Google Fiber Wifi: NYC Pay Phones To Get Free Wifi From Adverts, 'Communications For Future', Free Cell Phone Charging, SMS, Short Phone Calls, Environment Monitoring: New York might be the first city to have pay phones offer free WiFi and free cell phone charging.
According to Google, there may be as many as 10,000 pay phones in New York abd the project could be lucrative if it is done in a massive scale. About 4,000 pay phones have advertizing attached to them. The winner of the bid for pay-phone sites could use a number of technologies and win a compensation of $17.5 million in ad revenue.
New York authorities are eying pay phones as communication points of the 21st century and the WiFi installation's would offer WiFi free for 85 feet surrounding each advertising site. This would also include phone services and emergency calling such as 911 and 311 information calls. The city also wants to offer cellphone charging stations, and sensors that can keep track of the local environment of weather.
Susan Crawford, a visiting professor in intellectual property at Harvard Law School and a former Obama administration technology adviser said, in order to have a solid Wi-Fi connection, there needs to be fiber connection and many payphones are copper wired.She added, "payphones could also become a branding opportunity for the companies providing the Wi-Fi and that gives the City advertising revenue."
Although the New York City WiFi plan is free, service providers like Comcast are stretching their Wifi hotspots enabling users with home plans to use them in public. So far, there are about a million such WiFi hot spots as big firms like Comcast take a large chunk of the market share.
Crawford also told KCBS in an interview that if Google plays its cards right in New York and enables pay phone WiFi for free using fiber it could be a 'kick-back' for the cable operators on the streets of NY.
