As someone that tries to survive (every day more difficult) with just a dumbphone with me, I just fantasized about a parallel universe where all those kiosks still existed, and they were somehow like computer that you can briefly rent, to do the things people do with a smartphone. Perhaps you tap a card, and it picks your accounts, and you can quickly Whatsapp someone, check your email, call an Uber or use Google Maps (maybe even check hacker news, but with time limit?!)

Maybe then many people would stop carrying their own portals, as you can briefly use the public ones for the one-off situation where you need it, but enjoy a portal-free mind the rest of the time. Also quite useful in case emergencies as it seems those portable-portals tend to run out of battery, or get lost or damaged...

https://www.kcom.com/about-us/history/ they were operated by a separate company, so the crown wasn't appropriate.

Check the split by regions: https://www.thek6project.co.uk/where-are-all-the-boxes/

To be fair, that's the authentic London telephone box experience of old.

I think the actual experience was stepping into human poo, needles and overwhelming stench of piss and let's not go into why the telephone was sticky.