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New York's Free LinkNYC Internet Kiosks Are Now Used By 5 Million Users, Who Have Participated in 1 Billion Sessions and Make 500,000 Phone Calls a Month (venturebeat.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: In 2014, in a bid to replace the more than 11,000 aging payphones scattered across New York City's pedestrian walkways with more functional fixtures, Mayor Bill de Blasio launched a competition -- the Reinvent Payphones initiative -- calling on private enterprises, residents, and nonprofits to submit designs for replacements. In the end, LinkNYC -- a plan proposed by consortium CityBridge -- secured a contract from the city, beating out competing proposals with electricity-generating piezoelectric pressure plates and EV charging stations. The plan was to spend $200 million installing as many as 10,000 kiosks, or Links, that would supply free, encrypted gigabit Wi-Fi to passers-by within 150 feet. They would have buttons that link directly to 911 and New York's 311 service and free USB charging stations for smartphones, plus wired handsets that would allow free calls to all 50 states and Washington, D.C. And perhaps best of all, they wouldn't cost the city a dime; advertising would subsidize expansion and ongoing maintenance.
The Links wouldn't just get urbanites online and let them juice their phones, though. The idea was to engage users, too, principally with twin 55-inch high-definition displays and tethered Android tablets with map functions. Mike Gamaroff, head of innovation at Kinetic, characterized the Links in 2016 as "first and foremost a utility for the people of the city, that also doubles up as an advertising network." Two years after the deployment of prototypical kiosks in Manhattan, Intersection -- a part of the aforementioned CityBridge, which with Qualcomm and CIVIQ Smartscapes manages the kiosks -- is ready to declare them a success. The roughly 1,600 Links recently hit three milestones: 1 billion sessions, 5 million users, and 500,000 phone calls a month. Recommended reading: Free Municipal Wi-Fi May Be the Next Front In the War Against Privacy.
The Links wouldn't just get urbanites online and let them juice their phones, though. The idea was to engage users, too, principally with twin 55-inch high-definition displays and tethered Android tablets with map functions. Mike Gamaroff, head of innovation at Kinetic, characterized the Links in 2016 as "first and foremost a utility for the people of the city, that also doubles up as an advertising network." Two years after the deployment of prototypical kiosks in Manhattan, Intersection -- a part of the aforementioned CityBridge, which with Qualcomm and CIVIQ Smartscapes manages the kiosks -- is ready to declare them a success. The roughly 1,600 Links recently hit three milestones: 1 billion sessions, 5 million users, and 500,000 phone calls a month. Recommended reading: Free Municipal Wi-Fi May Be the Next Front In the War Against Privacy.
As I understand, the arrangement is similar to that between the MTA and Intersection/Alphabet - The MTA (or city in this case) bears little to none of the cost, while the Corporation who installed them makes up the cost through advertising.
I design and oversee the execution of plenty of digital installations that have to withstand the elements & abuse from the public, and $20k a pop is not surprising at all. A daylight visible screen alone is like $3k - $5k, plus all the misc power & networking gak, ventilation & and possibly heating to keep the stuff within operating temps. Wrap that up in a stainless steel enclosure, bolt it to the ground, and get it powered and wired, and I'd be pleasantly surprised if the subcontractor made their 15%.
never drink kool-aid from a big vat
Sloppy Journalism. The Payphone Projects been documenting issues with these kiosks, from out of date news and weather, bus alerts for lines not on nearby streets, to non-functioning tablets and inflated usage statistics.
What you are missing is that the calls thru the wired handsets are only a very small part of what these do. They are also free WiFi hotspots, so if you live close by, you don't need to pay for Internet.
But most of the cost is to pay for weather and vandal resistant advertising displays.