For Just The Cost Of A (Starbucks) Coffee A Day, You Could Save A Pay Phone Booth...
from the save-the-booths! dept
It's been nearly a decade or so since the rise of mobile phones began to impact the payphone industry -- and we've seen all sorts of creative attempts to save payphone booths in one form or another -- from turning them into music download stations or WiFi hotspots. Then, there's the idea of simply changing phone booths into places for mobile phone callers to go, so they're not quite so annoying, talking on the phone where everyone can hear them. Over in the UK, things are even worse, as the distinctive red iconic telephone booths has a much stronger cultural connection that has many upset at the demise of the phone booth.So, what BT has come up with a different sort of strategy for rescuing the red phone booths: getting local gov'ts to pay out of sympathy. Yes, BT is telling local councils that they can "adopt" a red phone booth and keep it alive for just £500 per year (about $1,000). I'm almost surprised they didn't open up the offering to individuals as well. I'm sure there are some folks who would pay to keep the phone booths alive.
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Filed Under: adoption, phone booths, saving
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just send a couple to a museum and move on.
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Way out in the Scottish countryside it's far cheaper to put a 'phone booth in the middle of a moor than a mobile 'phone mast - it just needs a power hook-up and a single copper wire. In unpopulated areas it makes more sense than maintaining a base station that will go largely unused.
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I myself have two Cell Phones (one for work & one for personal calls), but there are still many people believe it or not that do not have a Cell Phone.
Not just people in Ghettos, or illegal immigrants either.
Many children/tweens/teens do not have Cell Phones.
Tourists that have Cell Phones that are regionally locked to their homeland.
Anyhow I for one do not think that it's time yet to get rid of these things.
Until mobile phones are so dirt cheap, and either contractless, or fairly contracted, and their coverage is at least 90% of the worlds populated areas we will always need payphones.
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Vandalism?
The only red phone boxes I see around don't accept coins, for fear of them being broken into, which practically make them useless.
The only places this will happen is in little villages, where the residents will end up paying for them anyway.
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The Staple of Our Society
I bet you geniuses never thought of that. How will drug dealers make money? How will our public servants get paid? Anarchy, I tell you!
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Re: The Staple of Our Society
I've personally moved onto using a cell phone. Why are drug dealers so behind the times?
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I just wonder why the cops haven't bugged the phone booths in question. Listening devices in the hardened part of the phone, a camera where they can hide it and it already has a wire to return data to the cops. Detect a person in the booth not on the phone and start monitoring.
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Red Phone Booths?
The new ones had the advantage of being cheaper, having the latest logo and being easier to vandalise (way less sturdy)
If a council wants a red one I would suggest they go to the nearest scrap yard, buy one and shove their own phone in it - bound to be cheaper and they get whatever revenue there is
As for individuals owning them I know of a few pubs and people who have done exactly this - no need to involve BT and their 'service'
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Re: Red Phone Booths?
All the little glass panes make it very easy to vandalise and very expensive to maintain. Putting the blame on mobiles is a little cheap; society moved on years back.
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Great idea
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Phone Booths
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Why should the local government care?
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I dont understand . . .
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Why maintain the phone?
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recycle not dump -- too much trash
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I have no cell phone
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Then phones would be available for emergencies for the poor and for pretentious nerks who think they are making a statement of somekind by not having cell phones and plus the TARDIS wouldn't look so conspicuous when it comes to earth.
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Dr. Who?
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Small Villages
It sounds as if BT might be planning on phasing out phone boxes entirely, but want to offer the option to small villages to keep their red ones if they feel it contributes to the village charm or community or whatever.
IIRC some villages successfully campaigned to keep their red boxes when BT started replacing them with the modern type. This could just be BT recognising the same villages might be likely to take action again if their boxes were threatened.
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gone already ...
I think at Helsinki railway station i saw a couple (probably broken) a few years ago. Helsinki railway station is one of the busiest places in Finland, so that and airports would be the last places i'd expect to see them.
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