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United Kingdom

One Man's Battle To Save the Last Phone Box in His Village (theguardian.com) 56

Posted by msmash from the never-gonna-give-you-up dept.
Derek Harris, born the same year as the iconic K6 red phone box he's fighting to save, has launched what he calls a "David and Goliath" campaign against BT in the Norfolk village of Sharrington. The phone box is among 10 in North Norfolk marked for removal, having logged fewer than 10 calls last year. Harris argues the box remains vital in an area with poor mobile coverage, high elderly population, and proximity to an accident-prone stretch of the A148.

He recounts how it once saved a driver trapped in a snowstorm when mobile networks failed. BT's regulator, Ofcom, protects phone boxes that meet specific criteria, including emergency usage and location in signal-poor areas. Of the UK's original 100,000 phone boxes, only 14,000 remain functional, with 3,000 being the classic red design. For Harris, the fight transcends practicality. "It would be alive, wouldn't it? I feel an empathy for a living thing," he told The Guardian. "The nearer you get to the end, the more you want to see things live."
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One Man's Battle To Save the Last Phone Box in His Village More

One Man's Battle To Save the Last Phone Box in His Village

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  • so Slashdot (Score:3)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Thursday February 27, 2025 @03:24PM (#65199357)

    will have to change their UK story icon

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by leonbev ( 111395 )

      Nah... this is Slashdot we're talking about. They'll keep the icon for at least another 15 years, when even the old timers are struggling to remember the cultural relevancy of that picture.

      • They eventually got rid of the Billgatus of Borg icon once he started pushing mandatory gene therapy. Or is that just when I noticed?

        Speaking of which I hear the #EpsteinClientList is a dud.

        `Your culture will adapt to service us.`

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          "Speaking of which I hear the #EpsteinClientList is a dud."

          Mostly an attempt to distract from the Andrew Tate news, aka Trump actually importing sex traffickers.

    • Why? It's a symbol of a glorious bygone age that still looks good on the outside but that is largely disconnected from the modern (cellular) world. What more appropriate icon could there be?

    • There are still a few red telephone boxes around. After the phone was removed they have been repurposed as, among other things, miniature public libraries [minitravellers.co.uk]. In one of life's little coincidences such a library is facing closure because people are still using the phone [bbc.co.uk]. There's also a group who wants to use defunct phone boxes to house Automatic Emergency Defibrillators [communityh...eat.org.uk].

      As to the article itself it must be one of the most Guardian of Guardian articles in recent memory, and I'm saying that as a Guardian reader.

  • the last time I used a public telephone. I don't even want to touch them and I won't miss their demise.
    • Mid 1988 I used a pay phone in a Taco Bell to call my new landlord to pick up a key. I had to wait for a while. A shirtless guy wearing a pager and Crips blue athletic shorts was waiting for a call.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Maybe what you miss are all those telephone sanitizers that were sent away.

  • I completely get why they're going away but I still find it to be a shame given just how iconic these booths are. I still remember my first sighting of one of these on my first trip to the UK. It put a big smile on my face seeing something so distinctly British.

    • Place (Score:3)

      by JBMcB ( 73720 )
      There's still a use for them. Cell phones break, networks have problems, accounts have problems, things go wrong. It's good to have a last-resort backup, especially in small, out of the way towns where everything closes at 10PM.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        There's still a use for them. ...
        It's good to have a last-resort backup

        Despite the summary, this isn't an issue about if there is still a use for them or if they are a good idea.
        The issue is neither Derek or BT is willing to keep paying for the phone.

        Derek argues it is only worth keeping if someone else pays for it, but isn't worth keeping enough for him to set one up on his dime.

        You can still to this very day purchase a UK red phone box.
        You can also purchase payphones, of all shapes and stiles, with a plethora of connectivity options.

