Pay Phones in NYC Will Become Free Wi-Fi Hot Spots

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/nyregion/pay-phones-in-new-york-city-will-become-free-wi-fi-hot-spots.html

by anigbrowl • 12 years ago

182 57 12 years ago

stevengg• 12 years ago

anyone else sick of seeing pay walled links on the front page of HN?

yzzxy• 12 years ago

No. I'm sick of these comments. Articles from sources like Washington Post, NYT, and The Economist, which are often high quality, constantly get branded with some form of this complaint.

It is so easy to avoid the paywall: any major browser's incognito mode will do it, and you can just subscribe. Magazines and newspaper subscriptions are often on sale for free or extremely low prices.

There are some walls that suck - Quora comes to mind - but when it's this easy to read the article, you're just adding noise by complaining.

lettergram• 12 years ago

There are quite a few plugins, and techniques which can get around paywalls.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-ways-york-times-paywall/

serf2• 12 years ago

Yeah, it's obnoxious to assume that the rest of the community would be a member of 'the club' when linking articles.

anigbrowl3• 12 years ago

I don't have an NYT subscription or use any sort of workaround to access NYT pages, so I am not a member of any 'club'. You can view something like 20 stories a month before they ask you to subscribe, and I don't feel bad about posting an interesting story from a site that uses a paywall once or twice month.

teh_klev• 12 years ago

I think you need to recalibrate the point at which you measure something as "obnoxious", your usage is a tad hyperbolic.

mikeash• 12 years ago

They're trivial to bypass for the technically literate, which group I'd expect every HN reader to belong to. If you can't be arsed, fine, but don't waste your time writing annoyed comments about it either.

knowaveragejoe• 12 years ago

Another opportunity to collect marketing data(at the least).

nkozyra• 12 years ago

For some people this is a fair tradeoff for "free" wifi.

spacefight3• 12 years ago

No, for most people it's that they don't even realize what the tradeoff is. It just "free", give it to me!!!11

unicornporn2• 12 years ago

Probably. Getting a VPN provider could be a solution for the few who knows about such solutions. If all ports but 80 and 443 isn't blocked that is.

ynniv• 12 years ago

A VPN provider won't protect your MAC address from being physically tracked.

icebraining• 12 years ago

Some VPN providers offer their services on port 443. Don't ask me why I know :)

plumeria• 12 years ago

Which company is building these kiosks?

benjaminlhaas• 12 years ago

The responsible consortium is CityBridge, which is made up of Titan, Control Group, Qualcomm, and Comark. http://www.link.nyc/

davidholmesnyc• 12 years ago

I believe this is a step in the right direction.

wipash• 12 years ago

Spark in NZ has rolled the Wifi access point idea out all across Auckland, and in patches across the rest of NZ.

https://www.spark.co.nz/shop/mobile/whyultramobile/wifi.html

kalleboo• 12 years ago

I think it's pretty common around the world - the Swedish telco converted their phone booths to Wifi hotspots back in 2007. Cheap fast LTE has taken over though and they're finally removing all phone booths by 2015.

otoburb• 12 years ago

I'm surprised they're removing wifi enabled phone booths. WiFi offload is growing in importance in congested mobile network regions[1], although perhaps phone booths don't necessarily have fast enough network links to meaningfully offload enough load (yet).

If these type of pilot projects pan out then cities could eye this as a potential revenue stream if somebody isn't already paying for phone booth street locations on a recurring basis.

Although there's still some way to go before we reach clean WiFi & cell tower call hand-offs, just having the initial ability to make calls over WiFi via the 'branded' voice application will be huge for traditional wireless carriers, although also opens up the playing field for urban-only WiFi carriers.[2]

The 'branded' voice application on your smartphones will soon be just that when VoLTE is deployed more widely[1]. VoLTE = Voice over LTE, which could just as easily be Voice over WiFi. The upcoming battle for which app you launch when you want to make voice calls is slowly creeping up on us, since voice is still one of the stickiest phone applications.

[1] http://www.spotonnetworks.com/rcr-wireless-discusses-wifi-of...

[2] http://www.bna.com/wifi-once-lifeline-n17179890780/

kapkapkap• 12 years ago

If you live in a walk-up building and there is a payphone/hotspot on your block, would this actually allow you to cancel your internet and exclusively use this for your Wifi? (Article says 150ft range...)

ianlevesque• 12 years ago

It sure seems like that. Maybe a cantenna or similar at worst.

comrh• 12 years ago

If you considered the reliability and security concerns. It would be interesting in terms of anonymity though.

coralreef• 12 years ago

Wouldn't your speed be throttled down anyway

epic9x• 12 years ago

Cites $200 million to build, which seemed high until you see they're actually giant neon advertising signs too: http://www.link.nyc/assets/downloads/LinkNYC-Media-Kit.pdf

The city gets guaranteed profit of $20 million annual with projected rev share of much higher than that. Solid deal.

anigbrowl3• 12 years ago

Oh, gigabit wifi at that. Damn,t his looks like a good deal.

warfangle2• 12 years ago

It seems high until you realize they're putting in 10,000 of them. That's only $2k per kiosk - less than a high end gaming machine.

warfangle2• 12 years ago

^- please don't upvote this :) I was a zero off. They're $20k each.

Which considering the infrastructure upgrades involved is still pretty impressive. I doubt there's a fiber line to each of the payphone locations.

drcode• 12 years ago

Something tells me the will actually be ""free"" Wi-Fi Hot Spots.

