Phoneboxes Georg

June 5, 2022 4:34 PM

At their peak, in the mid-1990s, the British population of phone boxes was about 100,000. Now, there are just over 20,000 working boxes left, which still sounds like quite a lot, given it’s hard to imagine anyone actually using one. And yet, they do. According to Ofcom, 5m calls are still made from phone boxes annually. Five million! It seems impossible. A number so surprisingly large it made me think there must be a lone guy in a box somewhere obsessively making one-minute calls all day to random numbers.

—The last phone boxes by Sophie Elmhirst (audio version).
posted by Kattullus (48 comments total)

I'm impressed that Ofcom was able to set reasonable standards for service, and reasonable conditions for removal of an unprofitable payphone.

God knows that hasn't been the course of events in America
posted by your postings may, in fact, be signed at 4:44 PM on June 5, 2022 [5 favorites]

The death of the pay phone represents the privatization of communications, and a lot of people are left out. As a Futel operator, sometimes answering calls from our small network of (free) pay phones, people ask me all sorts of basic stuff- how to reach public services, the hospital, etc.

We need more hardened street furniture that provides information access.
posted by Headfullofair at 4:59 PM on June 5, 2022 [34 favorites]

I think giving out smartphones e.g. LifeLine may be a better use of resources.
posted by etc passwd at 5:09 PM on June 5, 2022 [4 favorites]

They're all the same TARDIS and it only appears that there are that many calls being made because in actuality they are all calls made over the course of the history of the universe and it just appears to an outside observer that both ends of the call happen in the same temporal space. They are actually calls from all over the vastness of spacetime.
posted by zengargoyle at 5:32 PM on June 5, 2022 [4 favorites]

I'd long figure that pay phones were another of those things from a bygone era that would just gradually disappear. But, among all the shitty things that happened in 2021, Telstra Australia confirmed that all of the 15,000 remaining phone boxes are now free for calls to local, long-distance and mobile numbers and will remain in service.

The cynical side of me keeps whispering that, given the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999 mandates that the phone boxes remain in service, Telstra has made them free because it costs more to collect the coins than the value from them represents. Also, I guess there's less damage to the phones because there's nothing of value to steal. But, either way, working phone boxes are a good thing for those that need them and I'm glad they are still there.
posted by dg at 5:58 PM on June 5, 2022 [31 favorites]

If each of just over 20,000 units were used once a day that would be minimally 7.3 million calls per year. 5 million seems pretty sparse; a call per payphone per 36 hours!
posted by Earthtopus at 6:00 PM on June 5, 2022 [8 favorites]

I was amused by the section about how much the residents of Borrowdale like their phones, because one of the most popular Scottish country dances is the Borrowdale Exchange.
posted by offog at 6:02 PM on June 5, 2022 [4 favorites]

Meanwhile Australia made all its 15,000 phone boxes free public calls
posted by mbo at 6:27 PM on June 5, 2022 [3 favorites]

'Iconic British red telephone booths are popping up in NYC this week'

I loved the old hotel booths that had curtains and an ashtray.
posted by clavdivs at 6:28 PM on June 5, 2022 [6 favorites]

I’ve seen quite a few small-village red phone boxes that are now phone free, but are community curated mini-museums a-la a Free Little Library style endeavour.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 6:41 PM on June 5, 2022 [3 favorites]

The last public payphone in NYC has been removed from Midtown
posted by lalochezia at 6:53 PM on June 5, 2022 [2 favorites]

5 million seems pretty sparse; a call per payphone per 36 hours!

Also, on a per capita basis that would be 1 out of every 13 people, once a year?
posted by anhedonic at 7:15 PM on June 5, 2022

Or on average, 5.8 calls per year per individual with dementia, given ~850,000 individuals in the UK. Or 2 calls per individual with dementia, and the rest of the population makes a call every …

I think it's kind of meaningless to try to convert a count of something with a frequency component to a per capita measure.
posted by etc passwd at 7:46 PM on June 5, 2022 [2 favorites]

The death of the pay phone represents the privatization of communications,
Well, payphones were always privatized. Hell, the entire telephone system was a commercial monopoly for most of the land line era.

