BT to launch phone box enquiry

BT is set to launch a detailed study of its 66,000 payphones as it intends to put pressure on the telephones regulator to rethink rules that force it to fund and maintain the phone boxes.

In an age of mobile phones and skype, BT is seeking to provide proof to Ofcom that payphones no longer play the vital social role that they once did. The study will provide up-to-date information about who uses the phones, in which parts of the UK they are most used and what, if any, social benefit they provide.

The company, which says that it can no longer absorb the costs of so many unprofitable boxes, will seek to show, for instance, how many emergency calls made from its public telephones are genuine and which are merely nuisance calls made by children.

The private report will be handed to the regulator to try to encourage it to rethink BT’s role in supporting call boxes around Britain even where it does not make money out of them.

Although the issue was not due to be reviewed for at least two years, The study could prompt Ofcom to review the issue sooner.

Since privatising in 1984, BT has been responsible for providing and maintaining public call boxes, even those that remain unprofitable. The commitment is one of several Universal Service Obligations (USOs) aimed at ensuring that everyone has access to basic telephone services at an affordable price. Yet, Bt argues that the boom in mobile phones has made pay phones less relevant to people today.

BT's most recent data illustrated that virtually no adults use payphones as their main phone and that takings from kiosks have plummeted. Nearly 12,000 of its call boxes, BT says, take less than £100 a year.

Meanwhile, it complains, it is left with sole responsibility for maintaining the 66,000 boxes – including repairs after vandalism – at an average cost of £1,409 per payphone per year. It “seems right”, the group argues, to remove public payphones from USO status.

Ofcom last reviewed the USO in 2006. It concluded that BT drew some benefits from areas with phoneboxes – boosting its image, for example - and that these benefits amounted to £64 million. There was, the regulator concluded, no “undue financial burden” on BT from the USO.

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