(i.e. if you have 2 valid forms of ID proving you live 4 blocks from the hot spot and you are willing to spend 5 minutes filling out web forms and you only want to visit one of 50 sanctioned websites and you are willing to receive notification emails and your computer is Windows 8.1 but doesn't have the incompatible service pack installed that the java applet crashes on and you happen to catch it on a day when it's working and you can get the webbeams login url to redirect properly and you don't accidentally scroll down while the login page is loading and you click through the screens about the new street sweeping schedule you will be able to browse the web for 17.5 minutes.)

unknownian• 12 years ago

Do you live in New York? The subway wifi's not that impossible, though it's a slight hassle.

wmf• 12 years ago

I downvoted you for excessive cynicism but then I saw that this company is providing the Wi-Fi: http://www.transitwireless.com/what-we-do/wifi-advertising/

unicornporn2• 12 years ago

Anybody knows how this "advertising on WiFi" model actually works?

eksith2• 12 years ago

That's extreme. This is just a swing toward turning internet access into utilities like electricity and water which are available without being tied to your residence. You still have public street lights and public water fountains outside your home. Likewise, internet is slowly moving away form this "thing" you always have to pay for to stay connected.

Verizon, TWC, Optimum, Comcast et al require that you have an account with them to use their hotspots. But you don't need an account with ConEd to be able to read your newspaper or book out on the street. This is where internet is headed.

Shivetya• 12 years ago

McDonalds, Starbucks, and many other private companies, all do not require an account, many don't even require you buy anything.

Counting street lights as electricity is a bit of reach. Last I checked to have electrical service or water service I actually had to have an account. After all, where would they provide it?

whyfi• 12 years ago

Don't worry about providing id, just walk around a bit - they will work out who you are soon enough.

http://www.channel4.com/news/shopping-centre-wifi-tracking-s...

nitrogen• 12 years ago

Indeed; if the city runs the network, they wouldn't have to request the data from a third party when they want to investigate somebody.

spacefight3• 12 years ago

Free means they setup tracking locations to scan your MAC as you roam the city. Bandwith itself is cheap these days.

Someone is paying that "free" stuff, always. Oh, and the 20M in profits must come from somewhere, right?

conorh• 12 years ago

I worked on a project with Verzion to wifi enable NYC payphones in 2003 [1], I think we did around 150 in the end. I worked on backend software and then eventually driving around the city in a Verizon van debugging hotspots. The system didn't work very well then - most payphone booths were not in good areas for using wifi, there wasn't enough coverage and there was quite a high failure rate for the equipment (and sometimes it was stolen). I like the idea of having other services available in the booth though, and perhaps it will work better now that everyone has wifi equipped phones and doesn't need to pull out their laptop to use it.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/14/technology/14NET.html

CWIZO• 12 years ago

On a related note; London is transforming the payphones into free charging stations.

bko• 12 years ago

Administration officials framed the move as an extension of Mr. de Blasio’s focus on inequality. Maya Wiley, counsel to the mayor, said low-income people, particularly blacks and Latinos, relied disproportionately on cellphone browsing to get online. And data charges can add up.

Free wi-fi is great and all but I feel that programs that mostly benefit the upper middle class are constantly being passed off by politicians as benefiting the lower class. From what I see, smart phones ownership definitely skews to the wealthy, although higher for African American and Hispanic [0]. Is there something I'm missing here?

[0] http://www.pewinternet.org/data-trend/mobile/cell-phone-and-...

Someone1234• 12 years ago

It skews to the young: 83% for ages 18-29. That's a hard figure to ignore (although you HAVE to to make your point). Seems like for older people they own smartphones if they're in careers which might require one (e.g. office work, where college+ and $50K+ are more common).

For young people almost "everyone" owns a smartphone. Plus the cost is fairly low if you avoid the big four carriers and buy direct[0]. Smartphones aren't "premium" anymore and haven't been for quite a few years. Yet some people continue to talk about them like they are (and "HDTVs" and "cable").

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Unlocked-Quadband-Android-Touch-Screen...

anigbrowl3• 12 years ago

High-end smartphone ownership for sure. But you can buy a craptacular Android phone that runs whatever Android 4.0 is and runs OK, just slow, for under $100. My understanding was that the smaller CPU and memory load of Android 5.0 Lollipop was partly a response to this trend. And of course you can get some sort of netbook for $200, $250. If you have the savvy to buy used (perhaps with the help of a friend) then your options get wider again.

josefresco• 12 years ago

Does anyone else think this is (cool but) 10 years too late? I would like to see a model where your phone/device seamlessly connects to these hotspots without the current (very manual and frustrating) wi-fi connect process.

For example, I'm walking down the street, pull out my device and connect to this wifi hostspot. Does the hotspot now work everywhere in NYC? Or do I need to connect to each hostspot each time? Will it remember me or will I need to re-authenticate on a regular basis similar to how TV providers grant access within mobile apps?

softdev12• 12 years ago

but late than never. i'm guessing this starts to expand to other cities - but instead of replacing payphones, they will start building new hubs at street corners or other public spots that are currently empty.

njharman• 12 years ago

TIL there are still payphones!?

tessierashpool• 12 years ago

this is a very positive development in a year full of bad news. kudos NY and congrats New Yorkers.

Pay Phones in NYC Will Become Free Wi-Fi Hot Spots

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