from the where-will-Clark-Kent-change-clothes dept.
New York City plans to replace sidewalk pay phones with Wi-Fi kiosks that include built-in tablets and phone chargers:
In New York City, the future is calling. New York City is saying goodbye to sidewalk pay phones, and hello to free Wi-Fi kiosks. Plans call for installing 7,500 of them. "This is going to be the fastest and largest free municipal network in the world," said Colin O'Donnell, the chief technology officer for CityBridge, which is partnering with the city to replace the old pay phones with high speed internet. They're called Links: slabs that look like fancy mall directories, but are actually hubs for Wi-Fi that can reach as far as 400 feet, about a block and a half. They'll include built-in tablet computers, and phone chargers. You can use them to call anywhere in the U.S. for free.
The first is already installed on a corner in the city's East Village, though it hasn't been switched on yet. Sitting at a Starbucks a few feet away, grad student Aliyah Guttmann said she's a fan. "It's interesting," she said. "I mean it's going to be more useful than a pay phone now." But she's not sure how much she'll use it. "I'm not going to be sitting outside with my computer on the Wi-Fi connecting to that and working there," she said.
To pay for the new system, the kiosks will have ads, big ones, right there on the sidewalk. O'Donnell says those ads will raise enough to cover the free stuff, with money left over for the company and the city. City officials say all the free Wi-Fi fits with their mission to give more poor people access to the internet.
We first saw this mentioned over a year ago.
Related Stories
The NYT reports that city officials say that beginning in 2015 thousands of payphones across New York City will be converted into Wi-Fi hot spots, providing free Internet access, free domestic calls using cellphones or a built-in keypad, a charging station for mobile devices and access to city services and directions. “It’s going to help us close the digital divide,” says Maya Wiley, counsel to the mayor, noting that low-income people, particularly blacks and Latinos, rely disproportionately on cellphone browsing to get online (PDF) and data charges can add up. The network will be 100 times as fast as average municipal Wi-Fi systems, so a two-hour movie can be downloaded in about 30 seconds. The kiosks’ Wi-Fi range will extend 150 feet in any direction and up to 250 devices will be able to use the network at each kiosk without diminishing service. The city hopes to install about 10,000 kiosks, each about 9.5 feet high and less than a foot wide. The first 500 CityBridge sites will be available by late 2015 to early 2016, with the construction expected to go on for six years. The contract would last for 15 years.
A successful pilot project has been in operation since 2012 but some elected officials have expressed reservations about the city’s decision to entrust the final product to CityBridge, a consortium made up of companies including Qualcomm, Comark, Control Group and Titan calling it a monopolistic arrangement. “Instead of trying to rush the process, the administration should seek a new authorizing resolution from the City Council that contemplates multiple companies,” says Letitia James, the city’s public advocate. For her part, Wiley says that she is prepared for lawsuits against the city. “In my legal opinion,” says Wiley, “this is the coolest thing ever.”
New York City's WiFi kiosks have over 5 million users
New York City's high-speed WiFi kiosks have been around for a while, but just how many people are using them? Quite a few, in fact. The LinkNYC team has revealed that there were over 5 million registered WiFi users as of September 2018, with over a billion sessions spread across the 1,700-plus units in the city. People make over 500,000 calls every month, too, although it's not clear how many of those were ice cream truck pranksters. You can safely presume that there's plenty of demand.
As VentureBeat reported, though, these kiosks haven't been without their share of concerns. They're ad-subsidized, but they've barely earned enough to meet the CityBridge consortium's minimum guarantee. The group also removed the kiosks' web browsers after complains of people surfing porn sites or hogging the machines. There's also the concerns about privacy given the presences of cameras and sensors on every kiosk, although Intersection (a part of CityBridge) has stressed that it doesn't collect sensitive info like exact locations or browser history.
Previously: Ten Thousand NYC Pay Phones to Become Free Wi-Fi Hot Spots
New York City to Install 7,500 Wi-Fi Kiosks
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DECbot on Thursday January 07 2016, @07:41PM
It'd be interesting if they could get those kiosks to include TOR exit nodes or support mesh networking. I could easily see this turn to a freemium product: DSL speed for free, broadband speeds for paid accounts.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday January 07 2016, @08:00PM
Can't you just use Tor and connect to the Wi-Fi network?
