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Thousands of phone boxes around the UK will be protected from closure

108 points by nixass 5y ago

errcorrectcode 5y ago
They're hiding Tardises, right?
jonplackett 5y ago
If we have to keep these completely pointless relics, how about at least forcing them to be reasonably priced and have free wifi
- TrueGeek 5y ago
  That's actually what this announcement says. If the box is still in use (50+ calls made in the last year) then it's kept. If it's in an area with low mobile coverage it'll be converted to a free wi-fi hotspot. Otherwise it's free to be torn down or used by the community (they show a box being used as a tiny library).
- II2II 5y ago
  Clearly these relics have a point, as outlined by the article, but is likely that few (if any) are cost effective from a business perspective. Defining what constitutes their purpose from a social perspective is certainly valid for determining when they should be maintained. It is all too easy to forget that there are people lead different lives from us. Some people don't have access to phones, or may need to use a phone where their calls cannot be traced by people who are close to them. Children are cited, but even adults in an abusive situations should count. While accidents are cited, there are also victims of crime (e.g. someone who was mugged late at night). Even those who own a mobile phone for emergencies or employment purposes may need to use phone booths, since a long distance calling card and a quarter for a local call is cheaper than a plan with comparable "free" local minutes (or it was about 10 years ago).
danw1979 5y ago
> Almost 150,000 calls were made to emergency services from phone boxes in the year to May 2020, while 25,000 calls were made to Childline and 20,000 to Samaritans. Of course, there’s no way to know which of the boxes that are about to close _would_ have been used to make a call to childline if only it hadn’t been disconnected. Fuck how much it costs to maintain these, just keep them open.
fivelessminutes 5y ago
Just wouldn't be the same without the fellow reek of stale urine.
- cm2187 5y ago
  I suspect it will only be displaced and you will still be able to enjoy it near you.
bob229 5y ago
As always Britain is fully committed to the past
Havoc 5y ago
Not sure I’d say vital. Don’t think I’ve ever seen one in use. For calling I mean not as a lavatory
- dazc 5y ago
  The last time I phoned the police in the UK I was told that I shouldn't be using the emergency 999 number unless it was a life or death situation. I was being threatened with violence at the time? Having the means to make an emergency call doesn't necessarily result in getting help, it would seem. *There is a non-emergency number but this also seems to be just a way of frustrating you into giving up.
  - alexchamberlain 5y ago
    For reference, this is simply not true. You can ring 999 for fires (which generally pose a much greater risk to property), you should call 999 after a serious traffic accident regardless of whether someone's life is in danger and you can even phone 999 if you're alone and have been stopped by a lone policeman (I learned this one recently from a criminology teacher). I'm sorry to hear you had a bad experience; of course, it has to be an emergency, but being threatened certainly sounds like that to me!
    - celticninja 5y ago
      That last one is a recent addendum as a result of the murder of Sarah Everard.
      - dazc 5y ago
        Indeed, which may be helpful if a serving police officer intends to murder you and is also willing to allow you to make the call.
        mytailorisrich 5y ago
        Yes, it's just for the show because they know full well that if a police officer stops you and says (s)he is arresting you then in real life you have two options: to comply or to flee/to fight. Obviously they cannot tell the public to resist arrest so they came up with this slightly ridiculous suggestion.
pndy 5y ago
The phone boxes were successfully killed off here in Poland in last 15 years; most likely because mobile networks become more reliable, dense and cheaper. Devices in particular places like hospitals or prisons should be still running and supported, as acc. to wikipedia article it's required by law but since the national telecom was privatized (now mainly owned by Orange) no official service provider was designated for the task. Last time I had chance to use a phone box I didn't even call - I had to text someone to actually call me on my prepaid phone.
- karlkloss 5y ago
  Hospitals and Prisons wouldn't even need payphones. They all have Internet, and could just screw IP phones to the walls. Would cost them next to nothing.
- m_eiman 5y ago
  Sweden's last phone box was demolished in 2016, which is surprisingly late! In the early 80s there were 44000 boxes in operation, apparently. https://blogg.tekniskamuseet.se/minns-du-telefonkiosken/ https://blogg.tekniskamuseet.se/minns-du-telefonkiosken/
  - fmajid 5y ago
    The ones in my neighborhood of London were only taken out a few months ago. Some of the photogenic traditional red boxes have been turned into: - a coffee stall - a flower shop - a free library
TomWhitwell 5y ago
Alternative headline: 75% of UK phone boxes to be removed (now=21k, future= 5k)
- bmsleight_ 5y ago
  Of which some have not be used for 2 years. There is a balance in providing the public regulated service and providing something that nobody uses day to day. The criteria appears sensible.
  - scoopertrooper 5y ago
