In New York City, the payphone is out and, slowly but surely, the Link is in.
Link is the city's name for its new kiosks -- tall, narrow structures with slick ads on either side, a small tablet in the center, and a beta warning slapped across the back corners.
for years (and years). But the kiosks only debuted last month, when the city flipped a switch and began beaming free Wi-Fi from them, blanketing slivers of Manhattan's 3rd Avenue with connectivity.
Today marks a big step in New York's tedious rollout of the Link: The city is turning on the Link's tablet functionality, enabling passersby to place calls, browse the Web, recharge a smartphone, and access Google Maps -- all for free -- at select kiosks.
Just 16 of the city's 40 Links are functional today, stretching from 14th Street to 45th. But a city spokesperson tells us "there will be 500+ Links across all five boroughs by mid-July (And 7,500+ across the City over the next 8 years)."
For both the rollout and the tablet itself, the city is deliberately starting small. For now, the Link works like a simple Android tablet void of an app store.
With four apps in total, the Link just barely meets the minimum criteria of what you would expect from a modern-day tablet. But at a press briefing yesterday, representatives of the project described ways the Link may evolve, suggesting features like transit alerts, community notices -- even the possibility of turning the Link into a voting booth. While the makers of the Link -- the City of New York, Qualcomm, Alphabet's Intersection, and municipal connectivity company Civiq Smartscapes -- will remain its gatekeepers, representatives of the group said it will seek out developer submissions and partnerships to bring new apps to the kiosks.
