Clearly hoping to move the conversation on from the recent fracas over porn consumption, LinkNYC has announced that New York City's free WiFi initiative is a major hit. The company announced this week that as of the end of September, 576,321 people -- more than the entire population of Atlanta, Miami, or Oakland -- have signed up to use LinkNYC's gigabit Wi-Fi service. LinkNYC started to retrofit older pay phone stations back in June, replacing them with the first of what's expected to be 7,500 Wi-Fi kiosks.
Through a partnership with Vonage these kiosks provide NYC users with free phone calls anywhere in the country, as well as access to 311, 911, 411 and city services (via integrated Android tablet).
According to this week's announcement, LinkNYC s WiFi has been used more than 26 million times since the network first launched last February.
"The fastest internet in New York City is on the streets, and it's completely free," said Jen Hensley, General Manager of LinkNYC. "With more than 400 Links installed across three boroughs, LinkNYC is already helping more than half a million people get online at super-fast speeds -- and we are just getting started."
Last month LinkNYC was forced to pull internet browsing from the kiosk tablets after complaints that homeless people had been using the devices to watch porn. LinkNYC had previously tried to use filters to block the pornography consumption to no avail. Users had complained that between porn and users spending all day at the kiosks, many passers by couldn't actually use the services provided.
But the company states that since removing the functionality, use of LinkNYC kiosks has increased 12%. The firm states that last week alone, New Yorkers made more than 21,000 free phone calls, used maps 11,000 times, and accessed 311 more than 4,000 times. Link NYC also states that reports of users monopolizing the kiosks have dropped 82% since the service update.
In other words, don't expect the embedded Android tablets to re-enable internet browsing anytime soon.
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