    Who even benefits from payphones still existing? The cheapest PAYG contract offered by BT's subsidiary EE gets you 500 minutes of phone calls for 10 pounds. Which also buys you 10GB of internet and unlimited texts. Meanwhile, 500 minutes of phone calls from a BT payphone would set you back 250 pounds! So, it's obviously not the poor who benefits from pay phones. Except maybe a subset of homeless people who can't commit to a PAYG contract. Seems like it'd be more economical for BT/EE to just handout phones at homeless shelters and shutdown this ridiculous relic. https://shop.ee.co.uk/sim-only/pay-as-you-go-phones https://shop.ee.co.uk/sim-only/pay-as-you-go-phones https://www.bt.com/pricing/current/Call_Charges_boo/3545_d0e5.htm#3545-d0e5 https://www.bt.com/pricing/current/Call_Charges_boo/3545_d0e...
    - mofosyne 5y ago
      These phone station can be used as wifi or short range 5g base station. Plus not everyone have smartphone and these maybe the only way those on the street especially the homeless can call others.
      - gpderetta 5y ago
        Sure, but you do not need a smartphone to make calls. A feature phone can be had for < £20 (and the battery will last a looong time). I wouldn't be surprised if charities were already giving them away and many homeless already had one.
towhomsoever 5y ago
The fact that a phone-box qualifies for saving if "more than 52 calls have been made from it over the past 12 months" kind of says everything that needs to be said about how rarely the things are now used.
- quitit 5y ago
  Almost certainly used for tourist photo ops above every other use. This seems to be why Malta still have theirs. (You can find the iconic british phone boxes in the streets of Valetta.) All of that said - it’s respectable that they’re looking out for those in need prior to decommissioning the telephone functions within.
aaron695 5y ago
They are all (15,000 payphones) now free in Australia https://exchange.telstra.com.au/why-were-making-payphones-free-for-calls-around-australia/ https://exchange.telstra.com.au/why-were-making-payphones-fr... Are these free? The cost of collecting money certainly not worth it, electronic systems to collect money probably not worth it, but there is the risk of going over the 52 calls / year if it's free.
- monkeycantype 5y ago
  It’s almost certainly worth it for Telstra to continue to hold onto control of that small piece of Real estate for signage and branding and wifi points , Telstra charges a premium over other phone companies because of the perception their network has significantly better coverage
nixass 5y ago
They're still in use in Dublin, mostly by junkies.
- tgraham 5y ago
  I don't doubt many legit uses, but similar subjective observation in London. Frequently vandalised, message board for sex workers, or defacto public urinals. It was surprisingly easy to get one removed from a nearby street given minimal usage and general abuse.
- dghughes 5y ago
  Or elderly people who do not have mobile phones, or have one but never use it, or forget to take it, or shut it off. It is strange to get rid of them they are still working phones. My mother finds phone screens hard to see, the phone hard to hear. She can't hear it ring or assumes it's something else. If it is near her the sound startles her and makes her jump. To our generation it's like telling us mobile phones will be discontinued in favour of the a technology.
lordnacho 5y ago
I saw one of these used as a place to swap used books, and another as a coffee stand. Seems reasonable. In any case, do people even carry coins anymore? How would you operate the phone for anything other than a 999 call?
- LeoPanthera 5y ago
  The newly built "street hub" public phones offer free calls to any UK number, so there is no need for payment. If there was, NFC payment is ubiquitous in the UK, so a simple card reader would suffice.
- goldcd 5y ago
  Reverse charges?
- vultour 5y ago
  We have a coin-operated vending machine at work. The cafeteria closes at 3, so it's the only way to get a drink after that. What maniac still carries coins these days?! Needless to say I was slightly upset the first time I found out.
gorgoiler 5y ago
An interesting business metric I like to track, for companies like BT, is revenue per iconic red phone box (RPIRPB.) For BT, their RPIRPB is £1.09m. Roughly speaking, for every million pounds they rake in, they are obliged to maintain one phone box. BT have other infrastructure of course, as well as many of the usual costs involved in running a business that employs 100k people. That 1M£ RPIRB isn’t just for red paint! Other cost centres include: branding consultancy (new logos and such), servicing venture finance (the £4bn for premiership rights alongside all the other investment into BT Sports channels 1, 2, 3, Classic, Free, Europe, Ultimate, BoxNation…); equity refreshers for all employees (5/1000ths of a basis point each, 3 year vesting); payroll (average employee £19k, CEO £5m.) It’s all about balancing priorities — upkeep of a national icon with which you have been entrusted vs ongoing return on investment for private capital / shareholders. Upsy downsies
- ben_w 5y ago
  > payroll (average employee £19k, CEO £5m.) Ouch. I’d forgotten just how bad UK incomes could be. Adjusted for inflation, £19k/year today is only a quibble more than the rate of pay I got in my pre-degree summer holiday job in 2003 making HVAC units in a factory.
  - aigo 5y ago
    Even unadjusted it's more than I was making as a graduate in 2012.
  - intricatedetail 5y ago
    There is about £2.5k of income tax and national insurance to pay out of that £19k... then you have council tax and other bills.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Kosirich 5y ago
Tom Scott did a segment on alternative use for them as place to store defibrillators: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecVHYg4_vZw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecVHYg4_vZw
toyg 5y ago
I wonder if this little gem [0] I found, on my way back from the Lake District, will be one of the victims. It's legit a potential film set for wartime movies. [0] https://photos.app.goo.gl/puj8MHhe7nuVk6L39 https://photos.app.goo.gl/puj8MHhe7nuVk6L39
