I spent about an hour over the weekend trying to figure out the correct terminology for what I now believe to be referred to as a “utility box”. Power box, phone box, or electric box — utility box does cover all those bases. As kids we called it the “green box”, and there was one at the end of the street I grew up on where we’d meet, sit, and hang out.
This is not a utility box you could hang out on, but it is in somewhat dense growth of foliage.
Don’t know what the one you took a photo of is. Probably some junction box for cables or something. Might just be a marker for underground cables.
The one we had at then of the court growing up was a transformer box. We didn’t have above ground electric lines; they all were underground. So the transformer that steps the voltage down from the utility lines needs to be housed somewhere. On above ground utility lines, you’ll see them on the poles every few houses (they are usually round cylinders up on the poles).
I don’t know exactly what voltage the residential lines are at. I think it is somewhere between 10-20,000 volts. The household feed is usually 240 volts. So Tom’s ass sat for years on the box that stepped down the main feed of high voltage down to all the 240 volt lines that ran to our houses.