UPDATE: BT GIVES IN. The company announced this morning (10/21) that it will not remove the Cairngorm box
BT’s war on the iconic red phoneboxes that once blanketed Britain continues, with a plan to scrap thousands of them across Scotland. But at Cairngorm, high in the Highlands, they have a fight on their hands.
Local residents and companies, along with local councils, are objecting to the removal of the phonebox that sits 2150 feet up Cairngorn mountain, at the base station of a ski resort. It’s the highest payphone in Britain.
Aviemore & Vicinity Community Council chair John Grierson says “we felt it should be retained on safety grounds…Mobile phones do work in the area, but not everyone has one, or after a long day on the hill their battery is run down.”
BT, formerly British Telecom, is so far turning a deaf ear. They say that 700 of the boxes they plan to remove have not been used for a single call in over a year; the Cairngorm phone has had only 5. BT says each booth costs £310 a year to maintain. Figures indicate that in the past 10 years, use of public payphones has dropped by over 90%.
For a story of how one town turned its turned-off phone-box into the world’s smallest museum, see this TravelGumbo news story.
