burner got in my face about being on a cell phone. I figured I wasn’t the only person whose week would be improved by a few minutes connected to the default world, and that it if were an art project, it would be more acceptable for everyone to use.
So I bought a used pay phone on Craigslist and modified it for this project.
There have been other phones on playa, including Brad Templeton’s working phone in 2004-2006 and the long-running “Talk to God” booth. As a nod to the latter I’ve joked about painting “Talk to Mom” on the side.
Hardware and connectivity
Inside, the booth is intentionally simple: a touch-tone phone circuit board replaced the coin handling hardware, a cheap Voice-over-IP adapter (the kind you’d plug a wired desk phone into) allow it to make calls over the Internet, and the phone and the “Phone” sign light get power via power-over-ethernet. The pedestal is 1 inch plywood that the booth bolts into.
For Internet, we’ve used Starlink since 2022. Before that the booth used Burning Man’s participant network, which required a 20‑foot tower with a Ubiquiti radio aimed at a radio tower near Center Camp. Starlink is much easier to set up and far more reliable.
Power comes from a solar generator occassionally topped up from a gas generator.
I’ve replaced the handset and sign LEDs a few times since 2014; otherwise the hardware has mostly been left alone.
Phone service
Since 2014, calls have gone through voip.ms, a low-cost Voice-over-IP telephone carrier that I’ve been happy with the service and reliability of.
Dialing anywhere in the world is allowed, with the only limitation that destinations that cost more than $0.40/minute using voip.ms “value” routing are disabled. This allows calling all numbers in roughly 120 countries and many landlines elsewhere while keeping the phone bill reasonable.
Outgoing calls are limited to 5 minutes using using an option in voip.ms’s configuration.
Many people have stopped accepting calls from unknown numbers, which unfortunately includes their loved ones calling from this booth, so many outgoing calls go to voicemail.
For 2026, I tried setting the caller ID for this number to “PLAYAPHONE.COM” instead of “EMPIRE NV”, and registered it with all three big US cell carriers as legit business number. Hopefully this helps avoid spam filters and increases the odds that calls get picked up.
What you’ll hear when you call
There is only one phone line, which means if someone is already on a call, any other callers get a busy signal. Inbound calls ring six times and hang up if nobody answers; the ringer is deliberately quiet. You may need to call several times; that’s normal.
A “that number is no longer in service” means the booth is offline. During the event week, this usually means the battery is dead and the generator needs to be restarted.
Callers who have already tied up the line for a few minutes in the last hour hear a “blocked” recording instead.
Anonymous and invalid caller IDs are rejected with a recording.
How busy is it?
Outgoing call volume peaked years ago when there was often a two-hour line. In the burn week one year, the booth made 2,000 calls to 1,250 numbers in 28 countries. With more cell service and Starlink on playa, outgoing volume has dropped by roughly 40%.
Starting in 2024, we started publishing the phone number publicly to allow people who weren’t able to attend Burning Man to call in. This has gotten to be quite popular, leading to busy signals much of the day.
In 2025, with the booth set up for 6.5 days on playa, there were 1,460 successful outbound calls to 835 numbers in 23 countries, with a total talk time of 34.8 hours. And there were also 676 successful inbound calls (of 5,658 total attempts) with a total talk time of 17.2 hours.
Privacy and fairness
The only data I collect is via the phone bill (“call detail records”) I get from voip.ms. I use that to show hourly stats on the main page during the event and to summarize usage afterward.
I don’t record or transcribe calls, even though people have requested it; I’m happy to let two people enjoy a private conversation.
And to try to ensure fairness between different callers, the service that updates the status info also looks for phone numbers that have already tied up the line for a few minutes in the last hour and temporarily routes their incoming calls to a recording that asks them to wait an hour before calling back.