British telephone booths will be protected by law against their repeal

Thousands of iconic red telephone booths in Britain will still serve their purpose. Under the new rules, they will be protected by law against their repeal, said British telecommunications regulator Ofcom this week. Public telephone booths may seem like an outdated survival in the age of ubiquitous smartphones, but according to the British regulator, they are still a "lifeline" for people in need. Ofcom is proposing rules to prevent the abolition of 5,000 payphones in areas with poor coverage by UK mobile telephone operators. The Office further stated that telephone booths in areas considered to be places of frequent accidents or suicides and those from which more than 52 calls had been made in the last 12 months would also meet the criteria. Ofcom has confirmed that there are approximately 21,000 telephone booths across the country, and in 12 months it registers nearly 150,000 emergency calls, 25,000 childline calls and 20,000 Samaritans, which provides first-hand telephone assistance for complex calls situations. "Some of the phone booths we plan to keep have a relatively low number of calls. However, if one of these calls comes from a child in need, an accident victim or someone contemplating suicide, this public hotline may be a lifeline at a time when it really needs it, ”said Selina Chadha, Ofcom's Connectivity Director. "We also want to ensure that people without mobile coverage, often in rural areas, do not remain without a telephone connection and can still make calls," she added. At the same time, the telecommunications regulator plans to support the deployment of new telephone booths with free wifi connection and charging. It also called on BT and KCOM to install batteries in some payphones to ensure that they could be used in the event of a power failure. BT Group, formerly British Telecom, says almost half of the telephone booths in the UK have been removed as a result of the development of the mobile telephone industry. More than 6,500 disused phone booths have so far been turned into miniature community libraries, art galleries or public defibrillator storage units under a plan called "Kiosk Adoption", which allows local organizations to buy a red phone booth for one pound and turn it into something useful.