After deciding to start removing the good old red telephone box from Britain's highstreets in response to falling popularity of payphones, BT has rethoughtits strategies after an outcry from local communities who argued that the boxes give Britain's streets character.
Thus, the telecommunications giant has come up with two solutions to save our endangered auburn allies – the boxes can either be sponsored, or adopted outright.
Sponsor-a-Kiosk involves charging councils an annual £500 fee to run and maintain a phone box, preserving it as a fully functioning telephone. This scheme also applies to any and all BT boxes too, not just the classic red one.
Adopt-a-Kiosk, while cheaper, is also a little more sinister. For just £1, the council can buy the box, but BT will remove the telephone, effectively neutering the once-proud telecommunications device and leaving little more than a lifeless relic of the pre-mobile era. Aww.
Deadline
BT has agreed not to remove any of Britain's 12 thousand-odd red boxes until October 1, which is the deadline for local councils to submit their applications for sponsorship or adoption.
Shadow Secretary for Business Alan Duncan, who wrote to BT in June suggesting the scheme, told the Telegraph: "I'm delighted that BT has agreed to what was always a perfectly simple proposal to ensure that red phone boxes do not disappear into the great grey blur of modern British streetscape."
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jmace86
August 29th
1. What a ridiculous proposal. Any council that chooses to "sponsor a kiosk" is idiotic and will just be wasting their money. Who in this age of mobile phones still uses phone kiosks.
"Not everyone has a mobile phone" some people cry out in opposition to this idea to remove the phone kiosks. If people do not have mobile phones (and let us be honest here, that is a tiny fraction of the population) when they are so cheap and so easy to use then, quite frankly, they should forego their right to make phone calls when not at home. One can purchase a pre-pay mobile phone for under £30, topping up is as simple as buying a lottery scratch-card from a newsagent and the phones are very small and unobtrusive so why anybody would not own one is beyond me, unless they have no friends or family to talk to, in which case they would not need a phone kiosk anyway.
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