About 5,000 public phone boxes around the UK will be protected from closure in areas of high accident rates or poor mobile signals, under plans drawn up by Ofcom, the regulator.
The communications watchdog said it would ban BT from scrapping payphones in areas where they are still needed, namely locations with poor mobile coverage, high accident or suicide rates, or higher-than-average use. There are about 21,000 call boxes across the country.
For several years, BT has been decommissioning payphones that are deemed to be no longer needed. Phone box use has plummeted as 96% of UK adults own a mobile phone. However, local organisations can buy a red phone box for £1 and use it for something else. More than 6,000 have been converted to other
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