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) 35
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.
Numbers (Score:2)
How does spending $200 million to install equate to "not costing the city a dime?"
And for 10,000 kiosks that is about $20K per kiosk. If they made the things bulletproof with titanium steel shells I don't see how the cost of goods can exceed $5,000.
That subcontractor made a killing.
Re:Numbers (Score:5, Informative)
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%.
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As noted below, the cost of the system was through the corporate entity (CityBridge, which consists of Qualcomm, Titan, Control Group, and Comark. In June 2015, Control Group and Titan announced that they would merge into one company called Intersection. Intersection is being led by a Sidewalk Labs-led group of investors who operate the company as a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. created to install and maintain the system.) Per the NYC gov website https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doitt/initiatives/linknyc.page, plus
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Better than being "disappeared". I was once "disappeared" by the NHS for six days. My GP called me in for a checkup, found out my systolic pressure was stratospheric (over 180) due to pneumonia, called in paramedics who put a gas mask on me and rushed me off to an acute care ward. My mobile phone ran out of power, no-one had a compatible charger, the bedside telephone/TV pods didn't support unrestricted international/national calls (only 2 minutes to another mobile phone, unlimited 01/02/03 numbers, no inte
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Tried getting a charger, everyone else had iPhone's,
These TV pods go through the hospital exchange. To stop anyone using the hospital telephone system to make free personal international calls, they simply block those calls - an employee has to get permission from an authorizing manager. Many hospitals are funded using PPP (Private-Public Partnerships). Things like medical treatment are public sector funded, but others things like car parking, shops and cafes (Starbacks, Costa, Nero) are privately run and p
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$200M for 10K kiosks... (Score:3)
Hmm...
So, ~$20K per kiosk. And, from TFS, each kiosk handles about two calls per day (500,000 phone calls a month, 10,000 kiosks).
I'm sure there's a point to spending that much to handle that small a number of calls, but I don't see it from here....
Re:$200M for 10K kiosks... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re: $200M for 10K kiosks... (Score:2)
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Many are apparently non-functional (Score:4, Informative)
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Location tracking beacons (Score:2)
The number of people using the kiosks is easily dwarfed by the number of people affected by their advertising purpose -- to work as bluetooth and wifi beacons to provide location data for anyone carrying a cellphone within their vicinity.
https://theintercept.com/2018/09/08/linknyc-free-wifi-kiosks/ [theintercept.com]
https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/07/30/1826229/google-wi-fi-kiosks-in-new-york-promise-no-privacy-can-collect-anything [slashdot.org]
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Its the same but not the same (Score:1)
Assuming that someone has not smashed everything up they will have all of the ambiance of the originals, the smell and urine, the visual impact of puke and graffito but none of the privacy.