Oxford Street phone boxes to be replaced with ‘digital BT hubs’
By Adrian Zorzut, Local Democracy Reporter
Councillors have voted to replace phone boxes on Oxford Street with digital BT Hubs offering free public Wi-Fi and calls.
Three 75 inch LCD advert screens equipped with a phone, USB charging points and an emergency button will be installed on Oxford Street and Praed Street after Westminster City councillors voted for them during a planning meeting Tuesday night.
But members voted overwhelmingly to reject two hubs on Great Portland Street claiming it was not a proper place to install them because they were not a welcomed “visual amenity”.
Committee chair, cllr Paul Fisher, said: “I have to consider this is not as commercial a street and that it’s not a proper place… for the BT hub to be positioned.”
West End councillor Patrick Lilley worried they would become “magnets” for anti-social behaviour and voted against four of five proposals.
He said: “The real crime is to use these spaces for drug deals, drug meetings. You don’t have to use your mobile phone and have traceable calls… What we will effectively be doing is helping connect the drug dealers and I think that is a real problem for me.”
Labour’s Md Shamsed Chowdhury said BT shared the contents of those calls with police and said the current phone booths acted as a “storage for drugs”.
BT has submitted plans for hubs across 24 sites with eight now rejected and 16 under consideration, according to a council document.
The report said similar plans had been rejected by the council in 2018 but overturned by the Planning Inspectorate a year later.
It also showed concerns about the devices attracting “drug gangs as well as rough sleepers” from the Met, who later withdrew those concerns after meeting with BT.
The hubs will pop up at 70-88 and 150-154 Oxford Street and opposite 19-21 Praed Street and will be in place for a five year trial.
Pictured top: A phone box that will be replaced with a BT Hub in Oxford Street and a BT Hub that will be installed (Picture: Google Street View and Westminster City council)
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