YOUR local phone box may be under threat
Many of our local phone boxes are threatened by a BT plan to remove all "uneconomic" phone boxes from our streets - whether they are needed for emergency purposes or not.
The local boxes on their hit list are:
North Road, Yate
Goldcrest Road
Shire Way (we think that's the Woodchester one)
Cherington / Shire Way
Little Sodbury End
Horton Hill, Horton
Rectory Close
"outside Westerleigh Post Office" (well, where it used to be)
at the layby, Stover Road
Codrington
Colts Green, Old Sodbury
Brimsham Green Shopping Centre
Sundridge Park
Since 2002 BT has removed 31,000 kiosks around the UK.
Is this serious? Save the Phone Boxes?
ReplyDeleteIf BT own them, they can do what they like with them.
No, actually they can't do what they like. Research by OFCOM shows that shows that over 33% of adults use phone boxes from time to time, while 7% use them regularly.
ReplyDeleteAs OFCOM says "Unlike a normal business, BT can’t just take away services for reasons linked to money. They have a duty, known as the Universal Service Obligation (USO), to provide a reasonable number of working phone boxes where they’re most needed"
NNGGARRGHHH! I wrote a four para response to this only for my browser to freeze and leave a frustrated Julian with nuzzin. NNGGARRGHHH again.
ReplyDeleteOk, compose self, start again. I think I said something like:
Thanks for the response, Paul. I don't find the statistics on usage particularly pertinent; if usage was considerable then phone boxes would be profitable and the removal of them, inevitable due to the spread of mobiles, wouldn't be happening.
The second point I confess to ignorance of - I didn't know that BT were obliged by the regulator to provide phone boxes. I find this rather odd, though. Phone boxes are not a public good and the only remotely reasonable purpose for government intervention I can think of is the (aforementioned) one about emergency calls. Aside from emergency calls, why should government be allowed to stipulate what products a supposedly private, profit-making company can or cannot provide?
In general I suppose I'm rallying against this culture of conserving (let us call is "conservatism") which tends to pop up even in Liberal parties.