8/3/2023 0 Comments The minions have the phoneboxThis May, the company announced that it was ceasing production of phonecards. Two years ago, BT doubled the minimum charge for a payphone call, and started charging for calls from phoneboxes to directory inquiries. For those that survive this cull, the prospects do not look good. "Between 10,000 and 12,000" are disappearing this year, and "further reductions" are anticipated. In February, his company began a programme of uprooting uneconomic kiosks. "We've got thousands that don't make enough to cover their cleaning costs," says Les King, head of public relations for BT's payphones division. British Telecom, the owner of the vast majority, has seen its takings from payphones fall by half since 1999. The era of the telephone kiosk is drawing to a close. There are more people in Carphone Warehouse than in all the phoneboxes put together. The reason is not difficult to spot: immediately behind the phoneboxes, between the cafes and clothes shops, are branches of Carphone Warehouse, Phones 4U, The Link, The Orange Shop and The Vodafone Shop. People stride past them without a glance. Phoneboxes still line Kensington High Street like guardsmen, red ones, blue ones, red and yellow ones, orange and metallic ones, always in pairs, often no more than 20 yards apart. Planning applications were submitted for another 130. During a single six-month period in the mid-90s, 102 new payphones were erected in its small knot of streets. Then, as now, Kensington was busy, wealthy and full of pedestrians as the century went on, the area remained a favourite with phonebox-installation companies. At the beginning of the last century, when clean new phoneboxes first started appearing on Britain's grimy pavements, one of the pioneering areas was Kensington in west London.
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