But I heartily agree with hardened public telco infrastructure! Municipal payphones! Or no-pay-phones!
posted by bartleby at 7:50 PM on June 5, 2022 [3 favorites]

A public phone idea I'd like to see return:
Back in the very late 1900's, San Francisco bus stops (shelters? kiosks? huts? structures?) had a payphone built into one side. Handy because both the phone and the bus were paid for with coins, were permanent street furniture, etc.
Now that many modern transit systems use chip-cards for fare collection; why not install payphones all along your public transit system, that also take payment via Oyster card, etc.?
posted by bartleby at 7:59 PM on June 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

The cynical side of me keeps whispering that, given the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999 mandates that the phone boxes remain in service, Telstra has made them free because it costs more to collect the coins than the value from them represents.

I think this was definitely a factor, as is the revenue Telstra gets from the advertising on the street furniture, but I think the breathless quotes from managing directors over public service isn't entirely a lie, either. Often executives will take jobs at ostensibly for-profit enterprises that are nevertheless providers of critical services, like Telstra and Australia Post, because it's an opportunity to contribute to the country. The idea that phone services are so low-cost to provide and so expensive and time-consuming to remove (I mean, they could always lobby to have the rules changed) that they might as well leave them up and make them free to use would be appealing to that sort of executive - a sound business decision that nevertheless is a genuine public service.

I understand similar thinking was involved in the Bank@Post scheme at Australia Post, the success of which inadvertently cost former Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate her job, after the former PM decided to make up for a bad week of news coverage by attacking the closest woman he could find. Banks in Australia were pulling out of rural Australia, and the post office was becoming the defacto bank. May as well make it official, make sure the licensees are paid for it, and take advantage of the (legislated) network.

Also, this is why legislation is useful.
posted by Merus at 8:29 PM on June 5, 2022 [8 favorites]

I was at a boys boarding school in the 1980s and, at one stage, had met a girl from the equivalent local girls school. Our school had one 2 payphones shared between about 250 pupils. To make a call you would wait in with your pile of coins until all the others in front had finished their calls to whoever. The moment of being at the front of the queue was a time of peril, because the phone might ring and everything would stop while we went off to look for whoever the caller was trying to contact; or at least pretend to. If I got through to my girlfriend (who was in fact probably more a "girlfriend") then I would be the person calling a similar set up at her end. Any actual conversation would be modulated not just by anxiety over a dwindling supply of 10p pieces but also by the impatient and curious line of eavesdroppers at each end. So we mostly wrote letters. Payphones are one of those instances where I can't believe I have lived in the same technological world then and now without having to be about 110.

Mac's phone calls in "Local Hero "provides a reasonable visual summary - first scene, second scene.
posted by rongorongo at 11:09 PM on June 5, 2022 [13 favorites]

Where is Superman supposed to change now?
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 11:43 PM on June 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

Never mind Superman - where are the UK's sex workers going to put their Tart Cards?
posted by Paul Slade at 12:34 AM on June 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

Many old payphones in city centres are being replaced by a sort of monolith with advertising screens plus a "free" phone on the side. They have device ID trackers and cameras in them to measure "footfall" too.

I've sometimes seen queues of people (about 10 people once) all with their hoods up and pulled tight hiding their faces, on a hot day, waiting to use the phone.

The big advantage of the monoliths is that it's not possible to have sex or urinate in them.
posted by BinaryApe at 12:36 AM on June 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm Australian, but I grew up in the 70s and 80s watching a lot of Britsh TV, reading British books, and listening to British music. So now everytime I'm in the UK, I get a nostalgic thrill every time I spot one of these red phone boxes. It's like seeing Paddington Bear, or a Dalek.

