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Good Riddance Payphones: NYC's Free Gigabit Wi-Fi Kiosks Go Live (networkworld.com)
alphadogg writes: New York City on Thursday officially launched its payphone booth replacements: shiny new 9-foot-plus-high kiosks, dubbed Links, that offer free Gigabit-speed Wi-Fi as well as free domestic VoIP calls via a tablet app. Mayor Bill de Blasio, joined by vendor partners such as Qualcomm and NYC Department of IT and Telecommunications reps, showed off the first operating LinkNYC kiosks, just over a dozen of which are spread across 3rd Avenue for starters. The spacing of the hotspots will enable users to stay connected as they walk down the street. More than 500 of the advertising-supported kiosks are slated to be installed by mid-year, with promises of secure and private connectivity.
How exactly can someone like me, without a "device," use these to make a phone call? Like to 9-1-1 in an emergency?
with promises of secure and private connectivity.
For values of "private" where you have to register with an e-mail address and every connection you make is linked to this account, and every web page you browse to is logged.
The ads play on big screens on the sides of the kiosk, as far as I can discern, you wouldn't even see them while making a call. They're just digital billboard space for passing pedestrians.
Oh no... it's the future.
You can make a free call with Vonage through an android tablet - part of the Kiosk.
I wonder how long the tablets will last...
https://www.link.nyc/
There are no doors - they are open to the outside. So where is Clark Kent going to do his thing?
and how do those work for the deaf, blind, or those physically unable to operate a tablet computer.. but are otherwise perfectly capable of placing a call using the so-called "obsolete" touch dial pay phones or tty devices?
Curious, how did the traditional pay-phone work with the deaf or those physically unable to operate it?
For those that are blind, LinkNYC have a traditional keypad on them
Can't help but think that at some point these will be used mostly for police work. I'm guessing they won't hire Apple for encryption work, they'll want to know every single bit that passes thru these. Do they have cameras and "gunshot" detectors yet? I'm not compeltley paranoid, I do see the value in these, and more good than harm will come of them, but I feel like it's just the city getting us used to surveillance. At some point self charging drones will be stationed on top of everyone of these zooming around the city, peeping in windows. Benign today, malignant tomorrow.
NYC can be very cold in winter, and trying to hear your correspondant in the street can be hard with the background noise.
Too bad that most of the time they were busted, and/or full of vomit, piss and a loony...
I fear the same thing will happen to these; they'll be smashed and graffitied to death in minutes
Curious, how did the traditional pay-phone work with the deaf
The deaf would use a TDD terminal. You could carry one with you, or some payphones had one built in. If you carried your own, it used acoustic couplers to connect to the phone, and the bitrate was sufficiently low to make it usable with them.
As for now . . . SMS should work well enough, or a video call so you can communicate with sign language.
For other disabilities, I don't have any specific answers.
www.wavefront-av.com
There is a HOPE conference this summer. If it doesn't happen prior to that, it'll happen then.
www.wavefront-av.com
As more folks start using the WiFi hotspots near ground level, it should take considerable load off of the cell phone towers in the city.
Free Internet anywhere in NYC?!?!? Provided by GOVERNMENT!??!!
This is so evil I don't know where to begin! How dare government step in and do something that could be done by a private corporation were it only profitable enough to pay their CEO millions of dollars?
How the hell am I supposed to get out of The Matrix? Sounds like a conspiracy to me.
And how the hell am I supposed to get new numbers from The Machine? Sounds like Samaritan at work.
Searching for IP address...please stand by.
No, but the federal government provides (well, subsidies) dumbphone service for poor people. (They'll actually subsidize smartphone service as well, but only like 20% of it).
This was a recent evolution from when they just used to subsidize landline service, and now someone can choose whether to apply it to a landline or a cellphone.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
I didn't realize someone stood there and would hold your eye open and force you to stair at the TV screens on the sides before you could make a call.
So far, the ads are not animated. They change periodically, and are pretty bright - so it's a bit of new noise in the neighborhood. Haven't used the wifi yet for anything other than verifying that it works, and it automatically picks you up as you progress up the street - though it does cut out between kiosks, so the range doesn't seem to be seemless. Remains to be seen how useful this is - unless, you live withing wifi range and can use it as a free ISP...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Not so much on the streets, but they making a killing in prisons, I hear.
Most sockets/jacks are only rated for so many mating cycles. I can't imagine these things are going to last long with 100 people/day plugging into them. Even the most durable, industrial connectors are typically only good for 10,000 or so mating cycles, and some are as few as ~1,000 (like microUSB)
I hope whomever designed this thing made the socket easily replaceable.
What will this do for 911call location issues ? Currently there are numerous issues with VOIP and 911, and AFAIK some solutions but none that provides the full functionality of standard phone calls as far as guiding emergency services to the location of the 911 call.
https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Perhaps I missed it, but I didn't see for sure who was paying for this.
It appears to be a gift from a group of companies, with possibly some money from the city government. And advertising was expected to pay the operating costs -- but not the initial installation, and the development that preceded it.
Did I miss that?
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.