BT plan to pull the plug on village phone boxes

MELKSHAM, Brougton Gifford, Atworth and Whitley are likely to lose yet another public service as BT plans to remove ‘unprofitable’ payphones.
BT say the phones are being taken away because they are underused in their current locations.
West Wiltshire district councillor Sue Ezra is urging residents to get in touch with her so she can take their complaints to the district council’s scrutiny committee which will be assessing the plans late in May.
She said, “I want people to phone or write to me so I can do something before it’s another thing gone. If they don’t respond then they’re going to lose them. People have got to stand up and be counted or there’s nothing I can do. There’s no national health dentists, we’ve lost our hospital, we’ve lost our post offices and we’ll have to hang on or we’ll have nothing left.
“People do break down in their motor vehicles and you can’t always get a signal on your mobile phone. If you take these public phone boxes out, what are people supposed to do? I still think that there is a need for them. They’re saying some of them are only used for £100 worth of calls, but those calls could be crucial.
One Shaw resident told Melksham Independent News, “It’s a sign of the times that there obviously isn’t the demand for public phoneboxes that there used to be - now that most people have mobile phones.
“However, there are still many people who don’t have mobiles. The phone boxes may not be used every day, but they can be a lifeline in some situations - especially as they are the only public phone boxes in each of the three villages.”
BT hopes to remove the boxes by the end of the year. Affected boxes will have notices placed in them.