More BT pay phones face the axe

Red alert for low-usage phone boxes...

BT is looking to close more public call boxes as usage continues to slide.

The telco said it is writing to local authorities to test the water about closing 14 per cent of its remaining estate of call boxes - or around 8,700 out of some 62,000 street payphones - as consent is required to remove them.

Local authority consent is not required to remove call boxes if there is another payphone within 400 metres, however.

The BT spokesman said: "Some local authorities understand that if a phone box has only received one call in a year then it might not be entirely reasonable to keep it there for any business. Some local authorities… think that they provide an important service and in those occasions we leave them."

BT said payphone usage has halved in the last two years and calls are declining at 20 per cent year-on-year. Almost 60 per cent of its payphones are unprofitable, it added.

The number of iconic red phone boxes under threat is unclear, as a spokesman for BT told silicon.com the telco is "colour-agnostic" when it comes to its call boxes - and is merely concerned with closing payphones with low usage.

According to BT, less than one call per week is made from more than half the kiosks in the consultation and less than one call per month is made from a third. Some of the threatened call boxes have only been used for one phone call in a year, the spokesman claimed.

Asked where the threatened call boxes are sited, the spokesman said they are "all over the place… wherever they are not used" - and denied they are more likely to be in rural areas.

He added: "There's far fewer phone boxes than there used to be because everybody's got a mobile and nobody uses them."

BT added in a statement: "BT is committed to providing a public payphone service, however over the years usage has declined. BT has therefore been constantly reviewing and where necessary rationalising its public payphone estate in order to meet demand…Any removal of unprofitable payphones is carried out in strict adherence to Ofcom guidelines and where appropriate with the consent of the local communities."

BT has removed around 31,000 payphones in the UK since 2002, when call box numbers also peaked at 95,000. Just under 3,000 red call boxes are listed and cannot be removed, it said.