page_title: LinkNYC
section_title: Payphones and plans for reuse
hierarchical_section_title: LinkNYC / History / Payphones and plans for reuse
caption_attribution_description: English: Looking west at station stair in front of Marcy Playground on a cloudy day. Bicycle is photographer's.
context_page_description: LinkNYC is the New York City branch of an international infrastructure project to create a network covering several cities with free Wi-Fi service. The office of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the plan on November 17, 2014, and the installation of the first kiosks, or "Links," started in late 2015. The Links replace the city's network of 9,000 to 13,000 payphones, a contract for which expired in October 2014. The LinkNYC kiosks were devised after the government of New York City held several competitions to replace the payphone system. The most recent competition, in 2014, resulted in the contract being awarded to the CityBridge consortium, which comprises Qualcomm; Titan and Control Group, which now make up Intersection; and Comark.
  All of the 9.5-foot-tall Links feature two 55-inch high-definition displays on their sides; Android tablet computers for accessing city maps, directions, and services, and making video calls; two free USB charging stations for smartphones; and a phone allowing free calls to all 50 states and Washington, D.C..
context_section_description: In 1999, thirteen companies signed a contract that legally obligated them to maintain New York City's payphones for fifteen years. In 2000, the city's tens of thousands of payphones were among the 2.2 million payphones spread across the United States. Since then, these payphones' use had been declining with the advent of cellphones. As of July 2012, there were 13,000 phones in over 10,000 individual locations; that number had dropped to 9,133 phones in 7,302 locations by April 2014, at a time when the number of payphones in the United States had declined more than 75 percent, to 500,000. The contract with the thirteen payphone operators was set to expire in October 2014, after which time the payphones' futures were unknown.
  In July 2012, the New York City government released a public request for information, asking for comments about the future uses for these payphones. The RFI presented questions such as "What alternative communications amenities would fill a need?"; "If retained, should the current designs of sidewalk payphone enclosures be substantially revised?"; and "Should the current number of payphones on City sidewalks change, and if so, how?". Through the RFI, the New York City government sought new uses for the payphones, including a combination of "public wireless hotspots, touch-screen wayfinding panels, information kiosks, charging stations for mobile communications devices, [and] electronic community bulletin boards," all of which eventually became the features of the kiosks that were included in the LinkNYC proposal.
  In 2013, a year before the payphone contract was set to expire, there was a competition that sought ideas to further repurpose the network of payphones. The competition, held by the administration of Michael Bloomberg, expanded the idea of the pilot project. There were 125 responses that suggested a Wi-Fi network, but none of these responses elaborated on how that would be accomplished.
caption: One of New York City's 9,000 to 13,000 dated payphones at the Myrtle–Willoughby Avenues subway station
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