        The one and only potential "loss" is the e

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skam240 ( 789197 )

        Agreed. I know of one active pay phone near where I live (at least I'm pretty sure it's still active). Just like with my earthquake kit (I live in California) I'll probably never need it but it's just prudent to know about it in case something horrible happens.

        I was only suggesting that I understand why most are being phased out as there certainly isn't a need to have as many active as there was in the 20th century.

    • The nostalgia just swept over me as I recalled many an evening spent feeding coins into a payphone, in all weathers. It was a good day when they introduced phone cards so users could stop carrying a bagful of change everywhere!
  • The box is not alive. This guy seems really weirdly attached to the phone booth. That withstanding, it seems there is both historical usage / precedent and ample good reason to retain it under the emergency guidelines listed in the story. So I imagine that BT will absolutely just blow it away and ignore any concerns.

  • Cannot remove? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Bert64 ( 520050 ) <bert@@@slashdot...firenzee...com> on Thursday February 27, 2025 @04:15PM (#65199495) Homepage

    A phone box cannot be removed if it is the last in an area (more than 400 metres from another phone box), and if one or more of the following conditions apply: if it’s in an area without coverage from all four mobile network providers, or if at least 52 calls have been made from it in the past year, or if it is somewhere with a large number of accidents or suicides

    So all he needs to do is use it once a week and they won't remove it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by msauve ( 701917 )
      I'm sure he thinks it's more fun to piss and moan about it.

      • I'm sure he thinks it's more fun to piss and moan about it.

        Piss IN it, if I remember the smell of a phone box from my youth...

    • The phone box is among 10 in North Norfolk marked for removal, having logged fewer than 10 calls last year.

      Fewer than 10 times in 2024 did anyone find a reason to use this pay phone - there is no historical reason to keep this pay phone, his desire to keep the phone booth in service is irrational (meaning there's no rational reason) - according to the guidelines there's no reason for it to remain.

      • The phone box is among 10 in North Norfolk marked for removal, having logged fewer than 10 calls last year.

        Fewer than 10 times in 2024 did anyone find a reason to use this pay phone - there is no historical reason to keep this pay phone, his desire to keep the phone booth in service is irrational (meaning there's no rational reason) - according to the guidelines there's no reason for it to remain.

        Fewer than 10 people in my area needed a fire truck last year - should we get rid of the firefighters too?

  • How is it that hotels don't get their lines cut off when their guests (who must occasionally) make terrible phone calls to people.

    Any normal person would get slammed for abuse with a VoIP line.

    My thought was this guy could put in his own booth with a cheap voip line but then the abuse potential seemed like a stumbling block.

    But hotels don't have this problem so there must be some variable treatment.

    • Hotels don't get free phone service for their rooms from the local telephone company, they have to pay for it. And, each room's share of that collective phone bill is figured into the room's rent, so that the hotel's customers end up paying for the phone service, including for times that the room isn't rented.

  • Australian payphones (Score:5, Informative)

    by redback ( 15527 ) on Thursday February 27, 2025 @05:02PM (#65199605)

    Telstra in Australia has done good things with their payphones.

    1. They are now free to use.
    2. They have free wifi
    3. They have usb ports you can get a charge from.

    There is certainly not as many as there used to be, but they stopped pulling them out when they realised they can sell advertising space on them.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They have removed a lot of them though.

      Not all have Wi-Fi.

    • Telstra in Australia has done good things with their payphones.

      1. They are now free to use.
      2. They have free wifi
      3. They have usb ports you can get a charge from.

      There is certainly not as many as there used to be, but they stopped pulling them out when they realised they can sell advertising space on them.

      Sometimes government regulations work. Telstra receives over $250M per year from the Australian government to maintain a minimum standard, and to their credit they have spent some of the cash on the services you describe. Sin they shutdown 3G they can't provide cellular service to my suburban house, but I agree that the wifi-enabled phone boxes are useful to the community.

