A Link NYC kiosk on 83rd street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.
New kiosks providing free wireless Internet service and free domestic phone calls are starting to pop up on the Upper West Side, and the consortium that operates the kiosks should be turning them on in the next few weeks, a spokesperson told us.
So far, there are six on the Upper West Side, but none had been turned on as of Wednesday. The kiosks are clustered near Broadway, with locations near 72nd and 76th streets and several near 83rd. You can see the locations of all of the kiosks in the city on this map. The blue ones have been turned on, while the gray ones are installed but aren’t on. There will likely be dozens on the Upper West Side. The CityBridge consortium installing them has a goal of placing 510 throughout the city by July and 4,550 within four years.
The Link NYC kiosks are a city initiative originally designed to repurpose old phone booths as wifi kiosks with touchscreens that allow people to make free domestic phone calls. They each have dedicated high-speed fiber lines. The early reviews have been positive — so far, wifi speeds have been strong, although that could be tested as more people attempt to use the wifi kiosks at the same time.
Getting on the network is relatively simple, according to Engadget.
“Signing onto a Link for the first time was surprisingly easy, as far as WiFi onboarding goes. After joining the “LinkNYC Free Wi-Fi” network, you just need to plug in your email address into a landing page to get connected. If you’ve got a Hotspot 2.0 device, you’ll automatically get a prompt to install a security key for the the private LinkNYC network. I had no trouble connecting to the kiosk with my MacBook Air while sitting in the Starbucks right in front of it.”
Logging on with your phone could be a little trickier, depending on how you want to use the service.
“The process was a bit more complex for my iPhone, since I wanted to test out LinkNYC’s encrypted offering. After receiving the prompt to install the additional security key, I had to manually approve it and restart my WiFi before my phone phone would hop onto the private network.”
If you’ve used the network, let us know what you think in the comments.
Photo by Benjamin Levkov.
I think they look like the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Me too! I made that joke on FB. No one got it.
Why free domestic calls? I thought my calls were already included in my monthly cell phone bill. I think the places where the kiosks are being installed already have service to just about every cell phone provider.
And why would I want WiFi on the streets of Manhattan? Are people going to be standing on the crowded sidewalks reading their mail, FB and Instagram? If so, they don’t need to be helped along.
I’m missing something here.
I know this is hard for many UWSers to understand, but there are a lot of people who dont have unlimited calling plans and dont have huge data plans.
Many people still run on plans with “minutes” and run out sometimes. Many people dont have data plans at all, but still have smartphones (because older models are dirt cheap) so this enables those people to have internet access.
And internet access is a huge deal to opening up a world of opportunity.
And porn. But mostly good stuff. Not that porn isnt good, but you get it.
One thing that you are missing is that not every person in NYC currently has a cell phone. So there’s that.
Name one.
Roughly 96 percent of New York City residents own cell phones, and 80 percent own smartphones.
(https://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2015/11/8583262/vast-majority-new-york-city-residents-own-cell-phone)
Yes the advertising that will be on them somewhere. The idea is similar to what the public phone kiosks are there for today. Not phone calls, but ad revenue. By having a phone there makes it much easier to get it installed. Basically they are going to be advertising billboards that will happen to have a phone/wi fi access in them.
So who is paying for this?
You are, of course. Do you even have to ask?
Actually this is done by a company run by Google and former Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff. I don’t know whether any tax money is involved, but that’s who’s doing it.
I have landed in curmudgeon central here. How are these kiosks anything but a rather sleek convenience for those who want general wifi access, and better than a box of free flyers that end up littering the street to those who are concerned about the hard landscaping of the neighborhood.
And if folks without phones or who have left their’s at home can make a call in a pinch still better, and if others can sit on a bench on a Broadway island and stream John Oliver without using their data allotment better yet.
Too large. Block light. Just mire billboard space for ads. No consideration for people with Electrosensitivity. EMF emissions are not good for the body.
My only question is why so few? The UWS needs about 10-20x as many as are deployed now.
You are all missing the point of these kiosks. They are all equipped with multiple cameras and beacon technology to track you.
They are ‘trackers’ disguised as a public service. They are the modern equivalent of a surveillance state, with big data advertising along for the ride.
The rest of this debate is a distraction.
Lord no! This will bridge the outside world and bring non-Upper West Siders and their non-Upper West Side ideas to our neighborhood! Perhaps Community United can start a “Save Our Dirty Sidewalks” opposition group.
This will certainly be good for tourists who are walking the streets and don’t have a US data plan.
If they put these in lower income areas it could solve a lot of problems for kids who don’t now have good access to do their homework.
One question is about bandwidth – will a couple of people streaming Netflix bring down the speeds and make the kiosks useless?
Like Google and other “free” digital services, it is about your information and advertising. The social contract you sign for a free service. Unless the wifi signal reach is far, it will have very little utility to residents of NYC (or the US for that matter), who can make calls, check email etc on the cellphones through their cell phone plan. People wont be whipping out their laptops on the street to log into wifi to work or whatnot. However, if the signal is very strong, you can have folks sitting in diners/restaurants (or even their apartments) using the wifi to wok on their laptop. The real benefit will be to foreign tourists who need free Wifi access for their phone to get online. I cannot tell you how useful this was for me when I travel out of the US, and need free wifi access to check email, maps, skype call, etc.
Who’s going to be standing around using WiFi on the sidewalk? If you have a smartphone, you’ve got data already. If you’ve got a laptop where are you going to sit? This seems pretty pointless.
What James said. These are going to be used to track you.
I was understating the problem. Not curmudgeon central alone but a vortex of paranoia.
Trigger warnings:
Walking down the street can expose you to advertising.
There are electronic devices being used by people near you.
Street lights have been known to cause shadows in the daytime.
Jeez.
Here’s why people are concerned.
The (NYCLU) also raised concerns about surveillance and sought a clarification about CityBridge’s policies regarding the sensors and cameras on the kiosks. From the letter:
“The policy states that “[CityBridge] will not give any data collected by environmental sensors or cameras to anyone other than the City or governmental law enforcement ,” with a few exceptions. One of those exceptions is with “advanced, written permission from the City.” We would like to know whether the environmental sensors and cameras will be routinely feeding into any City or NYPD systems, including the Domain Awareness System.
https://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/03/nyclu-raises-linknyc-privacy-concerns.html
This is such a relief. If there is one thing I have been worried about is that not enough people on the sidewalk are able to use their phones for talking and texting. I hope to see more people staring mindlessly at their phones while ignoring everyone and everything around them.
How secure are they,really?
One wouldn’t think it possible to find anything more worthless than an old NYC phone booth, but DeBlasio has indeed managed to find something – a wifi kiosk. These are the kind of really stupid things that happen here all the time. You would never see something like this in say, Japan. What is the purpose of these kiosks exactly!! Free cell phone calls? Is there anyone who pays for phone calls anymore that actually has a cell phone?
And since when is it my job as a taxpayer to provide people with FREE phone calling? Even the old phone booths used to cost a quarter a call. If you don’t have unlimited calling in 2016, PAY FOR THE CALL. Old phone booths were designed to provide convenience, NOT FREE CALLS? INSANE. Just another free advertising crony corporate gift that is of NO benefit to us.