femto 5y ago
Australia's Telstra has reversed its position on closing phone boxes, as they have now realised the value of the real estate they occupy. They are now placing 5G base stations and WiFi access points on phone boxes, and have a bonus revenue stream from advertising hoardings. It's not worth charging for the calls so calls from public phones are now free. They are probably kicking themselves for previously doing away with so many phone boxes, as in the past they had saturation coverage of the cities with lots of 1m^2 blocks of real estate: perfect for 5G.
- conjectures 5y ago
  > had saturation coverage of the cities with lots of 1m^2 blocks of real estate Tfw learning a new perspective every day :)
- 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
  Where I am Telstra has also made these telephone boxes available for use - completely for free. Though I've never seen anyone using them, probably because nowadays everyone and their dog has mobile phones.
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    > - completely for free I guess this is because coin boxes encourage vandalism and require someone to go empty them. Upgrading them to credit card machines is probably far more expensive than the revenue they'll ever earn.
    - funnyflamigo 5y ago
      My guess is that because relatively few people are interested in using them (due to ~90% of Australia's population having cell phones) it means if they charged money and somebody didn't have a phone they'd likely just ask someone to borrow theirs for a second. Plus with VOIP calls are nearly free and they already have an internet uplink right there for the 5G. I figure the only people that would choose to use them nowadays are likely in some type of "emergency" and can't use their cell - whether it's they left their phone at home, battery is dead, etc.
m4rtink 5y ago
The last phone booth has been taken out of service years ago here in the Czech Republic - but we now have a nice statue to commemorate them: https://znojemsky.denik.cz/zpravy_region/zvoni-a-provokuje-znojemsti-maji-orloj-z-telefonnich-budek-podivejte-se-20211008.html https://znojemsky.denik.cz/zpravy_region/zvoni-a-provokuje-z...
- notauser 5y ago
  In the UK, the statue came first - phone boxes were modelled on Soane's tomb in a London graveyard near St Pancras station: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-tomb-and-the-telephone-box-soane-s-mausoleum-1816 https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-tomb-and-the-t...
  - ableal 5y ago
    That story is probably worth its own submission, might even fly ...
henvic 5y ago
I bet there is a market for creating vending machines out of UK's phone boxes, and/or perhaps ship them as decoration items all over the world. In London, they could even be set up to sell miniature phone boxes in the most central locations.
- drewzero1 5y ago
  Somebody in my town (rural Wisconsin, US) had one (or a reproduction) in their front yard when I was growing up. They had integrated it into a very nice flower garden and iirc it lit up at night with their house number. It certainly made an impression!
- mattowen_uk 5y ago
  The cost of a removed phone box in poor condition is a few thousand pounds, and good condition ones are over 10k GBP. Not a cheap option for something that s just decorative. That said, many people do buy them and put them in their gardens.
  - em-bee 5y ago
    if i had a garden i'd get a blue phonebox and make it the entrance to my basement...
throw0101a 5y ago
Tom Scott did a video on what some are being used for: > Automated external defibrillators, or AEDs, help save lives: but they need to be in an obvious, easy-to-access, public place that's protected from the elements. Conveniently, it turns out there's a disused red telephone box sitting in the middle of a lot of British villages... * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecVHYg4_vZw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecVHYg4_vZw
- iso1210 5y ago
  And Libraries https://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2021-03-12/parish-council-outraged-as-risqu-fiction-left-in-community-library-box https://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2021-03-12/parish-council-... "A community library in a small Hampshire village has caused a stir after a number of adult fiction books were discovered."
tomxor 5y ago
I've encountered a bunch of the old red telephone boxes in villages being used as mini-libraries/book-exchange these days, which I thought was a pretty neat idea. https://minitravellers.co.uk/phone-box-libraries-in-the-uk/ https://minitravellers.co.uk/phone-box-libraries-in-the-uk/ ... although I've yet to find any interesting books in them yet :D maybe I should make a deposit.
- klondike_klive 5y ago
  We've got two in my village - one is a book exchange and the other is a general exchange for unwanted stuff including groceries. Every so often some scrotes come along and clean them out with a van, but they're a great place to get rid of unwanted children's books and stumble on some interesting stuff you didn't know you might like.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
SeanSpearo 5y ago
In Ireland, old phone boxes are being fitted with defibrillators, especially in more rural towns and villages. I believe it happens in towns in the UK as well. There's plenty boxes here from before the eircom and vodafone days that look very traditional with Fón painted on, these are the main ones being converted. I don't think wifi points happen here.
- klelatti 5y ago
  Just seen one converted to a defibrillator in Bath in the UK, and painted yellow so very distinctive. Not seen any in London though for example.
lostgame 5y ago
I lost my phone recently. Let’s just say I’m super glad phone boxes exist. I was able to call it and it was returned.

