About 5,000 public phone boxes around the UK will be protected from closure in areas of high accident rates or poor mobile signals, under plans drawn up by Ofcom, the regulator.

The communications watchdog said it would ban BT from scrapping payphones in areas where they were still needed, namely locations with poor mobile coverage, high accident or suicide rates, or higher-than-average use. There are about 21,000 call boxes across the country. Is this a good thing or are they just smelly death traps?