LinkNYC's 6 Million Users Have Used 8.6 Terabytes of Data (venturebeat.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: What better way to replace New York City's thousands of aging pay phones than with 9.5-foot-tall kiosks outfitted with 55-inch HD displays, gigabit internet, and Android tablets preloaded with informational apps? So went the thinking back in 2014, when then-mayor Michael Bloomberg launched a competition -- the Reinvent Payphones initiative -- calling on private enterprises, residents, and nonprofits to submit designs for spruced-up, publicly accessible hubs that would provide advertising-subsidized services to the public. CityBridge's LinkNYC beat out piezoelectric pressure plates, EV charging stations, and other competing proposals for a contract, and the consortium wasted no time in getting to work.

Intersection -- which with Qualcomm and CIVIQ Smartscapes manages the kiosks -- said it plans to spend $200 million laying down 400 miles of new communication cables and installing as many as 10,000 Links that supply free Wi-Fi to passersby within a 150-foot radius. The first kiosk went online in January, though the project has quite a ways to go -- 1,780 Links are active currently, short of the initial goal of 4,500 kiosks by July of this year. [...] And the initial kiosks have really taken off. According to Intersection, the LinkNYC network now has more than 6 million unique users who have used 8.597 terabytes of data collectively -- equivalent to about 1.3 billion songs or 292 billion WhatsApp messages. And the project facilitates 600,000 phone calls every month, up from 500,000 in September of last year. Further reading: Free Municipal Wi-Fi May Be the Next Front In the War Against Privacy.

Comments

Pee fi

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

"It smells like pee!"

"Dude, you're 100 feet away!"

"Not helping its case any!"

Re:Pee fi

[Anonymous Coward]

If it will be underwater in a few years, who cares about a bit of pee now?

That's 1.43 Megabytes Each

[Anonymous Coward]

The average user's data volume could fit on a floppy disk.

Fail.

Re: That's 1.43 Megabytes Each

[tysonedwards]

The odd detail is that since September, they only used 233GB / month. That's barely enough for said 6 million people to send a ping.

Re: That's 1.43 Megabytes Each

[Anonymous Coward]

Even without dividing it out just reading the headline I was surprised by that number too I guess maybe they are making the point that it isn't that much data, but it seems really unlikely that those figures could be correct. That seems orders if magnitude too low for 6 million connections. And certainly people that love near by must be trying to use this as free home WiFi which would only increase the data throughput. I don't believe those numbers at all.

Re: That's 1.43 Megabytes Each

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the 1.3 billion songs detail - if you can fit 1.3 billion songs in 8.57tb that good enough to listen to, unless they meant .mid files

Re: That's 1.43 Megabytes Each

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if the original figure was presented in a different region that swaps comma for the decimal point.

Perhaps it was really 8597 TB and the (likely non-technical) author got it wrong.

Re: That's 1.43 Megabytes Each

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if the original figure was presented in a different region that swaps comma for the decimal point.

Perhaps it was really 8597 TB and the (likely non-technical) author got it wrong.

No. The key word is connections. A web page has like a hundred connections at this point, with all the scripts and infinite scroll, 10 tricks, hot stewardesses... type crap.

Re: That's 1.43 Megabytes Each

[rtb61]

Perhaps they were looking just at data downloaded, now they have snuck in data uploaded and not said much about the nature of the data. The design kind of makes no sense, why have it free standing when you can have it flat against a building on sticking a inches out and in many location under cover. Stop and think but you do not get as good a view up and down the street, with built in microphones, so free standing closer to the street, which makes them and their users much more vulnerable to traffic but affords a better view of the public space, up and down the street and footpath. A whole bunch of traffic now transmitted, hmm, a continuous audio visual stream from those locations, 24/7/365, yep, they are spy towers.

If they did not want them as spy towers, they would have mounted them flat against buildings, much safer for everyone and the pedestrian traffic is slower closer to buildings but you can only see effectively across the road. SPYlinkNYC.

Do people abuse it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm wondering if it limits client use somehow? I can imagine people living in the immediate area might try to smooch off of the kiosk WiFi for their home computer, instead of paying for their own internet connection.