108 points by nixass 5y ago

They're hiding Tardises, right?

If we have to keep these completely pointless relics, how about at least forcing them to be reasonably priced and have free wifi

TrueGeek 5y ago
That's actually what this announcement says. If the box is still in use (50+ calls made in the last year) then it's kept. If it's in an area with low mobile coverage it'll be converted to a free wi-fi hotspot. Otherwise it's free to be torn down or used by the community (they show a box being used as a tiny library).
II2II 5y ago
Clearly these relics have a point, as outlined by the article, but is likely that few (if any) are cost effective from a business perspective. Defining what constitutes their purpose from a social perspective is certainly valid for determining when they should be maintained. It is all too easy to forget that there are people lead different lives from us. Some people don't have access to phones, or may need to use a phone where their calls cannot be traced by people who are close to them. Children are cited, but even adults in an abusive situations should count. While accidents are cited, there are also victims of crime (e.g. someone who was mugged late at night). Even those who own a mobile phone for emergencies or employment purposes may need to use phone booths, since a long distance calling card and a quarter for a local call is cheaper than a plan with comparable "free" local minutes (or it was about 10 years ago).

danw1979 5y ago

> Almost 150,000 calls were made to emergency services from phone boxes in the year to May 2020, while 25,000 calls were made to Childline and 20,000 to Samaritans. Of course, there’s no way to know which of the boxes that are about to close _would_ have been used to make a call to childline if only it hadn’t been disconnected. Fuck how much it costs to maintain these, just keep them open.

fivelessminutes 5y ago

Just wouldn't be the same without the fellow reek of stale urine.

cm2187 5y ago
I suspect it will only be displaced and you will still be able to enjoy it near you.

