BT has recently announced that they are cutting the light out of a lot of their phone boxes across the rural parts of the country. If you are trying to get on the phone to someone at 3 in the morning how are you going to be able to do this with no light?
Emergency
BT are refusing to replace many of the bulbs because they are saying that a lot of the boxes are simply not used enough but the people that live around the area are really annoyed because if they have to go out and make a call they are having to take a torch with them or dial in darkness.
This is certainly something that could really cause problems when there is a bad emergency. It is going to be almost impossible to look for a torch if someone was in danger or your house was on fire, it just gets sill. People alreayd panic when there is a big emergancy can you imagine what it is going to be like if there is no light in the telephone box.
The counter argument
BT have argued that people are just using mobile phones now but the fact is that many people are still getting poor reception in rural areas meaning they are going to have to use the call boxes.
Each bulb in the box will cost BT around £9 a year which is nothing to how much BT make as a company and it works at around 3p a day which is less than you are going to be charged a minute if you were on the phone!
However there are of course many other ways you can call someone or get in contact with them such as using services like fax to email, call conferencing and of course if there are no lights you may need some mobile phone insurance.
Tags: Emergency, phones, Public Outrage
