This might not be something you would expect to hear from us, but we don’t believe every free internet idea is a good internet idea. And New York City politicians are out to prove our point.
The digital version of the Wall Street Journal reports, “The New York City pay phone is getting a high-tech replacement next year. Dubbed ‘LinkNYC,’ a network of devices will provide free wireless Internet throughout much of the five boroughs as well as free domestic calls and the opportunity to video chat from the street.”
Replacing 6,400 phone booths across NYC
Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced that more than six thousand pay phones, located from one end of the city to the other, will soon go the way of the dodo. In other words, they’ll be wiped out as a species.
We don’t know much about Mayor de Blasio and his administration. We do know that many of His Honor’s critics call him a Communist. We haven’t kept up with his policies nor his history to know if that’s a correct assessment, but we know this is one wacky idea that’s doomed to failure.
What, you may ask, will replace the soon-to-be extinct pay phones? WSJ.com reports, “Next year, New Yorkers will start seeing sleek, nearly 10-foot-high structures with 24-hour, 150-foot-radius Wi-Fi, a keypad for phone calls and a tablet touch screen with a handful of applications related to city services.” But the new kiosks can be used for public wifi, free domestic phone calls, and even video calls.
Users will be bombarded by unavoidable public-service announcements in emergencies
The good news, we suppose, is that the LinkNYC locations will offer convenient spot for the city’s residents and visitors to charge their electronic devices.
“This is going to help us close the digital divide,” Maya Wiley, counsel to Mr. de Blasio, stated.
We’re proud to say that no one has fought longer nor louder to close that digital divide than we have here at CheapInternet.com. But as far as we’re concerned, building 10,000 of these white elephants across the city’s five boroughs doesn’t seem to be a reasonable, rational way to do it.
LinkNYC will be “a public-private partnership between the mayor’s office and CityBridge, a New York-based consortium of technology, manufacturing and advertising companies.” We have often editorialized in favor of such public-private partnerships, but only when the jointly arrived at technology solution makes sense.
City leaders say the LinkNYC kiosks will generate more than $500 million over the next 12 years. They don’t say how, but we assume the income will come from on-screen and on-kiosk advertising. Those funds will “help” cover the construction, maintenance and operation of the kiosks. That revenue will be shared between the city and the six companies participating in the project.
It’s been estimated that the project will cost a total of $200 million, although no taxpayer money will be used in the construction.
“Luke DuBois, an associate professor of integrated digital media at New York University’s engineering school, said public Internet kiosks are a good match for the city’s pedestrian culture,” the Journal reported, “adding that New Yorkers with some downtime will likely toy with the machines.”
Good idea? We don’t think so.
We have a laundry list of problems with this concept:
- With wifi available in every coffee shop, McDonald’s, and so many other indoor retail locations, why would anyone open their laptop on the street to connect to wifi?
- If someone just wants to use their phone to check their email, Yelp a restaurant or check a map, everyone already does this using their built-in mobile internet.
- What about physical security? Would you really feel safe opening your expensive laptop or pulling out an ipad on a busy New York street?
- Will the kiosks really have keyboards so that people can make phone calls? Seriously? Why? Virtually everyone already carries a cell phone.
- The kiosks have screens. How many of them will survive a week before being smashed by street thugs?
- Uh-oh. City officials say user information won’t be shared with advertisers, but could be turned over to law-enforcement. That’s reassuring.
- Government projects have a nasty way of costing considerably more than estimated, and generating substantially less than estimated.
Commentary on the internet shows that we seem to be the few doubters of the idea, but we’ve become the leading voice in bringing free and cheap internet to the masses because we call them as we see them. Still, we sincerely hope we’re proven wrong. We hope our analysis of this public wifi project is 180 degrees off and that this New York City project becomes the blueprint for other civic programs around the country.
Only time will tell.
sorabji says
I am skeptical of LinkNYC as well, for some of the same reasons you point out, and for many others.
Their choice of Titan to head the consortium is puzzling, and I don’t know if the monopolistic nature of the consortium will pass regulatory muster. If it gets approved the city can look forward to lengthy litigation.
I welcome the possibility of free phone calls being available to all, assuming that service is actually reliable, especially in power outages. They claim that each device will have a one hour battery backup for such scenarios, but an hour is not an impressively long period of time.
I think you’d be surprised, though, how many people still use payphones in New York for non-emergency calls.
All in all I just have to ask Why? The value of this program has not been proven to such a point that awarding a lengthy 12-year contract to implement it makes sense.