Free Wi-Fi Kiosks In Philly Will Come Equipped With Cameras
As announced late last year, free Wi-Fi kiosks are coming to Center City and other sections of Philadelphia. The kiosks, which will fully replace old-fashioned phone booths, will provide free wireless capability for consumers, along with charging ports and a tablet to make video calls. Thanks to lessons learned in places like New York City that already have wireless kiosks, they will also come equipped with cameras to monitor user activity and discourage vandalism.
Free Wi-Fi will soon come to Philadelphia in the form of smart kiosks called Links which will be equipped with cameras.
According to the Virginian-Pilot: “Each kiosk, called a Link and provided by the Intersection media company, comes equipped with 55-inch high definition screens for advertising and art, an encrypted Wi-Fi network, charging ports, and a tablet for calls — all free. They’ve already replaced thousands of telephone booths across New York City and the United Kingdom.”
When Links were first installed in NYC, they came with internet access as well. This feature had to be quickly nixed when it was discovered that homeless citizens were looking up pornography and other x-rated materials on the communal screens. The wi-fi kiosks will come equipped with 55-inch screens, but these will be used solely for art, advertising (the proceeds from which the city gets to pocket half), and video calls. The kiosks will be tricked out with smart sensors that display weather conditions and other current data.
In the Big Apple, where over 1,300 free Wi-Fi kiosks have already been built, there are plans in the works for a minimum of 6,000 more. The city estimates that it will sweep in about $540 million in advertising revenues by 2026. Talk about installing the same kind of kiosks in the City of Brotherly Love began in 2014 after Titan, a transit advertising firm, won a 20-year bid contract from the city. Since then, Titan has since merged with another firm to form Intersection, whose investors include Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs.
