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London's classic telephone booths with domed roofs and molded royal crowns have been rendered obsolete by the rise of mobile phones, but the telephone companies have never given up their rights on the sidewalk.
LONDON – The British phone booth is not dead yet. In parts of central London, a box is placed every 100 feet, and if the telephone companies succeed, they will plant one every 50 feet.
But it is not the red cast iron booths that have been for generations emblems of Britain. According to critics, these are horrors, covered with digital advertising screens and likely to be transformed into surveillance stations.
Even worse, some are imported from New York.
The result is a battle on the British public space, led by local town planners and telecommunications companies. The most controversial battle takes place in Westminster, in the heart of London, where new telephone kiosks are set up between construction barriers and bus stops in crowded streets.
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The classic red cabins, with domed roofs and molded royal crowns, have been rendered obsolete by the rise of cell phones. Yet, the telephone companies have never given up their rights on the sidewalk. Under British rules in force since the iPhone was created, payphones are still considered vital infrastructure and companies with appropriate licenses can continue to use them as long as local boards do not oppose.
For example, the telephone companies set up a new type of booth: two-sided digital screens with Internet connectivity and tactile cards that display craft beer and credit card ads.
"Many of them are advertising with a handset," said John Walker, planning director for Westminster City Council. "They are just a blot on the landscape."
According to an advisory association in England and Wales, some councils are inundated with proposals for phone numbers 900% higher than a few years ago. Corporations have submitted proposals for 300 new booths and replacement booths in the last two years, in Westminster alone, where the traps are already six on a stretch of the busy Edgware Road.
The councils are lobbying the central government to change the law.
Critics call the profusion of high-tech booths, centered on advertising – kiosks, in the new language of the telephone companies – an element of a wider sale of British public space. Telephone booths moved from the public sector to the private sector in the 1980s, when British Telecom was privatized under the aegis of Margaret Thatcher and her monopoly on the booths came to an end.
"Glorified panels"
Now, with the austerity measures reducing maintenance budgets and leaving the streets cluttered with potholes, the councils also oppose the proposals of what they call billboards. glorified display.
Some proposals at Westminster relate to traditional stands with a wall for advertising. Others, like New York's InLink kiosks, are stylish Internet-connected stations with touch-sensitive cards and electronic billboards flashing on passers-by, privacy advocates say. They are a collaboration between BT, the descendant of British Telecom; Intersection, an enterprise of smart cities with links to Google's parent company, Alphabet; and a giant of outdoor advertising.
The planning documents indicate that InLink kiosks are supposed to be able to "anonymously monitor" things like "pedestrian movement," raising concerns that they can follow anyone whose phone goes through the Wi-Fi range. The kiosks are equipped with cameras, although BT claims not to have been lit.
"The infrastructure for building a surveillance network is being installed on British streets," said Adrian Short, a data analyst who created a web portal to track InLink applications . "And the councils do not have or have the right to refuse them."
The new boxes would join or, in some cases, replace a mishmash of phone booths dating back to the 1990s and already dirty on the street.
And since each of the 33 local authorities in London occupy themselves separately from the planning, it is up to the local planning teams to sift through the piles of phone box proposals.
Walker said that they arrived at his Westminster office in stacks of paper dozens of times, sometimes just before the Christmas holidays. The countdown begins then: 56 days until, in the absence of board objection, the telephone company has the right to start work.
Establishing credible objections is a laborious process, requiring planners to solicit feedback from nearby businesses and traffic specialists. Telephone companies often promise to remove two boxes dating back to the 1990s for each new addition they add, but Walker said Westminster did not want it, period.
Matthew Carmona, professor of planning and urban planning at University College London, said the situation "has, in a way, surprised policy makers." After removing the phone booths obsolete with the rise of cell phones, the telephone companies realized that they could draw money from it in a different way, which allowed them to circumvent any regulation. "
Exposing the disadvantages
The distribution of telephone booths also revealed the disadvantages of the fragmented London planning system. Low-vision housing, for example, differs in each of London's boroughs.
Sarah Gaventa, a former design advisor to the UK government, said a public art project she was working on had required dozens of applications from seven different local authorities, an obstacle she said did not exist in other major European cities.
By replacing the old booths with Internet-connected kiosks, the phone companies claim that they are decluttering the streets and giving Britons and tourists modern tools to navigate the city, resulting in more calls and more. Frequent use of touch screens. Neil Scoresby, General Manager of Payphones and InLink at BT, said that the company had complied with the planning laws and had sometimes agreed to remove a box that a board did not want.
InLink stated that the company only stored unique identifiers for people's phones after registering for the service and did not track pedestrian movements.
Westminster City Council has rejected approximately 175 requests for additional or replacement booths in the last two years. But the telephone companies can call on a government planning inspector to install them anyway.
Now the Westminster council is looking for broader powers. In August, he filed a complaint with the High Court of Justice to compel the planning inspector to consider, beyond the site and appearance of new boxes, whether it was necessary to use them. .
Walker said the Westminster council had a better idea of what should be added when old phone booths were removed: "We would rather have a tree," he said.
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