Slow Saturday Special: British Phone Booth

"London phone booths find new life as charging stations" 0123456789New York Times Syndicate0123456789   October 04, 2014
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01234567890123456789An enabler if not criminal collaborator of organized crime when you think about it.0123456789

LONDON — They are much loved but little used these days, so Britain’s red telephone booths are often creatively repurposed — as tiny public libraries, art installations, shower stalls, places to keep defibrillators, elongated aquariums, and even the world’s smallest pub.

Now someone has come up with a reuse that actually involves phones, the mobile kind that helped make the venerable kiosks obsolete.

Two entrepreneurs are transforming decommissioned telephone booths (they call them boxes in Britain) into charging stations for mobile devices. The first one was unveiled in London this week, and five more are set to be operating in the city soon.

The booths, now painted green and named Solarboxes, can charge up to 100 phones or tablets a day, the entrepreneurs say. The service is free: The power comes from a 33-inch solar panel on the roof, and other costs are covered by advertising displayed on a screen inside while a device is charging.

Kirsty Kenney and Harold Craston, two geography graduates from the London School of Economics, are behind the initiative.

They won 5,000 pounds ($8,000) to finance the project this year in a Low Carbon Entrepreneur competition sponsored by the mayor of London, Boris Johnson....

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01234567890123456789Also a major purveyor of crap I really don't care about these days, too.0123456789
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01234567890123456789The call out to France was not included in my printed paper.0123456789