Not a single comment?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on Slashdot commenters, surely you must have something to complain about or some opinion on how it would have been much better if they just designed it the way you just thought of??

Re: Not a single comment?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah they could have not spent the money since everyone has a cell phone anyway

Re: Not a single comment?

[stealth_finger]

Buy every one a pizza instead.

So less than a floppy disk per user.

[Anonymous Coward]

Much hype, such wow.

Pretty sure I've downloaded more than 8.6 terabytes of porn all on my own over the last 12 months, and I don't even consider that a lot.

Numbers donâ(TM)t add up

[sinan]

8.6 terabytes for 1.3 billion songs is about 7 kilobytes per song. If it is MIDI, that would work. Not mp3.

Re:Numbers donâ(TM)t add up

[Anonymous Coward]

I like short songs.

Re: Numbers donâ(TM)t add up

[Anonymous Coward]

...and i cannot lie

This Calls for no-bid S3 deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Get HQ2 back

Another msmash headline

[Anonymous Coward]

8.6 TB into 6 M users is 1.4 MB per user. But it sounds like a lot right?

Fire editor msmash. Please do yourselves a favor.

Captcha is menarche. Perfect.

292 billion What's App apps?

[rsilvergun]

Man, Jared and Ivanka need to go easy. That's nearly as many tweets as the old man did last month.

Re:TRUMP VINDICATED

[Anonymous Coward]

suck it kkk turd

Porn

[Sarusa]

That's a lot of bums watching a lot of porn. Who handles the cleaning of these?

But what about the subways?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll bet that's why the subway system sucks so bad. No money going there.
Instead subsidize the crack dealers to surf for porn.
Nice job.

Bitching about what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Voice is super low bandwidth via modern codecs. Nobody's binge watching 4K video in a kiosk. Nobody's pirating in a kiosk, and they're likely not loaded with the default spyware your shitty android mobile comes with. I'm sure someone is masturbating in a kiosk, but porn is going to be a non-factor really.

Of course bandwidth usage is low.

what the actual fu

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm used to our dipshit politicians wasting lots of money on useless trash while the MTA remains a hellscape

But TWO HUNDRED MILLION on fucking KIOSKS???

Remember the six millions

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody can do simple maths. Can six millions users in four years be serviced by 1780 kiosks?

This represents 4*365.25 = 1461 days ; 24 hours to a day so 1461 * 24 = 35064 hours.
35064 multiplied by 1780 kiosks = 62413920 is about 62.4 million hours that kiosks ran, so ten hours per user.

Well, I applaud the numbers - this works.

Perhaps someone swapped a . for a ,

[drjoeward7078]

If you look at the actual data https://data.cityofnewyork.us/... back in January, 2018 it was 8,597 cumulative Terabytes not 8.597 US vs international notation. with that much data the other indicators make more sense, like a billion songs

Re:Perhaps someone swapped a . for a ,

[Anubis IV]

Thanks for finding that. I was wondering how 6M people could have used less data in several months than some of us can go through by ourselves. I had figured the rollout was a bust with a number like that, so I was confused by the glowing review in the summary. Increasing the number by a factor of 1000 makes it a LOT more believable.

Clear!

[Anonymous Coward]

Slightly unrelated(?) but in the UK they're installing defibrillators in some old phone boxes which seems like a great idea. A modern use for a very iconic British thing.

https://www.minutesmatter.org.uk/how-convert-kiosk

On Topic

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Almost 10 Terabytes of data... between how many people... in how many days? That is like my Steam folder synced to 2 and a half PCs.

But what's really sad? It's probably the biggest in the US.

Re:TRUMP VINDICATED

[stealth_finger]

Read the report you fucking jews.

So cross 1 thing off the list of 100 reasons hes a shit bag.

8 is nothing...

[Anonymous Coward]

My family of four uses over a terrabyte of data every month. So it is news a bunch of people managed to use what I use every 7 months?

The number is only impressive in that it is very small for that number of users.