New York City to Replace Pay Phones with Free Wi-Fi

Something similar has been done in New Zealand. One of the 3 main providers of cellular service, Spark (and the only owner of phone booths, being formerly state owned), has installed wifi routers on top of all the phone booths. You get up to 2 GB a day for free if you're a Spark customer.

http://www.spark.co.nz/discover/freewifi/

I presume it was fairly trivial to install adsl modems to the already existing telephone connections. It seems like a good use of already existing infrastructure.

In Wellington, we also get free wifi in the CBD: http://cbdfree.co.nz/

Apparently there are adverts for this, but I've never seen them, presumably due to my adblocking.