bob229 5y ago

As always Britain is fully committed to the past

Havoc 5y ago

Not sure I’d say vital. Don’t think I’ve ever seen one in use. For calling I mean not as a lavatory

dazc 5y ago
The last time I phoned the police in the UK I was told that I shouldn't be using the emergency 999 number unless it was a life or death situation. I was being threatened with violence at the time? Having the means to make an emergency call doesn't necessarily result in getting help, it would seem. *There is a non-emergency number but this also seems to be just a way of frustrating you into giving up.
- alexchamberlain 5y ago
  For reference, this is simply not true. You can ring 999 for fires (which generally pose a much greater risk to property), you should call 999 after a serious traffic accident regardless of whether someone's life is in danger and you can even phone 999 if you're alone and have been stopped by a lone policeman (I learned this one recently from a criminology teacher). I'm sorry to hear you had a bad experience; of course, it has to be an emergency, but being threatened certainly sounds like that to me!
  - celticninja 5y ago
    That last one is a recent addendum as a result of the murder of Sarah Everard.
    - dazc 5y ago
      Indeed, which may be helpful if a serving police officer intends to murder you and is also willing to allow you to make the call.
      - mytailorisrich 5y ago
        Yes, it's just for the show because they know full well that if a police officer stops you and says (s)he is arresting you then in real life you have two options: to comply or to flee/to fight. Obviously they cannot tell the public to resist arrest so they came up with this slightly ridiculous suggestion.

pndy 5y ago

The phone boxes were successfully killed off here in Poland in last 15 years; most likely because mobile networks become more reliable, dense and cheaper. Devices in particular places like hospitals or prisons should be still running and supported, as acc. to wikipedia article it's required by law but since the national telecom was privatized (now mainly owned by Orange) no official service provider was designated for the task. Last time I had chance to use a phone box I didn't even call - I had to text someone to actually call me on my prepaid phone.

karlkloss 5y ago
Hospitals and Prisons wouldn't even need payphones. They all have Internet, and could just screw IP phones to the walls. Would cost them next to nothing.
m_eiman 5y ago
Sweden's last phone box was demolished in 2016, which is surprisingly late! In the early 80s there were 44000 boxes in operation, apparently. https://blogg.tekniskamuseet.se/minns-du-telefonkiosken/ https://blogg.tekniskamuseet.se/minns-du-telefonkiosken/
- fmajid 5y ago
  The ones in my neighborhood of London were only taken out a few months ago. Some of the photogenic traditional red boxes have been turned into: - a coffee stall - a flower shop - a free library

TomWhitwell 5y ago

Alternative headline: 75% of UK phone boxes to be removed (now=21k, future= 5k)

bmsleight_ 5y ago
Of which some have not be used for 2 years. There is a balance in providing the public regulated service and providing something that nobody uses day to day. The criteria appears sensible.
- scoopertrooper 5y ago
  Who even benefits from payphones still existing? The cheapest PAYG contract offered by BT's subsidiary EE gets you 500 minutes of phone calls for 10 pounds. Which also buys you 10GB of internet and unlimited texts. Meanwhile, 500 minutes of phone calls from a BT payphone would set you back 250 pounds! So, it's obviously not the poor who benefits from pay phones. Except maybe a subset of homeless people who can't commit to a PAYG contract. Seems like it'd be more economical for BT/EE to just handout phones at homeless shelters and shutdown this ridiculous relic. https://shop.ee.co.uk/sim-only/pay-as-you-go-phones https://shop.ee.co.uk/sim-only/pay-as-you-go-phones https://www.bt.com/pricing/current/Call_Charges_boo/3545_d0e5.htm#3545-d0e5 https://www.bt.com/pricing/current/Call_Charges_boo/3545_d0e...
  - mofosyne 5y ago
    These phone station can be used as wifi or short range 5g base station. Plus not everyone have smartphone and these maybe the only way those on the street especially the homeless can call others.
    - gpderetta 5y ago
      Sure, but you do not need a smartphone to make calls. A feature phone can be had for < £20 (and the battery will last a looong time). I wouldn't be surprised if charities were already giving them away and many homeless already had one.

towhomsoever 5y ago

The fact that a phone-box qualifies for saving if "more than 52 calls have been made from it over the past 12 months" kind of says everything that needs to be said about how rarely the things are now used.

quitit 5y ago
Almost certainly used for tourist photo ops above every other use. This seems to be why Malta still have theirs. (You can find the iconic british phone boxes in the streets of Valetta.) All of that said - it’s respectable that they’re looking out for those in need prior to decommissioning the telephone functions within.

