On a frosty morning on February 18, 2016, dozens of reporters and cameramen flocked to the northwest corner of 16th Street and 3rd Avenue in Manhattan to watch New York Mayor Bill de Blasio make a phone call. Leaning against the wall of a sleek, almost glass building, de Blasio leisurely dialed '311' – his administration's number – to demonstrate that he could make free calls through LinkNYC, the network of free Wi-Fi hubs that completely envelop the city.
“LinkNYC will be a Wi-Fi network that matches the image of New York,” de Blasio said at a short press conference that followed the demonstration. “It will be the largest and fastest Wi-Fi network in the world, and it's completely free.” The entire network consists of 510 nodes (or so-called links) located in each of the five major boroughs of New York. And eventually there will be about 7,500 hot spots available for the 8.5 million Big Apple residents.
A person who has never been to the United States may have a reasonable question: they say, why is this all, we have free Wi-Fi almost everywhere in Moscow, and although the speed is not gigabit, it is enough for everyone.
The fact is that in the United States, the mobile Internet is godlessly expensive and networks with free access to the Internet are literally worth their weight in gold there. “In 2016, the Internet is no longer an exclusive, accessible only to a select few,” said de Blasio. – “It is rather a vital thing for every modern person.”
The American LinkNYC is not the first project to cover an entire city with a single free Wi-Fi network: megacities around the world (for example, Taipei and Helsinki) already have free public Wi-Fi at a speed that is noticeably higher than that offered by most providers to private customers. The advantage of LinkNYC is its gigabit speed, which is the fastest wireless Internet access option. To give you a better understanding of what this means, here's an example – at this speed, you can download an HD movie in just 7 seconds. Even the latest models iPhone can't handle half that speed. According to LinkNYC CEO Jen Hensley, “For the first time in the history of the Internet, device hardware limitations are a problem.”
Advertising and privacy
LinkNYC's network is designed to be funded entirely by advertising and cost nothing to the common people. In addition, Hensley emphasized that the main goal of the project is to provide users with a “clean Internet experience,” that is, without displaying various ads. Instead, ads are shown on two 55-inch screens located at each hotspot. Hensley described this monetization model as “the first of its kind”. Through a 12-year contract to install 4,500 'Links' in the first four years and then expand to over 7,000, LinkNYC expects to ultimately generate $ 500 million in advertising revenue. At the same time, existing phone booths only generate $ 40 million in advertising revenue per year. The LinkNYC deployment is expected to cost $ 200 million.
The appeal for small businesses, especially private sellers looking to advertise a sale or new product, is clear.
“We believe that New York is one of the largest media markets in the world in terms of digital advertising scale, with truly enormous potential,” Hensley said. The LinkNYC network will help advertisers more effectively engage pedestrian traffic around specific areas.
Hensley also noted that while certain data is being collected, LinkNYC is not going to track the traffic flowing through users' devices – or the websites they visit. But at the same time, information will be collected about how people use the network (browsing, calls, games), and how they move around the city at the same time: according to the creators of LinkNYC, this way it will be possible to continuously improve the network without invading privacy of users. In general, the data collection system can be described as follows: LinkNYC requests anonymous data (for example, gender to make it easier for advertisers to adapt to the audience of a particular area).
All roads lead back to Google
If you delve deeper into the history of LinkNYC, you can go to the multibillion dollar conglomerate Alphabet, owned by Google. In May 2014, the de Blasio administration announced a tender to replace old New York payphones with modern Wi-Fi hotspots. Six months later, LinkNYC was announced as the winner with a multi-year contract. Almost at the same time, two relatively small companies owned by LinkNYC announced themselves, one of them engaged in advertising on payphones, and the other in their maintenance.
Thus, the ubiquitous Alphabet has a hand in a product designed for daily use by millions of New Yorkers and visitors. In conclusion, it should be noted that each LinkNYC access point, in addition to a phone for making free calls and a USB port for charging gadgets, is also equipped with Android – a tablet with free access to Google services.