The evolution of the phone box, 1921-2018 BT / WIRED

Over the last few months an unfamiliar object has begun to appear on London’s streets. Ratty old BT payphones, that of late had only functioned as advertising space and unofficial public toilets, are being replaced by internet-connected “Links” kiosks as part of a BT, outdoor advertising giant Primesight and Intersection, a smart cities firm which counts Alphabet subsidiary Sidewalk Labs as an investor.

In exchange for free wifi and phone charging – and even free calls if you are prepared to shout into the kiosk’s side, as apparently over 86,000 desperate callers have already done – users allow the consortium to identify them and track their movements through the city.


Here’s how it works. You approach the kiosk and connect your phone to “_InLinkUK from BT Free Wi-Fi”. Then there’s a login page. You submit your email address and accept the terms of use and privacy policy. At the same time, the kiosk also collects your device type and MAC addresses, an identifier unique to each individual wireless device.

Congratulations! Now you have allowed your personal data to be used by the three companies involved, potentially alongside third parties, who – those T&Cs state – “may include advertising partners or other providers that help [the consortium] understand [its] users”, to target tailored advertising and monitor its effectiveness.

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There may be other sensors collecting other types of data, but at this point we cannot know for sure. Unlike a consumer Internet of Things product, which would have been purchased, disassembled and analysed component by component by vigilant members of the tech community as soon as it went on sale, a teardown of Links kiosks (and other bits of connected public infrastructure) cannot be accomplished without committing some very public acts of vandalism and theft.

We do know from the published FAQs that each kiosk contains three cameras which “are turned off at the moment”. (Although presumably they are not just there for decoration.) We also know that the kiosks are designed to be “modular and extensible”, and BT’s publicity mentions that the Links will “feature sensors, which can capture real-time data relating to the local environment – including for example air and noise pollution, outdoor temperature and traffic conditions”. These sensors are not mentioned in the current privacy policy, which is “under regular review” and so presumably subject to change at the convenience of InLinkUK.


Of course, we’ve been here before. Back in 2013, UK startup Renew London put advertising screens and WiFi into 12 litter bins in the City of London and tracked unsuspecting pedestrians using their MAC addresses. But back then the idea provoked outrage, and the company went into administration after the local authority asked them to stop (although the firm behind the technology, Presence Orb, remains in operation). By contrast, the appearance of the Links kiosks has barely caused a stir.

True, the introduction of MAC address randomisation on mobile devices has made it more difficult to track people without their explicit consent, and it does seem at the moment the kiosks are only tracking users, who have accepted (though probably not read) the privacy policy. However, as they allude to in their own FAQs, Intersection, BT and Primesight can call on a great deal of supporting data to make the most of what they collect from the kiosks.

Ross Atkin

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Alphabet has also made it clear it intends to work directly with local governments, beginning with a huge project in Toronto that seems to be commencing without the actual consent of the city, while the kiosk’s FAQ states that “the data collected by these sensors could be used to introduce an exciting new range of ‘smart’ services to local councils and communities based on the Internet of Things,” suggesting that the eventual plan is to sell this data back to the very organisations whose streets they are using to collect it.


From a privacy and governance perspective, this is extremely worrying. Yet, remarkably, the Mayor’s office views it as a good deal. Rajesh Agrawal, London’s Deputy Mayor for Business declared: “I welcome this exciting new addition,” suggesting that it would help expand “London’s digital infrastructure and improve “connectivity for Londoners and visitors to our city”.

Neither of these statements is exactly false. Yet they fail to understand the exchange that is taking place. Back when the phone boxes were originally installed the deal was very clear. Local authorities voluntarily gave up a few square feet of London pavement, and in return the public received decades of useful connection.

Even then there was a cost. Phone users had to pay for calls; then, as calls became less frequent, those revenues were replaced by renting out the boxes' for advertising. Under the law phone box owners are now actually allowed to charge local authorities many thousands of pounds to remove unwanted and non-working phone boxes to compensate for the loss of revenue from the advertising they carry. Local authorities are looking at deals that made sense a few decades ago, when the technology landscape was different, and regretting them.

Now, however, the stakes are much higher, because the property is not just land, but data. Public sector organisations like local authorities, Transport for London and the NHS hold vast datasets which they are considering handing over to tech companies because of the short-term benefits that could be provided by AIs trained on the data. As the phone box situation illustrates, once public property has been handed over the transaction cannot be reversed, long after the amenity has faded and only the unintended consequences remain.

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Additionally, as the Links kiosks demonstrate, if you pack those square feet of property on a street with enough sensors you can generate your own valuable data directly from the public space itself. What’s more, the recipients of this data are global companies who have already stockpiled so much of our personal data that they are butting up against anti-monopoly regulation – and that was before they hit our streets.

What makes all of this so disappointing is that it flies in the face of London’s past experience. For over a decade, the city has been pioneered a bottom-up, pragmatic approach to building the smart city, developing and deploying world leading technologies such as autonomous trains, Oyster Card, audiovisual next stop announcements on busses, Contactless Transport Payments, and the detailed real-time, free-to-use data that powers apps like CityMapper. This expertise is even sold internationally, via Transport for London’s technical consulting arm.

Now, under Sadiq Khan, I fear we are taking a big step backwards. In June, at about the same time that the billionth contactless payment was made on the London transport network, the Mayor told the audience at London Tech Week that he planned to “make London the world’s leading smart city” – putting himself squarely in the camp of the big tech companies and their hype machine, rather than his own staff, who know, from the perspective of helping actual citizens, London is already the world’s leading Smart City.

Khan has inherited a “Smart London Board” packed with figures from academia, think tanks and huge technology and consulting firms with little experience of deploying urban innovations, and has brought in Bloomberg Associates to help draft a new “Smart London Plan”. The discussion paper about the plan, released at the end of January by London’s new Chief Digital Officer, contains the kind of platitudes about unspecified benefits of gathering data, connectivity and optimisation that litter the smart city white papers of any of the technology giants.

The discussion paper is part of a wider “Listening Exercise”, which is going on until March. But based on this evidence the new “Smart London Plan” could end up representing the moment Londoners lose control of their smart city, acquiescing to the tide of Links kiosks – and worse – in exchange for few direct benefits.

This does not have to happen.

The Mayor could back the people who have already made London a true smart city and allow them to shape his strategy. He could acknowledge that, no matter how many shiny tech incubators he opens, creating services that benefit citizens is more important than “incubating” new businesses or inviting the likes of Alphabet into the city. He could publish a code for how smart city systems deployed in London can collect and use data and how this is communicated to citizens. There is fantastic work being done on making technology more legible in London, by IoT Mark and IF in particular, that he could take inspiration from.


This would not just ensure control and value for money for citizens but also create an ecosystem of services and companies focused on using technology to solve real-world, human problems. Then London will have a smart city that works, with lessons (and potentially products and companies) that can be exported to other urban centres, long after the buzzwords switch over and the technology visionaries have disappeared to hype the next bubble.

Ross Atkin is a designer and author of the Manifesto for the Clever City

Updated 16.02.18, 17:00: This article has been changed to reflect the fact that InLink is provided by a joint venture between BT, Primesight, and Intersection, a smart cities firm in which Alphabet subsidiary Sidewalk Labs is an investor. The article also claimed that the kiosks did not need planning permission; in fact, InLink consulted local authorities and received permission.