aaron695 5y ago

They are all (15,000 payphones) now free in Australia https://exchange.telstra.com.au/why-were-making-payphones-free-for-calls-around-australia/ https://exchange.telstra.com.au/why-were-making-payphones-fr... Are these free? The cost of collecting money certainly not worth it, electronic systems to collect money probably not worth it, but there is the risk of going over the 52 calls / year if it's free.

monkeycantype 5y ago
It’s almost certainly worth it for Telstra to continue to hold onto control of that small piece of Real estate for signage and branding and wifi points , Telstra charges a premium over other phone companies because of the perception their network has significantly better coverage

nixass 5y ago

They're still in use in Dublin, mostly by junkies.

tgraham 5y ago
I don't doubt many legit uses, but similar subjective observation in London. Frequently vandalised, message board for sex workers, or defacto public urinals. It was surprisingly easy to get one removed from a nearby street given minimal usage and general abuse.
dghughes 5y ago
Or elderly people who do not have mobile phones, or have one but never use it, or forget to take it, or shut it off. It is strange to get rid of them they are still working phones. My mother finds phone screens hard to see, the phone hard to hear. She can't hear it ring or assumes it's something else. If it is near her the sound startles her and makes her jump. To our generation it's like telling us mobile phones will be discontinued in favour of the a technology.

lordnacho 5y ago

I saw one of these used as a place to swap used books, and another as a coffee stand. Seems reasonable. In any case, do people even carry coins anymore? How would you operate the phone for anything other than a 999 call?

LeoPanthera 5y ago
The newly built "street hub" public phones offer free calls to any UK number, so there is no need for payment. If there was, NFC payment is ubiquitous in the UK, so a simple card reader would suffice.
goldcd 5y ago
Reverse charges?
vultour 5y ago
We have a coin-operated vending machine at work. The cafeteria closes at 3, so it's the only way to get a drink after that. What maniac still carries coins these days?! Needless to say I was slightly upset the first time I found out.

gorgoiler 5y ago

An interesting business metric I like to track, for companies like BT, is revenue per iconic red phone box (RPIRPB.) For BT, their RPIRPB is £1.09m. Roughly speaking, for every million pounds they rake in, they are obliged to maintain one phone box. BT have other infrastructure of course, as well as many of the usual costs involved in running a business that employs 100k people. That 1M£ RPIRB isn’t just for red paint! Other cost centres include: branding consultancy (new logos and such), servicing venture finance (the £4bn for premiership rights alongside all the other investment into BT Sports channels 1, 2, 3, Classic, Free, Europe, Ultimate, BoxNation…); equity refreshers for all employees (5/1000ths of a basis point each, 3 year vesting); payroll (average employee £19k, CEO £5m.) It’s all about balancing priorities — upkeep of a national icon with which you have been entrusted vs ongoing return on investment for private capital / shareholders. Upsy downsies

ben_w 5y ago
> payroll (average employee £19k, CEO £5m.) Ouch. I’d forgotten just how bad UK incomes could be. Adjusted for inflation, £19k/year today is only a quibble more than the rate of pay I got in my pre-degree summer holiday job in 2003 making HVAC units in a factory.
- aigo 5y ago
  Even unadjusted it's more than I was making as a graduate in 2012.
- intricatedetail 5y ago
  There is about £2.5k of income tax and national insurance to pay out of that £19k... then you have council tax and other bills.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Kosirich 5y ago

Tom Scott did a segment on alternative use for them as place to store defibrillators: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecVHYg4_vZw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecVHYg4_vZw

toyg 5y ago

I wonder if this little gem [0] I found, on my way back from the Lake District, will be one of the victims. It's legit a potential film set for wartime movies. [0] https://photos.app.goo.gl/puj8MHhe7nuVk6L39 https://photos.app.goo.gl/puj8MHhe7nuVk6L39

femto 5y ago

Australia's Telstra has reversed its position on closing phone boxes, as they have now realised the value of the real estate they occupy. They are now placing 5G base stations and WiFi access points on phone boxes, and have a bonus revenue stream from advertising hoardings. It's not worth charging for the calls so calls from public phones are now free. They are probably kicking themselves for previously doing away with so many phone boxes, as in the past they had saturation coverage of the cities with lots of 1m^2 blocks of real estate: perfect for 5G.

