So,‘Silly Week’ is upon us, and what could possibly be sillier than an EU directive regulating how many payphones we have? Guess what, the ‘Universal Service Directive’ does just that! Article 6(1) issues the dictat:
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“Member States shall ensure that national regulatory authorities can impose obligations on undertakings in order to ensure that public pay telephones are provided to meet the reasonable needs of end-users in terms of the geographical coverage, the number of telephones, the accessibility of such telephones to disabled users and the quality of services.”
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Of course, OFCOM have managed to turn this into several policy documents and dictats of their own, some of the highlights of which are:
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“The obligation to provide PCBs applies across the EU but has been implemented in different ways in different Member States. For example, some countries such as Germany and Latvia specify the number of universal service public pay telephones. Others such as the Czech Republic and France set the number of universal service public pay telephones based on X per ‘000 inhabitants.”
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“The procedures for the removal of PCBs vary between countries. In Germany, factors such as the distance between alternative payphones, the revenue individual payphones generate and mobile coverage are considered in consultation with local authorities. By contrast, in the Slovak Republic, the universal service provider can determine whether or not to remove a public pay telephone.”
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“Between January and October 2004, the average objection rate across the UK by public bodies to BT’s planned removals was 43 per cent.”
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And what were the reasons for these objections?
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“The removal of a payphone area serving 19 households, taking £1.40 in revenue per annum and with no calls to the emergency services in the preceding four months, was objected to by the parish council on the grounds that it provided a “useful landmark”
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“A parish council objected to the removal of the PCB as “the light from the payphone illuminated the parish council notice board at night”. The PCB took £12.98 in revenue per annum.”
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“Another parish council objected “because the light provides a useful beacon on dark nights.”
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But it’s not just the yokals that want in on the NIMBY action, oh no!
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“Some MPs have suggested that they should be involved in the consultation [to allow the removal of a payphone].”
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So following the latest consultation, how did we actually decide to implement these six or so lines of a fairly irrelevant EU directive?
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“We wanted to be able to strike the right balance between the number of call boxes that the public actually needs, and BT’s wish to remove phone boxes that lose them money. This booklet explains the rules that BT must now follow if they want to remove the only phone box in a local area, and the important role that local authorities play in that process.”
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All that silly bureaucracy over a few silly sentences some silly Eurocrat wrote, just fancy that!
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“Member States shall ensure that national regulatory authorities can impose obligations on undertakings in order to ensure that public pay telephones are provided to meet the reasonable needs of end-users in terms of the geographical coverage, the number of telephones, the accessibility of such telephones to disabled users and the quality of services.”
-
Of course, OFCOM have managed to turn this into several policy documents and dictats of their own, some of the highlights of which are:
-
“The obligation to provide PCBs applies across the EU but has been implemented in different ways in different Member States. For example, some countries such as Germany and Latvia specify the number of universal service public pay telephones. Others such as the Czech Republic and France set the number of universal service public pay telephones based on X per ‘000 inhabitants.”
-
“The procedures for the removal of PCBs vary between countries. In Germany, factors such as the distance between alternative payphones, the revenue individual payphones generate and mobile coverage are considered in consultation with local authorities. By contrast, in the Slovak Republic, the universal service provider can determine whether or not to remove a public pay telephone.”
-
“Between January and October 2004, the average objection rate across the UK by public bodies to BT’s planned removals was 43 per cent.”
-
And what were the reasons for these objections?
-
“The removal of a payphone area serving 19 households, taking £1.40 in revenue per annum and with no calls to the emergency services in the preceding four months, was objected to by the parish council on the grounds that it provided a “useful landmark”
-
“A parish council objected to the removal of the PCB as “the light from the payphone illuminated the parish council notice board at night”. The PCB took £12.98 in revenue per annum.”
-
“Another parish council objected “because the light provides a useful beacon on dark nights.”
-
But it’s not just the yokals that want in on the NIMBY action, oh no!
-
“Some MPs have suggested that they should be involved in the consultation [to allow the removal of a payphone].”
-
So following the latest consultation, how did we actually decide to implement these six or so lines of a fairly irrelevant EU directive?
-
“We wanted to be able to strike the right balance between the number of call boxes that the public actually needs, and BT’s wish to remove phone boxes that lose them money. This booklet explains the rules that BT must now follow if they want to remove the only phone box in a local area, and the important role that local authorities play in that process.”
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All that silly bureaucracy over a few silly sentences some silly Eurocrat wrote, just fancy that!
5 comments:
Glorious!
To be fair, maybe BT could just dismantle the actual phone and leave the box (which presumably has no scrap value) standing as a handy noise-free place if you're on your mobile; for prostitutes to put up their cards (the first two seem to apply in London) and, if the local council wants to pay the electricity for the light, good luck to them.
Yeah, you'd think with all this devolution/big society claptrap that NIMBY coincils and MP's will get told to pay for phoneboxes themselves.
I'm not holding my breath.
Incidently, OFCOM's telephone monkey told me that the only rule on phoneboxes was that 60% of them had to be unprofitable. I guess that's just how their monkey trainers explain it to them.
I was like, 'what, so 60% of phoneboxes have to be where no one wants them?' he just kind of sniggered.
If you read the "diktat" carefully, you see it's not much of a directive. All it is saying is that regulators cannot be prevented from making 'phone companies provide phone boxes, not that they have to tell 'phone companies to provide 'phone boxes, just that the gov't can't prevent them doing so, if they wished. So it's not "EU directive regulating how many payphones we have", is it? The fact that OFCOM are using it as such does not make it so.
This is an excellent example of British bureaucracy interfering with our lives and blaming it on Brussels.
Bayard - Exactly! So George can cut it then without the 'EU' excuse and Dibley Parish Council can buy their own payphone (or the rich bald one with the big house can let everyone use his).
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