YOUR leader comment (“Far too soon to cut off rural communities’ phone boxes”, The Herald, October 17) attempts to link BT’s payphone consultation with the rollout of superfast fibre broadband, when in fact they are separate issues.
As you acknowledge, more than two million Scottish households and businesses can now order fibre broadband as a result of BT’s multi million pound commercial investments and the Digital Scotland project. According to the independent website thinkbroadband, superfast broadband speeds in excess of 30Mbps are now available to more than 86 per cent of households in Scotland. Coverage is continuing to grow rapidly.
We’re also committed to providing a public payphone service, but with usage declining by more than 90 per cent in the last decade, we’re consulting with communities on the future use of some payphones. Where we receive objections from the local authority, we won’t remove the payphone. Many unused payphones have been converted to new uses, such as housing life-saving heart defibrillators as part of our Adopt a Kiosk scheme.
Brendan Dick,
BT Scotland director,
Alexander Graham Bell House,
1 Lochside View, Edinburgh.
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