conjectures 5y ago
> had saturation coverage of the cities with lots of 1m^2 blocks of real estate Tfw learning a new perspective every day :)
0xdeadb00f 5y ago
Where I am Telstra has also made these telephone boxes available for use - completely for free. Though I've never seen anyone using them, probably because nowadays everyone and their dog has mobile phones.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  > - completely for free I guess this is because coin boxes encourage vandalism and require someone to go empty them. Upgrading them to credit card machines is probably far more expensive than the revenue they'll ever earn.
  - funnyflamigo 5y ago
    My guess is that because relatively few people are interested in using them (due to ~90% of Australia's population having cell phones) it means if they charged money and somebody didn't have a phone they'd likely just ask someone to borrow theirs for a second. Plus with VOIP calls are nearly free and they already have an internet uplink right there for the 5G. I figure the only people that would choose to use them nowadays are likely in some type of "emergency" and can't use their cell - whether it's they left their phone at home, battery is dead, etc.

m4rtink 5y ago

The last phone booth has been taken out of service years ago here in the Czech Republic - but we now have a nice statue to commemorate them: https://znojemsky.denik.cz/zpravy_region/zvoni-a-provokuje-znojemsti-maji-orloj-z-telefonnich-budek-podivejte-se-20211008.html https://znojemsky.denik.cz/zpravy_region/zvoni-a-provokuje-z...

notauser 5y ago
In the UK, the statue came first - phone boxes were modelled on Soane's tomb in a London graveyard near St Pancras station: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-tomb-and-the-telephone-box-soane-s-mausoleum-1816 https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-tomb-and-the-t...
- ableal 5y ago
  That story is probably worth its own submission, might even fly ...

henvic 5y ago

I bet there is a market for creating vending machines out of UK's phone boxes, and/or perhaps ship them as decoration items all over the world. In London, they could even be set up to sell miniature phone boxes in the most central locations.

drewzero1 5y ago
Somebody in my town (rural Wisconsin, US) had one (or a reproduction) in their front yard when I was growing up. They had integrated it into a very nice flower garden and iirc it lit up at night with their house number. It certainly made an impression!
mattowen_uk 5y ago
The cost of a removed phone box in poor condition is a few thousand pounds, and good condition ones are over 10k GBP. Not a cheap option for something that s just decorative. That said, many people do buy them and put them in their gardens.
- em-bee 5y ago
  if i had a garden i'd get a blue phonebox and make it the entrance to my basement...

throw0101a 5y ago

Tom Scott did a video on what some are being used for: > Automated external defibrillators, or AEDs, help save lives: but they need to be in an obvious, easy-to-access, public place that's protected from the elements. Conveniently, it turns out there's a disused red telephone box sitting in the middle of a lot of British villages... * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecVHYg4_vZw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecVHYg4_vZw

iso1210 5y ago
And Libraries https://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2021-03-12/parish-council-outraged-as-risqu-fiction-left-in-community-library-box https://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2021-03-12/parish-council-... "A community library in a small Hampshire village has caused a stir after a number of adult fiction books were discovered."

tomxor 5y ago

I've encountered a bunch of the old red telephone boxes in villages being used as mini-libraries/book-exchange these days, which I thought was a pretty neat idea. https://minitravellers.co.uk/phone-box-libraries-in-the-uk/ https://minitravellers.co.uk/phone-box-libraries-in-the-uk/ ... although I've yet to find any interesting books in them yet :D maybe I should make a deposit.

klondike_klive 5y ago
We've got two in my village - one is a book exchange and the other is a general exchange for unwanted stuff including groceries. Every so often some scrotes come along and clean them out with a van, but they're a great place to get rid of unwanted children's books and stumble on some interesting stuff you didn't know you might like.
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SeanSpearo 5y ago

In Ireland, old phone boxes are being fitted with defibrillators, especially in more rural towns and villages. I believe it happens in towns in the UK as well. There's plenty boxes here from before the eircom and vodafone days that look very traditional with Fón painted on, these are the main ones being converted. I don't think wifi points happen here.

klelatti 5y ago
Just seen one converted to a defibrillator in Bath in the UK, and painted yellow so very distinctive. Not seen any in London though for example.

lostgame 5y ago

I lost my phone recently. Let’s just say I’m super glad phone boxes exist. I was able to call it and it was returned.