Homeless fill the old telephone booths and spend plenty of time watching pornography and masturbating in public. And all this despite the fact that theoretically, the WiFi network filters and blocks access to banned sites.
After a few months running, the plan of New York to change phone booths into free WiFi networks points -connections 1.3 Gbps in a radius of 50 meters- has encountered a harsh reality: the 'homeless' are using them and “ spend plenty of time watching porn and masturbating in public”, according to an official source. Theoretically the WiFi network filters and blocks the access to porn sites, but apparently not enough.
The situation, paradoxically, comes just as the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, has just said in his speech on the state of the EU that in 2025 all cities and roads in the EU must have 5G uninterrupted coverage and and with the rule WiFi4EU, Wi-Fi will be offered in and around public buildings, health centers, parks and squares.
According to a report published by the London newspaper The Guardian, LinkNYC, the managing body of the service, has been forced to suspend the service temporarily, until they find a solution for this. LinkNYC poles, opened less than a year, and also allow free local calls voice, and charge mobile phone.
This was the plan
New York's plan was to phase out its conventional telephone booths. Instead, the consortium LinkNYC installed WiFi hotspots that provide speeds up to 1.3 Gbps of within 50 meters and free.
In addition to the Internet, booths LinkNYC provide access to services and information related to the city via a touch screen, allow making free voice calls within the US, direct contact with medical services and emergency and USB sockets for charging battery of mobile devices.
It is planned to install 10,000 of these posts or 'connected cabins'
There were considered two important premises for the development of the posts, both applicable to any city with a significant amount of tourists: to provide information in multiple languages and to provide connection points for the more than 50 million tourists who visit the city every year.
According to the report Inside New York's Plan To Cover The City In Free, Super-Fast Wi-Fi, the project helps especially the 'marginalized digital', citizens who do not have Internet access at home or on their mobile phones and so they can rely on wireless networks to connect.
All service’s infrastructure is financed by advertising displayed on screens outside the posts, which prevents both the deployment and the provision of services and WiFi connection does not impact on the budgets of the city. Instead, it was estimated that the city of New York would receive $ 500 million over the next twelve years.
In total, it plans to install 10,000 of these posts or "connected cabins" in the five neighbourhoods that make up New York City: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx and Staten Island.
