The U.K.'s phone regulator says it will keep thousands of the nation's famous red public phone kiosks in service, despite a sharp drop in calls from the boxes.
Communications regulator Ofcom says the payphones are still vital in case of emergencies, and in areas where cellphone users can't get a reliable signal.
Under the regulator's new criteria, a call box will need to be used at least 52 times over a 12-month period for it to stay in service. And if a kiosk is in an area identified as an accident or suicide hotspot, it can't be removed.
quote:
Even if a red phone kiosk is slated for decommission, it can be adopted by its local community under a plan that lets governments or organizations buy the call box for just £1. According to Ofcom, "more than 6,000 kiosks have been converted to a range of different uses, such as community libraries, or to house life-saving public defibrillators."
Well, I imagine there are some (like at airports or train stations?) but I can't remember the last time I saw one....
Oddly enough, a payphone was one of the very first things I took a photo of when I went to Japan for the first time, in 1996. They looked so foreign to me then!
Well, we haven’t gotten rid of our red pennies, either, despite their being pretty useless.
-------------------------------- “It's hard to win an argument with a smart person. It's damn near impossible to win an argument with a stupid person." -- Bill Murray
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