I don't see NYC building a massive amount of Tor exit nodes. NYPD Police Commissioner Bill Bratton or somebody else would scream "terrorism". Your best bet for more exit nodes would be libraries or the rumored Mozilla-Tor collaboration.
Perhaps mesh networking could be handled on the user device end. That is, your device, mobile or not, connects to some part of the 7,500 node Wi-Fi network, then shares that connection wirelessly with other devices.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday January 08 2016, @01:31AM
Yikes, the build out might happen faster than NYC planned.
Wouldn't even have to to a true mesh to see this thing balloon bigger than they expected in short order.
I suppose they would have to so some sort of TTL limits to prevent that. (or limit mac address per connection some how).
Still you have to expect this will be sweet for exactly 10 days, and then the tragedy of the commons will strike with a vengeance.
The bandwidth will be gone, the hackers will move in, and the whole thing will become a security laboratory where the high priced help will get schooled.
The tablets will probably have to be behind bullet proof glass and will permanently be covered with, well, nuff said I spose.
Still: The sooner that gets built out the better, because there are bills in congress to prevent municipal broadband.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 07 2016, @09:10PM
Your libertarian bullshit plan doesn't mention torrent or bitcoin anywhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2016, @03:51AM
DSL speed is not broadband? "A 2012 survey found that "DSL continues to be the dominant technology for broadband access" with 364.1 million subscribers worldwide." See http://point-topic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Sample-Report-Global-Broadband-Statistics-Q2-2012.pdf [point-topic.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by useless on Thursday January 07 2016, @08:06PM
New York City to Re-install WiFi kiosk after vandalism
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday January 07 2016, @08:11PM
I'm wondering what will stop people from hogging the tablet and charger in the kiosk. Although even if that does happen other people still get use out of it with the municipal Wi-Fi network.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by useless on Thursday January 07 2016, @08:26PM
Well, the weather would stop them from standing around outside for too long. And who would want to stand around outside for the time it takes to charge a phone when there's a coffee shop right there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 07 2016, @09:35PM
Run an extension cord to your apartment. It's Free as in Gimme FREE SHIT.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday January 08 2016, @01:51AM
Probably the best place to steal a phone would be at the kiosk.
On the other hand some enterprising big honkin dude could make a killing "watchin" your phone charge for two bucks for 15 minutes.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by cykros on Friday January 08 2016, @04:55PM
Well, the weather would stop them from standing around outside for too long.
Some people will stand out in some pretty inclement weather for quite some time. Though I guess in New York, they have laws [nytimes.com] to prevent that these days.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday January 08 2016, @02:00AM
I'm wondering what will stop people from hogging the tablet and charger
Hope they wire the charger jacks for power only.
Hope people get a charge only cable or dongle for their phone.
I'd have to be in desperate straits to plug into an unknown usb port.
Even the airport charge kiosks aren't always safe and they are under surveillance.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2016, @03:45AM
Have you ever come down with something from an airport hook-up?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2016, @09:30AM
All my USB-charged devices (well, admittedly I only have two of them, a phone and an ebook reader) explicitly ask whether I only want to charge or also want to transfer data in case I connect an USB which allows data connection. So is there any attack that could succeed if I tell the device only to charge?
(Score: 2) by deadstick on Thursday January 07 2016, @10:37PM
Vandalism? On the Internet? OMG, somebody do something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2016, @09:32AM
I think he didn't mean internet vandalism, but plain old physical vandalism. As in, physically damaging those kiosks.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday January 08 2016, @02:06AM
I don't know how the thousands of devices connecting to these nodes isn't going to instantly kill throughput, but the idea is nice. I can imagine that if there are homeless who have smartphones (whether their own or given to them) they'll be able to connect to services and potentially find work through this wifi network. Other people who have homes but no connectivity (as in, the working poor or recent immigrants) will benefit, too, as will the better-off who find themselves in a service shadow in the city.
But god I wish we had Google Fiber in this city. The established players (Time-Warner Cable, Verizon FIOS, etc) are fucking terrible. The data rates are paltry and the cost is ridiculous, and that's if you can get them, which even in many wealthy parts of the city, you can't.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Friday January 08 2016, @08:05PM