(Laurie Penny wrote a long but thought provoking article about the dangers of conflating actual real Britain with the Britain of the popular imagination, where "David Bowie drinks gin with Elizabeth Tudor and Doctor Who trades quips with Oscar Wilde and there are always hot crumpets for tea". But those red phone boxes are so iconic that they feel fictional.)
posted by davidwitteveen at 1:14 AM on June 6, 2022 [7 favorites]

Tourists from outside Britain absolutely love photographing one another in them.
posted by Paul Slade at 1:23 AM on June 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

Another cool repurposing of these phone boxes, particularly in rural villages a long way from hospitals or ambulance stations, is as an AED (defibrillator) location. You can nominate a phone box to be converted through Community Heartbeat.
posted by atlantica at 1:47 AM on June 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

For about nine months I lived in what's best described as an old 1930's extravagant hotel. A whole row of telephone booths with doors and a seat, a front counter that kept messages and any incoming mail or calls, people standing in line waiting to use the phones. 1998, but put a black-and-white filter on things and it looks like the 1930's with weirder (if even possible) clothes. Sorta almost miss it, like the payphone in the university dorm, people taking messages or people waiting to use the phone. Youngsters don't quite know what it was like before the cellphone. Hey guys, know that little pocket in your pocket? That's where you stash some change so you can call somebody in an emergency. Don't know, haven't seen a public telephone booth since forever by now.
posted by zengargoyle at 3:00 AM on June 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

Another cool repurposing of these phone boxes, particularly in rural villages a long way from hospitals or ambulance stations, is as an AED (defibrillator) location.

The green and white/cream Telefón boxes of Ireland don't have quite the same iconic status as their UK counterparts, but some of these also now house defibrillators (though rather than being repurposed, some are newly built). I first saw one in 'The Diamond' in the center of Carndonagh, Co. Donegal.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 3:10 AM on June 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

Tourists from outside Britain absolutely love photographing one another in them.


And none are more popular than the one in parliament square with a view of big ben.

So if you want to talk to a tourist in London you can call:
([phone]
And there probably will be a confused tourist taking a picture for you to talk to.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 4:14 AM on June 6, 2022 [16 favorites]

These quaint old kiosks symbolise Britain’s historic influence in the world to a lot of people. But what do they say about the country nowadays, given that they now sit around unused and full of faeces?

hmm, let me think...
posted by chavenet at 4:32 AM on June 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

I recently pointed out on the blue the removal of water fountains in a local building. This is in fact a local bus and train station, a lovely old art deco building with a trim and compact six-storey office building atop it.

As I mention occasionally to anyone I might be with, you can date the renovations to a relatively narrow window of time — the rear of the building, where one goes to reach the buses, now has a broad wheelchair ramp where originally it had three or four steps. You would not have seen accessibility addressed in the original 1930s design, I think.

At the same time, this ramp is flanked by a bank of pay phones: seven on a side. I have trouble imagining a new building today finding room for fourteen pay phones.

I do see them used occasionally, and I think it is disappointing that public phones in general are vanishing. On the one hand, I have a cell phone; on the other hand, it has a battery which has occasionally been drained down to nothing (and the same privatization impulse that leads to public phones disappearing also means a dearth of public spots to recharge a phone). Once or twice I have found it very useful indeed to be able to drop a couple of quarters into a phone and reach someone for a pickup.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:55 AM on June 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

Another cool repurposing of these phone boxes, particularly in rural villages a long way from hospitals or ambulance stations, is as an AED (defibrillator) location.

I learned about this -- like many things -- from a Tom Scott video from 2021.
posted by terrapin at 5:01 AM on June 6, 2022

I've never seen "queues of people (about 10 people once) all with their hoods up and pulled tight hiding their faces, on a hot day, waiting to use the phone" at LinkNYC kiosks. I'm confused at what "hoods up and pulled tight hiding their faces, on a hot day" is supposed to mean. It's easier to come out and say what's meant.
posted by Geckwoistmeinauto at 5:15 AM on June 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

hey Just this guy, what's fun is the Royal Family's main switchboard is on the same exchange as that pay phone!

