The public telephone has an arrangement for conducting pre-paid telephone conversations, an arrangement for accepting payment with coins or cards, an arrangement for outputting receipts, an arrangement enabling the user to select a function of the terminal to carry out a call or demand a parking period, an arrangement for converting the payment into conversation or parking time and an arrangement for communications with a center that manages and monitors the terminal. An independent claim is also included for the following: (a) a method of settling parking time charges for vehicles.