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BT to remove half of the UK's remaining telephone boxes
With the majority of Britons now carrying a smartphone in their pocket, demand for static, boring telephone boxes has dwindled. A small number of them have been repurposed, turned into tiny offices, WiFi hotspots and charging kiosks, but many of them remain derelict. This week, BT announced that it will do something about that, confirming that it will remove half of the UK's remaining telephone boxes in order to focus on the units that people actually use.
Leeds turning telephone boxes into free WiFi kiosks, crowdsource your memories for posterity
Public WiFi projects don't normally involve antique restoration and historical crowd sourcing, but that's exactly what's going on in Leeds. Local telecoms company aql is renovating Giles Gilbert Scott's iconic red telephone boxes in the area, adding solar panels, networking equipment and giving them a blue paint-job. While the boxes will be locked to keep the wireless gear secure, the company has added touch screens to the outside, letting locals make emergency calls and leave messages that share their memories about the area -- a better fate for the hardware than inspiring this portable monstrosity.
