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Comment by scoopertrooper | Hacker News Reader

Who even benefits from payphones still existing?

The cheapest PAYG contract offered by BT's subsidiary EE gets you 500 minutes of phone calls for 10 pounds. Which also buys you 10GB of internet and unlimited texts.

Meanwhile, 500 minutes of phone calls from a BT payphone would set you back 250 pounds!

So, it's obviously not the poor who benefits from pay phones. Except maybe a subset of homeless people who can't commit to a PAYG contract. Seems like it'd be more economical for BT/EE to just handout phones at homeless shelters and shutdown this ridiculous relic.

https://shop.ee.co.uk/sim-only/pay-as-you-go-phones

https://www.bt.com/pricing/current/Call_Charges_boo/3545_d0e...

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In an emergency situation, an actual emergency, not "I forgot to charge my phone and I've got a flat tire" but more "there is a major power outage and all the cell networks are down" or "there is a major crisis and the cell network is congested" the landlines will keep running and placing calls just as they always have. I don't know if it is still required, but it used to be a regulation that landlines in the US and the UK were carried on separate power systems and cabling systems so that they would remain operational in the event of a national emergency. There is also a lot of areas where cell phone coverage is just not reliable. And so payphones do still have their place.

In an emergency where the cell networks are down, you can go to your nearest BT phone box and discover someone smashed the plastic handset five years ago, and nobody noticed because zero calls in five years is the norm.

Anyone who thinks public phone boxes will play a role in a national emergency is fooling themselves.

The "emergencies" they help with most often seem to be of a distinctly local and biological nature...

> there is a major crisis and the cell network is congested" the landlines will keep running and placing calls just as they always have

This is pretty optimistic, landlines get congested during major crises too. do-do-dee all circuits are busy now, please try your call again later.

From the Ofcom release:

> Some of the call boxes we plan to protect are used to make relatively low numbers of calls. But if one of those calls is from a distressed child, an accident victim or someone contemplating suicide, that public phone line can be a lifeline at a time of great need.

Seems like they could just mandate ATMs or other public computers (London's Santander Bike rental terminals for example) to double as emergency call points and solve this problem.

Except that ATM’s are also slowly being removed more and more.

Your experience of mobile network coverage in the UK maybe doesn't match everyone else's?

> Who even benefits from payphones still existing?

This is quite clearly outlined in the article.

These phone station can be used as wifi or short range 5g base station.

Plus not everyone have smartphone and these maybe the only way those on the street especially the homeless can call others.

Sure, but you do not need a smartphone to make calls. A feature phone can be had for < £20 (and the battery will last a looong time). I wouldn't be surprised if charities were already giving them away and many homeless already had one.

I guess people who loose their mobile phone and need to contact someone asap.

Those 500 minutes don’t last forever. Below 20 minutes per month of use pay phones end up cheaper.

10GB could probably give you non-stop online voice calls for a month too!

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