(+44) (0)20 7930 4832
posted by Geckwoistmeinauto at 5:16 AM on June 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

If you're an Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark fan, don't miss the 632 3003 box that has now been repurposed into a mini OMD museum. Andy McCluskey even came to the dedication.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:09 AM on June 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

In this photograph, taken from my bedroom window just now, you can see Sea Mills 100 Museum, a permanent museum sited in a K6 phonebox rennovated during the centennial celebration of the Addison Act (the Housing, Town Planning, &c. Act 1919, to be clearer) in the various original "homes for heroes" (now, sadly, very largely former, says the gentrifier) council estates. The darkest patch behind the museum is Addison's Oak, planted in the presence of Christopher Addison (it seems either his gentlemanly scruples or local machinations led to Dr Addison foregoing the actual planting, leaving that honour to Bristol's lady mayoress) on 4 July 1919, shortly after ground was broken on site.

I worked in housing for the last ten years, and I've found living somewhere that at least recollects a time when people in power did something to address the need for decent housing and decent communities a real source of comfort and pride in recent times. Red phoneboxes are similar: this was the state taking responsibility for ensuring that basic infrastructure needs were met, not just for a larger businesses, but for people in general. Phoneboxes aren't really still useful like the houses: they really are just a reminder that our collective power to change how life works is vastly greater than we think.

It could make me despondent, looking back 100 years. I might fear such times will never come again, but then I go and have a look at the Roman ruins of Abona* which underlie the whole area and reflect that infrastructure investment always ebbs and flows. Oh how the wheel becomes it!

* Also "Abonae". Identification is, I understand, actually slightly more tentative than some like to admit. There are no other credible candidates, but it apparently difficult to square the position of Sea Mills with the mileages given in the surviving copies/records of itineraria.
posted by howfar at 7:44 AM on June 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

I think giving out smartphones e.g. LifeLine may be a better use of resources.

In many ways, yes, especially given the internet access a smartphone provides as well. But now to make a phone call the price is "1) keep track of this brick that is probably a cheap model that 2) isn't waterproof, and 3)keep it topped up with electricity every few days" instead of "already have or just ask a stranger on the sidewalk for 1) a quarter."

There are definitely ways to fix the waterproof and electricity problems but I don't know that there's a decent solution for "keep track of this object" in all circumstances.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 9:35 AM on June 6, 2022

One other advantage of old style pay phones is they keep working during power disruptions because they are powered by the local switch which has batteries and generators and fuel for an extended outage.
posted by Mitheral at 12:44 PM on June 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

If you find yourself in South London, you can see these in Kingston upon Thames.

Five or so years ago I did some work for a mulitnational in Manhattan who had their own trans-Atlantic comms, and on one of the floors was a bank of half a dozen phone booths, nominally for visitors to use. The boss encouraged me to use them to phone home to the UK, and it certainly had a very positive effect on my mobile bill (even to the extent of me going into work on the weekend purely to phone home). No idea if they're still there, but it was a nice perk.
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 2:32 PM on June 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm confused at what "hoods up and pulled tight hiding their faces, on a hot day" is supposed to mean.

Given the context of

Many old payphones in city centres are being replaced by a sort of monolith with advertising screens plus a "free" phone on the side. They have device ID trackers and cameras in them to measure "footfall" too.

I would assume that these people are trying, ineffectively, to avoid being surveilled.
posted by Lexica at 3:01 PM on June 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

I've never seen "queues of people (about 10 people once) all with their hoods up and pulled tight hiding their faces, on a hot day, waiting to use the phone" at LinkNYC kiosks. I'm confused at what "hoods up and pulled tight hiding their faces, on a hot day" is supposed to mean. It's easier to come out and say what's meant.

Fair enough, more details:

Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester, in the UK, I thought we were discussing UK pay phones so I didn't give the country. Drug dealers or drug dealer's customers I would assume, given it was like a drugs market there pre-Covid. If you'd like me to specify ethnicity too they were, as far as I remember, all white. The screens were the older sort supplied by BT (British Telecom) to replace their phone boxes. The new screen don't include phones.

