An example of a new 5g LinkNYC tower presented by the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications.
The LinkNYC kiosks that now allow phone calls and offer free wifi are being expanded to become much taller 5G cell towers too, and the design was just approved by the Public Design Commission.
But the approval only applies to commercial and industrial areas, and a debate has opened up about whether they’re appropriate for residential blocks. The commission did not approve them for residential areas, saying there needs to be further study.
Citybridge, which operates the towers, fell behind projections for revenue-sharing payments to the city because it didn’t sell enough ads on the kiosks, according to Crain’s. The 5G upgrade would mean the company could make more money by renting space to telecom companies.
“Signe Nielsen, president of the commission, said the panel will reconsider allowing the equipment in residential and historic districts once there is more financial data on the rollout for the rest of the city,” Crain’s reported.
The kiosks were meant to bridge the digital divide by offering free wifi in neighborhoods where people don’t have access to fast wifi service. But they’re now clustered largely in wealthier neighborhoods.
UWS preservationist group Landmark West! submitted testimony urging the commission to decline the proposal or at least restrict it so the towers don’t end up in historic districts.
“When first introduced, LINK promised to replace pay phones and fire call boxes, offering to bring equity to internet access citywide for ‘free,'” the testimony says. “Now that the city has lost its fire call boxes, lost its payphones, and created 24/7 distractions of moving advertising at street level for block after block, only to be denied tens of millions of dollars from our coffers, we are simultaneously told that this just-installed infrastructure is obsolete and warned that we cannot have the promised infrastructure unless we give away more of the city…While we may have all gotten a little bigger during the pandemic, few perhaps have grown at the rate of the LINK kiosks, which have both widened and more than tripled in height over five years.”
Ok I think we can all agree that these posts look hideous and stick out like 32ft sore thumbs.
What looks more hideous is the tacky easel sign advertisement – illegally chain linked to the street lamppost. And the unsightly lamppost which probably hasn’t been painted in years!
Clean up our streets and sidewalks. That means the NYCDOT…as well as the Community, too, taking responsibility!
I’m sure people said the same thing when electric street lights replaced gas lights in the 1800s, and then when more modern electric lights replaced those… on and on.
It’s not the same and you know it. The street lights provided light but these hideous memorials to greed will provide more ways to rip our information off of our digital devices so that it can be sold or stolen and the extra benefit of making our street like prison yards!
They definitely did say that!
I am trying to decide which designs are uglier – these towers or the dock house building planned to be put up near the W. 79th St. Boat Basin which will block the view of the river. Any opinions?
What worries me is that the Public Design Commission, which approved this LINK design will be assessing the dockhouse design this Spring. I don’t know who’s on this commission but they certainly don’t know good design. They cannot be trusted to evaluate designs that will impact everyone living in the city!
“Now that the city has lost its fire call boxes,” Err, no. For better or worse (and yes, there are arguments both ways), the fire alarm boxes, or in most cases “ERS” boxes, are still in place.
Oh, in regards to using the LinkNYC kiosks for phone calls? I’m guessing these folk never tried them. Just about impossible to use due to low volume and ambient noise.
People are saying these are ugly but nobody protests giving up our entire curbs space to ugly glass and steel cars. How historic is the line of Audis parked on my block?
Yes, I feel the same about dogs and dog walkers taking up “valuable public sidewalk space.”
“Curb space,” you write. What a joke!
And I had thought “Transportation Alternatives” and other anti-community shills had (wisely) stopped communicating on this forum, given the chaos they have brought to our streets and sidewalks.
There’s a lot uglier in that picture than the posts. Anyway, I thought everyone was on board for infrastructure improvements?
Being onboard for infrastructure improvements and wanting better designed said infrastructure are not mutually exclusive positions for one to take on?
As a resident of an UWS historic district, I would be very happy to welcome the new LINK equipment
Why? What do think it will do for you?
You must not have looked at them. They are hedious.
This is totally fugly. They couldn’t design this better than this?? Really?????
I’d say the 6 or 7 boxes on every other block that used to carry free newspapers but are now empty are quite a bit worse than this. But no one complains about them.
What are the odds that all the negative comments come from gentry who have broadband and cellphones?
