Iconic red telephone boxes in Britain soon will be knocked over and sold to collectors
Around a quarter of BT’s payphones are likely to be removed over the next year, chairman Adam Crozier told at the company’s annual general meeting. It follows action by regulator Ofcom last month to change the rules to protect kiosks in areas with a poor mobile phone signal, or where they are used frequently to report accidents or call helplines. BT payphones
In Birmingham, three public phone boxes in the Edgbaston area are being used as ‘click and collect’ points for drug dealing and soliciting sex works, reports the Birmingham Mail.
BT has 21,000 working payphones across the UK, 3,600 of which are the iconic red boxes.
It runs a scheme for communities to adopt phone boxes for as little as £1 and change their use, such as into miniature libraries and art galleries.
A BT spokesman said the firm was ‘reviewing’ its payphones and was ‘looking at removing those which aren’t used’.
Other payphones in operation include newer glass kiosk designs as well as phones located in shopping centres and train stations.
Red phone boxes were once a staple of streets across Britain and remain an icon of the UK and serve as a key photo opportunity for tourists.
But their existence has been under threat due to the meteoric rise of mobile phones, which has caused demand for payphones to collapse in all but the most remote areas.
Since 2008, over 6,600 phone boxes have been taken on by communities for just £1 each through BT’s Adopt a Kiosk programme. Redundant phone boxes, once a lifeline of communication before the arrival of mobile phone networks, have been transformed into everything from defibrillator units and mini history museums to art galleries and book exchanges.
BT will also consider adoption requests to house defibrillators in modern glass phone boxes, a potentially life-saving conversion.
As part of plans to modernise its payphone estate, over 400 payphones across towns and cities have also been upgraded by BT to digital units, called Street Hubs, offering free ultrafast public Wi-Fi, free UK phone calls, USB device charging, environmental monitoring and more. BT’s Street Hubs also play a vital role in sharing public information, for example during the Covid-19 pandemic, Street Hub units across the country have displayed key advice from Public Health England and local councils. Street Hubs form part of BT’s plan to transform the UK’s high streets with a digital communications service designed for the 21st Century. BT payphones
