Yes, basically a junction box. The black on the left with yellow/black wires is the old underground lead in phone cable. Probably the line in from the road enroute to the first phone or jackpoint. Sometimes used in various parts of the internal wiring if modifications had been made over the years (not over the last 20 odd years though). Possibly just a feed to a bell circuit or something but hard to say for sure without seeing the whole circuit. 

Yep the grey flat twin is the xDSL killer.

HISTORY

The red sort of oval box was a standard GPO/NZPO Telecoms Dept Junction block/box from the 1960s/70s and used to be used to hard connect a phone (via screw terminals) to the house wiring, long before the introduction of Jackpoints. It had many colour variants to match the standard phone colours of the day but were mainly Red, Blue & Green.   It was superseded by a similar brown/Tan Square box that served the same purpose in the 1980s - these are/where know as NEO Blocks, which were then phased out with the introduction of the standard 6 pin 3 wire Jack points (which again have been phaseed out by the 2 wire version and again by the introduction of RJ45s as the 'Standard' communication connection.

The older blocks can still be found in many houses built or recabled through the 60s/70s and 80s in the ceilings/cupboards etc as an interconection point of the house wiring.

^^^

I've seen a few of them for sale in 2nd hand building parts businesses, along with the old short wave radio Aerial / Earth outlets.