In the grandest rollout of free public Wi-Fi to date, New Yorkers will gain access to the Internet from anywhere in the city with the installation of up to 10,000 Wi-Fi hotspots throughout the five boroughs to form the LinkNYC network. The hotspots will come in the form of pylons, or “Links,” outfitted with gigabit Internet as well as free domestic calls (including 911 and 311). The Links will be designed and installed by CityBridge, a consortium comprised of various technology and infrastructure companies, in cooperation with the Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation. According to CityBridge, LinkNYC will come at no cost to taxpayers, but will be funded through advertisements displayed on screens on either side of the Links. The project is estimated to generate more than $500 million in revenue for the city of New York over the first 12 years through advertising.
In terms of the Links themselves, think of them as modernized telephone booths. Constructed from aluminum built in New York, Links will be outfitted with mobile phone charging stations and Android tablets containing maps, city services, and public service announcements, in addition to the aforementioned wireless access points and free phone calls.
To address security concerns, CityBridge boasted that LinkNYC will be “one of the first free municipal Wi-Fi services in the country to offer an encrypted network connection,” and that its privacy policy will be “the most robust and forward-thinking” for any municipal Wi-Fi project.
Though CityBridge’s website espouses the benefits of gigabit Wi-Fi, touting its speed as “more than 100 times faster” than traditional public Wi-Fi, no mention is made on the technological specifics of the network. It remains to be seen whether CityBridge plans to build the network using existing wireless technologies, or if they’ll develop new ones, considering the massive scope of the project.
The consortium developing LinkNYC, CityBridge, is comprised of several notable tech companies, including Qualcomm, Titan, Control Group, and Comark. Still, some questions remain. It’s unknown at this time whether Links will have the capacity to receive firmware updates via patches, which wireless standard they’ll use, or whether CityBridge is planning increased network capacities in a few years’ time, given the inevitable progression past gigabit speeds by that time.
CityBridge plans to begin work on LinkNYC at the start of 2015, and to have operating pylons by the end of that year.
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