People in the United Kingdom are racing to save a beloved icon, in a mission that in some ways resembles efforts to save the giant panda in China, or the polar bear in the Arctic.
But this icon isn't threatened by habitat loss or climate change. The problem here comes from companies like Apple, Samsung and Nokia.
"Mobiles have taken over," laments Mark Johnson, the man in charge of payphones for British Telecom.
People below a certain age may not even know what a payphone is: think great big cell phone that lives in a box on the street. Drop a coin to make a call.
In London, the crimson red "telephone box" is a revered icon, as much as the black taxicab or the double-decker bus. But people still ride black cabs and double-decker buses. Payphones haven't fared as well: Calls from them have dropped 80 percent in the last five years.
"In 2002 we had 92,000 payphones," Johnson says. "We've now got 48,000 on the street."
I stood with him in front of the most photographed booth in all of London, the one right at the foot of Big Ben.
"Everybody comes up to it. They have a photograph with Big Ben in the background. And a lot of them are holding up the mobile phone to their ear rather than making a phone call," he says. "I wish everyone that used this made a single call out of it, because it would be absolutely the best used kiosk in London."
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