NYC is turning thousands of payphones into Wi-Fi hotspots

A new “communications network” known as LinkNYC has announced plans to turn all of the payphones in New York City, of which there are many, into public Wi-Fi stations, according to The New York Times. The kiosks will be taller and narrower than average phone booths, but will retain the advertising space.

NYC has been trying to figure out what to do with its dilapidated payphones for quite some time. The city did a miniscule rollout of Wi-Fi hotspots at 10 phone booths back in 2012, and in 2013, the Department of Information Technology and Communications made numerous proposals for redesigning and repurposing the booths into something more useful and aesthetically pleasing.

According to Tech Crunch, the LinkNYC network is a public-private partnership between the Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation and CityBridge, which is a coalition of companies that includes Qualcomm, Antenna, Comark, and Transit Wireless (the company that has installed Wi-Fi in 47 stations of the city’s subway system).

The LinkNYC kiosks will offer “up to gigabit speeds,” feature charging stations for devices, have touch screens for accessing information about the city, and allow free domestic phone calls. While the consortium hasn’t elaborated about its gigabit capabilities, and it hasn’t mentioned any attempts to secure a contract with any of the ISPs in the area.

However, according to CNET, LinkNYC plans to deploy “the fastest and largest free municipal Wi-Fi deployment in the world” and claims that it will be “more than 20 times fast than the average home Internet service in NYC” with a “seamless roaming experience from Link to Link” and adds that this will all come “at no cost to taxpayers.”

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