Pay Phones in NYC Will Become Free Wi-Fi Hot Spots | Hacker News Reader

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

nytimes.com

182 pointsanigbrowl57 comments

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.)

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

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/

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

I really hope it is just advertising on a captive portal, and not content injection

"Advertisers can reach subway riders in many ways such as sponsorship of Free Wi-Fi, landing page banner advertisements, video advertisements and application downloads"

Here's some info my dad sent me he's actually involved in the project on the Transit Wireless side

http://www.link.nyc/

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2ziLFANXR9deEJPMmZQcUNUT0l...

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.

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?

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...

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.

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.

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

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.

^- 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.

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

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

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.

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/

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?

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.

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?

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...)

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

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

Wouldn't your speed be throttled down anyway

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

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

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

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.

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

But a rooted device does.

IIRC iOS 8 performs MAC address randomization for just this reason.

This is only when searching for WiFi... once you connect the access point will know your true MAC address.

No, unfortunately the MAC randomization seems to be pretty ineffective. IIRC, it only happens when the phone is sleeping, and has been for several minutes. http://9to5mac.com/2014/09/26/more-details-on-how-ios-8s-mac...

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

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

>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-...

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...

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.

Which company is building these kiosks?

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

I believe this is a step in the right direction.

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

TIL there are still payphones!?

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

> and I don't feel bad about posting an interesting story from a site that uses a paywall once or twice month.

I don't want you to feel bad, I just want you to know that I think that it's obnoxious, and not very considerate towards others to expect them to bob-and-weave through pay-walls.

> You can view something like 20 stories a month before they ask you to subscribe

Sure, that's how it is at the moment. Next month it'll be ten views, a few months after 3 views, and so on, (effectively further reducing the archival worth of news publication links)

Also, how do you know that I haven't yet exceeded my monthly allotment?

Posting paid content excludes the poor who either lack the know-how to do so or refuse to side-step the pay-walls from discussion of the article until someone either copy/pastes the important parts or a freely available source is linked, and I just want people to be aware of that.

I reckon there's a fair chance that if you're on HackerNews, you know you can circumvent a paywall by going incognito ...

Wait, you think people shouldn't post and discuss interesting stuff because you're to cheap to help underwrite the (very reasonable) cost of decent journalism?!

I'm sorry, but this is a news site. People come here to read and discuss relevant news. And while this may come as news to you, those articles don't write themselves for free.

You want to lecture somebody on etiquette? Go find a journalist and tell them how "rude" they're being by expecting payment for their work. Find their editors, while you're at it, and see if they're willing to discuss their "entitlement issues". If you haven't had your head ripped off maybe you can tell us how the conversation went.

No one is expecting you to do anything.

They are providing a link to something they feel others might find interesting.

You can choose to feel ungrateful for that, that's your right.

But I disagree with your choice.

> You can view something like 20 stories a month

10 stories a month. Also, even though you may only post one or two as you say from these sites, others do the same adding to that total E.G. wsj.com Which doesn't allow viewing at all unless you browse in from a search engine or subscribe.

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

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.

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