PRESS RELEASE
One hundred years of the red telephone box: new report finds no official commemoration, 3,000 working red survivors and a thriving £1 second life
For immediate release · 21 August 2026
ISLE OF MAN, 21 August 2026. The red telephone box turns one hundred this year, and nobody official is throwing the party. A Century in Red, the 31st research report from independent comparison service BroadbandSwitch.uk, finds that Royal Mail's published 2026 stamp programme and the Royal Mint's announced 2026 commemorative coins contain no kiosk issue of any kind, and that BT has announced no centenary campaign. The hundredth birthday of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's K2, first seen on London's streets in 1926, is being marked by local councils, a handful of magazines and this report.
The 34 page study, verified against named and dated sources throughout, traces the box's full service record. Around 92,000 public payphones stood at the early 1990s peak. About 20,000 remain, some 3,000 of them classic red kiosks, and call minutes have collapsed by 99.5% since 2002. Yet the survivors are far from finished: more than 7,200 kiosks have been adopted by communities for £1 since 2008, over 700 now hold public defibrillators, and 2024 to 2025 auctions saw listed boxes fetch £8,000 to £17,000, while one on a Bath path made famous by Jane Austen went to a charity for £1.
The report also documents Ofcom's protection rules, including the 52 calls a year test that keeps a village box officially needed, the four routes a removed box can take, Hull's crownless cream kiosks, the exact British Standard shade of red, and the road from one shared phone per street in 1926 to full fibre outside 82% of UK homes today, ahead of the copper network switch off on 31 January 2027.
Dr Alex J. Martin-Smith CMgr DBA, founder of BroadbandSwitch.uk and the report's author, said: "The red box is not a relic of a failed technology. It is chapter one of the most successful one. A century after the K2 gave whole streets their first shared line, the same engineering story has put full fibre outside four front doors in five. The box deserved a proper send off with every figure checked, and that is what we have given it."
He added: "We were genuinely surprised to find no stamp, no coin and no national campaign for the centenary. That is either an oversight or an opportunity, and we would happily be proved out of date."
A Century in Red (Report No. 31) is published at broadbandswitch.uk.
Notes to editors
- BroadbandSwitch.uk is an independent UK broadband comparison service and research publisher, a trading name of SearchSwitchSave (Isle of Man company 030828B). Its reports include The 82% Country, The Complaints Floor and The Last Dial Tone, and its work has been covered by outlets including ISPreview.co.uk.
- Every figure in the report is attributed to a named, dated source, with a published methodology, a four grade source rating and an open verification list. Two period scene illustrations are AI generated and clearly labelled as such.
- Report highlights: the K6 measured at 8 ft, 3 ft wide and roughly 750 kg; the 1,400 plus boxes protected under Ofcom's rules; almost 150,000 calls to the emergency services from boxes in a single year; the K2's shallow dome traced to Sir John Soane's tomb.
- Interviews with Dr Alex J. Martin-Smith, the full PDF, key charts and a captioned image pack are available on request.
- Media contact: press@searchswitchsave.com · broadbandswitch.uk/media