      • In cities, BT's done some of this too (under duress, because BT won't do anything unless they're forced into it). However, most rural phone boxes are just being removed because so few people even walk past them, let alone want to stop to charge their phone or whatever.

        In fairness to BT, having a phone box in a little village is a liability. Some idiot will take a piss in it, someone else will smash the windows, someone else will smash up the phone... and so it goes on. BT then have to send someone on a long

    • Telstra get paid by the gov to maintain payphones under the USO

      "Telstra has a Universal Service Obligation (USO) to ensure standard telephone services (STS) and payphones are reasonably accessible to all people in Australia on an equitable basis, wherever they work or live."

      secondly they can put a cell site to broadcast the Telstra LTE signal

      think for a moment how difficult it is to get real estate in the middle of towns or villages (they dont use them all like this but they do it where it makes sense)

      BT co

  • When will we learn? Capitalism wont do National Security unless its made to, there's no profit in it.

    This man's public phone box is being take out because it costs more than it earns and that has made his village less secure. His village is an example of whats happened in the country with all our utilities. In the UK our phones are mostly VOIP, and I assume until you tell me wrong when the internet goes down we lose VOIP and voice comms that were working just fine for 100 years with analogue on copper.

    UK c

    • This man's public phone box is being take out because it costs more than it earns and that has made his village less secure.

      The man's village would also be more secure if it had drone-jamming EW suite, Patriot battery, and cache of automatic weapons. And yet I don't see many serious arguments being made that it'd be worthwhile. That's the problem the nebulous yardstick of "less" secure.

      Once isolated the population starts getting scared and hungry, government has no medium to communicate calm and hope

      Radio? And if the infrastructure for FM radio is down, I don't see why we should assume the landline infrastructure would be online.

      • The man's village would also be more secure if it had drone-jamming EW suite, Patriot battery, and cache of automatic weapons. And yet I don't see many serious arguments being made that it'd be worthwhile. That's the problem the nebulous yardstick of "less" secure.

        I agree "secure" is a concept, it's about risk management, impact and probability. The article cited the phone box was used to report an accident that saved a life. That's worth it for me in respect of impact if it's near an accident black spot. We still see emergency phones by the motorway. The probability a witness to an accident (or paratroopers) has a working phone, charged, with a reliable signal in a rural area, and can describe their location accurately, and call emergency services, that's 50/50, 6

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      When will we learn? Capitalism wont do National Security unless its made to, there's no profit in it.

      This man's public phone box is being take out because it costs more than it earns and that has made his village less secure. His village is an example of whats happened in the country with all our utilities. In the UK our phones are mostly VOIP, and I assume until you tell me wrong when the internet goes down we lose VOIP and voice comms that were working just fine for 100 years with analogue on copper.

      UK could be defeated in days by a handful of men exploiting our single point of failure. Take out our internet and citizens have no comms, no calling emergency services, no cloud based corporate/government/NHS IT infrastructure, no payment systems, no financial trading. Once isolated the population starts getting scared and hungry, government has no medium to communicate calm and hope, law and order crumbles, the country will defeat itself. In that confusion and social breakdown, bomb the water and power infrastructure and we're medieval again.

      Erm, I have no ill will towards this guy trying to save a phone box but seriously? How is a phone box in Norfolk (that's the UK's Alabama BTW) remotely related to national security. It's not like the 1950's where the Prime Miniters driver had to carry change for the phone box...

      The first person to notice that the Russians are coming will not be some web-footed hermit in East Anglia by a long shot.

      Telephone exchanges are almost exclusively digital these days, if data services aren't working then voice

      • See the macro in the micro. The universe in a dew drop and all that William Blake. Of course his phone box doesn't add to much vs National Security, for his village though it does, he cited one occasion when the phone box was used to report an accident that saved a life. Being secure is managing risk, not everyone has a charged mobile with a signal when its really needed, e.g. I believe we still have emergency phones by the motorway.

        Apply the motives behind these events, the outcome, to the country. To me

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