New York City hasn’t exactly “paved paradise and put up a parking lot,” but officials there are repurposing unused pay phone stalls and turning them into free high-speed Wi-Fi hubs in all five of the city’s boroughs. The plan has been on the drawing board for a couple of years, with a request for proposals issued early last year.
The first of approximately 10,000 LinkNYC kiosks are being installed and are expected to be in use early this year as part of a $200 million project. Not only will the project allow low-income citizens of New York to have free broadband access, but the project will also be completed at no cost to taxpayers.
A public-private partnership, the project is the brain child of a consortium of advertising, technology and connectivity firms that will pay the up-front costs of the project and operate the system. The kiosk network is also expected to be a money-maker, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars from advertising that will appear on the 55-inch screens in the kiosks. Money from the advertisements will be used to fund the program.
In addition to the display screens for advertisements, the project also includes:
- Free access to high-speed Wi-Fi;
- Power-only USB ports for charging mobile devices and Internet-ready tablets;
- Free phone calls to anywhere in the United States on cell phones or by using a built-in keypad; and
- Touch-screen access to information such as directions, maps and listings of city services.
Initial plans are ultimately to install 10,000 of the kiosks. They are expected to be able to service up to 250 mobile devices within a range of 150 feet of the kiosks. Officials are hopeful the program will help bridge the “digital divide” for low-income New Yorkers who cannot afford Internet access. Mayor Bill de Blasio said the connectivity project will be “the fastest and largest municipal Wi-Fi network in the world.” It is expected to be 100 times as fast as the typical municipal Wi-Fi system.