People have also been seeing queueing to pick up drugs from dealers in various streets and canal towpaths nearby, it's quite a thriving local economy. We had a big problem here with "spice", synthetic cannabis, a few years ago after it was made illegal and went from mild to absolutely awful stuff that left people sprawled over pavements in the city centre, but there's other sorts of drugs too.

If you were concerned I was implying American Black people were up to no good this is 100% white young men in the UK.

Edit: We have huge amounts of CCTV in the UK so they were trying to avoid being picked up on camera or spotted by the police that wander around there arresting people obviously dealing drugs.
posted by BinaryApe at 3:06 PM on June 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

Back when I was in high school, there was a womens’ college a bit down the street from us, and they had dorms with a single payphone in the hall on each floor. At one point, the sports guy from our local TV station got his hands on the number to one of those phones and would call it and just try to pick up whoever answered on the basis of his minor local celebrity. Apparently they finally got a volunteer to actually go out with him. She soaked him for as much as she could spend, and gave him nothing. He eventually got the message.

I’m not sure if that’s a pro- or anti-payphone story.
posted by Naberius at 5:54 PM on June 6, 2022

Once or twice I have found it very useful indeed to be able to drop a couple of quarters into a phone and reach someone for a pickup.
This wouldn't work for me, as I don't know anyone's phone number - a significant part of my brain's remembering important things function has been outsourced to my phone. I may live to regret that.
posted by dg at 8:44 PM on June 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

Add to that the demographically shrinking cohort of people who would answer a voice call.
posted by bartleby at 8:52 PM on June 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

An article in The Manchester Evening News about the kiosks being used for anonymous drugs-ordering in Manchester and London.
posted by BinaryApe at 10:13 PM on June 6, 2022

Has it not occurred to anyone that Neo and Morpheus have been hacking the Matrix to keep enough phone boxes in service so they have enough exits available without having to rely on private residence phones?

But seriously, the fact that landlines including phone boxes have historically been phantom-powered from the phone co.’s own generating system and thus blackout-resistant is definitely a plus, which also speaks to the larger issue of decentralizing power grids so that essential services might be more resilient. (In the great blackout of 1965 in northeast North America, Boston’s MBTA had its own separate power supply; commuters were able to get home.)
posted by Philofacts at 9:06 AM on June 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

This phone box next to a waterfall on the Isle of Mull which featured in the classic P&P film, “I Know Where I’m Going” had better be on the preserved list.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 9:20 AM on June 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

There's a classic red phone box maybe 50 yards from my parents' house. It serves a cluster of about 30 houses built in the 1930s or so, at the end of what had previously been a farm track. Presumably it had originally been installed for the benefit of the residents, but more recently must have been useful only to people who'd got very lost, or people out for a country walk (calling a taxi to get home again?).

Slightly to my surprise, given that the valley has no mobile phone reception so it would still have had utility as a telephone, the last time I visited I discovered that the box now housed a defibrillator. Well and good, but it's at the *bottom* of the steep hill.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 2:53 AM on June 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

There are areas in the UK with no cell phone reception? The entire UK is like, just 100k square miles. It'd be so easy to just blanket, it's like one US state in area but a rich western country.
posted by etc passwd at 11:34 PM on June 11, 2022

Cell signals are often attenuated by physical barriers like hills. A winding valley especially can easily end up with dead zones even if the surrounding area is blanketed with signal.
posted by Mitheral at 5:40 AM on June 12, 2022

Yep, exactly what's at play in this case.

Also, different providers have different coverage maps - all of them nominally cover everywhere, but in practice, each of them is patchy in different places. At work, my phone (O2) usually gets a decent signal, whereas my colleagues on other networks are out of luck. Visitors from overseas using roaming packages can just glom onto the strongest signal, and therefore may well get a rosier picture than those of us who live here!
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 6:58 AM on June 13, 2022