I woud much prefer these clean designs with no advertising to the visual pollution of constant videos we have now, flashing on and off with advertising and “new factoids.” I like this design. Takes up much less visual space than what is there now.
The wifi and touch screens are not functioning on many current LinkNYC kiosks. Also, if you place a call using LinkNYC, the call is labeled as “spam” on the recipient end and may be automatically blocked or ignored. There is also a time limit where the kiosk cuts off the call.
They couldn’t build this equipment into the streetlight pole that’s right next to it in the picture? There are already tens of thousands of these electrified light poles like that everywhere. If you could put the equipment inside them you wouldn’t need the new towers.
Umm… New York is well on its way to becoming the ugliest city in the world! Between the overwhelming garbage on the UWS, the rats the size of bunnies as said by The Patch, the out of scale and largely hideous new construction that someone is naive enough to pay millions for, and now these Link Towers- just rename it Ugly New York!! There’s no city planning. And it seems increasingly that no one with an aesthetic has any power or no one really cares.
Half of the design reactions here are because of the Google is evil mindset. Be honest, if you were shown these images and told they are new modern streetlights, would your reaction be the same?
Honestly, that’s a great point. I did think they were a bit ridiculous, but looking at it as if it were a street light it actually looks pretty cool. I guess the problem is that since it’s not a street light, there will just be random ones scattered around – and that haphazardness will look bad (as opposed to street lights that would look much more purposeful)
Can we all talk about the fact that only drug dealers and buyers, as well as homeless, use these kiosks?? If we make it convenient to live in the street, they will continue doing so and our exorbitant tax dollars continue to be completely wasted on ineffective and underutilized homeless programs. Our elected officials just don’t get it.
They’re handy for foreign visitors too. We had a friend participating in the marathon and were able to direct him to the link kiosks for the wifi since he didn’t have cell service. I mean, I think it’s kinda weird to fly to NYC, pay for a hotel, buy running gear, etc but not make arrangements for temporary phone service – but it definitely happens! Probably because the assumption is that NYC makes it easy to come visit without messing with that sort of thing *shrug*
I have to turn my wifi off on my phone because LinkNYC makes my phone not work!
Im leaning more in favor of bringing back our snowflakes
I have been wondering what happened to the Columbus Ave snowflakes this year. I looked at the BID website and couldn’t find anything about them. Does anyone know?
Like cable tv and wireless internet, there ain’t a damn thing anyone can do about this next wave of ‘smart’ tech: 5G is coming via towers and via satellites and we gotta live with all of it come hell or high water. Why? Because Elon Musk is Time’s Man of the Year!
God awful. As ugly as the street lamps. Make them look like trees-it’s not a new idea.
Let no good deed go unpunished…
I think they are more attractive then the wooden phone poles that are all over the rest of America
They are more attractive than those filthy, graffiti vandalized “free” daily magazine racks…haphazardly thrown around our sidewalks!! Most are sitting EMPTY and filled with garbage. Why is the defunct and empty “Village Voice” newspaper box still standing on my corner? The city needs to get a flatbed vehicle and simply remove them. Is that too difficult NYC DOT???
And what about the tree pits filled with garbage and debris? Why doesn’t the city require property owners to add attractive metal tree guards around our trees? And have you noticed the rise in vandalized mail boxes, fire boxes and fire hydrants? Why not have a “paint team” clean up these eyesores? Such a simple fix!
So by comparison, the LinkNYC kiosks are at least a cleaner urban design for the sidewalk that doesn’t pollute our neighborhood, unlike all the disgusting things that indeed ruin our blocks and street corners. If our UWS elected officials adequately addressed these sidewalk eyesore issues that add filth, not beauty, to our blocks…then we’d reverse the urban decay that’s sadly, only been getting worse.
Ugly as sin and unnecessary. Probably most of these will be used by people who watch pornography in public. Blight!
LinkNYC owed the city $75 million a year ago.
These monstrosities are only being built so that LinkNYC can pay the city back – which sounds like a horrible idea to sell more of the commons just so that the politicians can salvage a bad deal.
I would like the bottom part to be painted brown and the top part green so they look like trees.