London’s iconic phone booths reborn as solar gadget-charging kiosks

By | October 3, 2014

 

The ‘solarbox’ scheme may pain some smartphone-eschewing old-timers. But at least London’s beloved phone boxes are still kind of being used to make calls, right?

Source: www.mnn.com

On Tottenham Court Road, a single démodé London phone booth dressed in the standard “currant red” has been painted over in green and outfitted with roof-mounted solar panels. Inside the kiosk, the payphone hardware has been removed and replaced with charging stations for mobile devices and screens that, naturally, play advertisements.

 

An additional five so-called solarboxes will join the kick-off kiosk at Tottenham Court Road Station by next spring. It’s expected that each solarbox, capable of boosting device batteries by 20 percent in 10 minutes flat, can charge up to 100 mobile devices per day.
And those looking to use a solarbox needn’t have a pocketful of pence or swipe a credit card. The sextet of charging stations will be free of charge although users are, as mentioned, subjected to a stream of adverts while they patiently wait for their batteries to receive a boost.

 

Author: Staff Writer

Craig Keefner -- With over 40 years in the industry and technology, Craig is widely considered to be an expert in the field. Major early career kiosk projects include Verizon Bill Pay kiosk and hundreds of others. Craig helped start kioskmarketplace and formed the KMA. Note the point of view here is not necessarily the stance of the Kiosk Association or kma.global