Red telephone boxes, like double-decker buses and black taxis, are a symbol of London and Britain. But, like double-decker buses, they are disappearing. The reason is very simple: everyone has a cell phone these days. To find out whether there is any hope for the red phone box, we spoke to Yusuf King, a senior press officer with BT, or British Telecom. We asked why people still love the red phone box:
Yusuf King (Standard British accent): It is a classic design. It was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, who is a famous architect. He designed Bankside Power Station in London, which is now Tate Modern, he designed Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral, and he also designed Battersea Power Station. And, certainly, British people recognise those as sort of powerful symbols of the country. I suppose for British people we’ve just grown up with the red phone box. They’ve been around so long and, before people had mobile phones, before people even had a phone at home, they used to go down to the corner phone box, put their four pennies, or whatever, in, and that was the way they communicated. So we’ve become used to it and, obviously, visitors to the country now recognise that as a symbol of Britain, and you can buy souvenirs and postcards of red phone boxes as well.
He then talked about the phone box’s decline:
Yusuf King: The heyday of the pay phone in the UK was sort of mid-1980s to perhaps 1990, where we saw an increase in the numbers before everyone had a mobile phone. So we saw an increase in the numbers of pay phones, but, really, gradually, since that time, as everyone
gets a mobile, the numbers have gone down.
I mean, we still do other things to try and keep the pay phone business profitable. Even though the majority of pay phones lose money, we have things like wi-fi units in pay phones, we have advertising on the sides of phone boxes, and we have some combined pay phones and cash machines, so you’ll have a pay phone on one side of the phone box and a cash machine on the other, and that’s proved very popular. So that helped alleviate the losses, so to speak, from the other phone boxes that are not making any money.
And, as Yusuf King explains, there are some even more imaginative ideas:
Yusuf King: We introduced a scheme in 2008 called ‘Adopt a Kiosk’, where local councils, generally parish councils, small councils, can adopt their local phone box. They basically buy it from us for £1, and then they can turn it into whatever they like, so we take the pay phone out, and then they turn it into all sorts of things. They have some as libraries, so they put loads of books in them, some as art galleries, so... we’ve had lots that have had defibrillation machines for people who have cardiac arrests, so lots of those have been installed, and we’ve even had one village who were protesting against the removal of their local pub, their local public house, and they turned it into a pub for the night, and they were selling beer from the kiosk, just for one night, just as a protest!
So, yeah, it’s been very popular, it’s certainly captured the imagination of people around the country!
Aprende todo sobre este emblema londinense: Save The Phone Box: Life After The Cell Phone
