A white telephone box in Kingston-upon-Hull, East Yorkshire, England

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In 1906, when Britain's multiple regional phone companies were bundled together in a move that led to the creation of the Post Office telecommunications network, Hull missed out. Isolated on the east coast, the city was told to look after its own telecoms system. The Hull Corporation Telephone Department was born, and for decades it was the city's anomaly, a locally-run phone system which had its own operators and phone boxes (they were beige) in the days when everyone else in Britain had to subscribe to the state-run monopoly. In the 1980s, when the Government started deregulating the phone system, the city decided to turn its phone department into a wholly- owned company. Kingston Communications was born in 1987, and, being small and able to react quickly, it became a testbed for new technologies from overseas phone companies.

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Size: 3350px × 5005px
Location: Hull, East Yorkshire, England
Photo credit: © Maurice Gordon / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: blue, box, call, communications, east, hull, kingston, kingston--hull, phone, public, querky, sky, telephone, white, yorkshire