There’s a new kind of phone booth available in London, and this one can do more than just make phone calls. They also provide Wi-Fi, a place to charge your devices, a button for calling emergency services and a tablet for getting directions, weather and other information.

The kiosks, called InLinks, come from the same company that placed similar kiosks in New York City, and they’ll likely start to appear in other cities soon, as well.

A New Kind of Phone Booth

InLinkUK, the company responsible for the booths, says it plans to replace nearly 1,000 pay phones in major cities in the United Kingdom. It installed the first one on London's Camden High Street. The company says it will leave a majority of London’s iconic red phone boxes where they are, though, to preserve that piece of London’s history and identity.

How They’re Expected to Help

The kiosks will offer free Wi-Fi with speeds of up to one gigabit per second, much faster than most of the other Wi-Fi networks currently available in London. People will be able to access this network, called InLinkUK, on their personal devices. They’ll also be able to use a touch-screen tablet on the booth itself.

While this tablet can’t be used for free-range Internet browsing, probably thanks to the debacle that occurred with these devices in New York, you can use them to look at maps, check the weather forecast and get updates and information about public transportation. You can also use them to make free phone calls.

There will also be a dedicated button for calling 999, the equivalent of 911 in the U.S., in emergency situations. You can also charge your phone or another device with the kiosks’ USB ports.

Who's Paying for This?

The project is a collaboration between the UK carrier BT and Sidewalk Labs’ Intersection, a startup backed by Google and Alphabet. It’s supported by Primesight, an outdoor advertising company, that will place digital ads in the kiosks, as well as other non-digital ads in other kiosks. All three companies will share the ad revenues.

Unlike at the New York City hotspots, InLinkUK is required to track and store the browsing history of everyone who uses the network on their personal devices. This is because of a 2016 law called the Investigatory Powers Act, which requires Internet service providers to store this data for up to one year.

How Is This Different?

Of course, London and other cities around the world already have Wi-Fi hot spots. How are these different?

Their main claim to fame is the fact that they’re significantly faster and more reliable than other public Wi-Fi. Modern circuit boards are designed to securely process digital information at high speeds, and InLinkUK takes full advantage of this capability. Most other hot spots can’t reach a gigabit per second.

The company has also promised less restrictive browsing capabilities, making the network inherently more useful. The network is also designed to be easy to access.

Of course, the other features available at the kiosks — free calling, maps, weather information and charging stations, among other things, help it stand out as well. These features make InLinkUK useful in ways services that just offer Wi-Fi are not.

The kiosks also include sensors that record temperature, air and noise pollution and traffic conditions. This data could be used in the future to inform other projects.

Round Two

We have an idea about how this situation will play out, because of what the company has already done in New York City. They also have a few lessons learned.

LinkNYC, the New York version of the project, launched in January and has been quite popular. 671,000 people have used the Wi-Fi network in 34 million different Wi-Fi sessions, and have made tens of thousands of free phone calls each week. The company has installed almost 900 of the booth in NYC so far, with plans to add more.

The booths in London have pretty much all the same features as NYC’s kiosks. However, using a key takeaway from New York’s service, they will not offer unrestricted Internet browsing. As it turns out, without restrictions, people will commandeer the booths for hours to watch movies, listen to music and, most problematically, watch porn.

Next Steps

London is starting slowly with the installation of the new kiosks. The first phase of the project will include 100 booths, with 750 more to be installed by the end of the project. New York also has nearly a thousand, but will likely add more.

InLinkUK says it also plans to place kiosks in other UK cities. It wouldn’t be surprising to see them and ones like them popping up in cities around the world.

As the Internet becomes more integrated into our lives, you can get it for free in more places. And who knows? Maybe someday soon, we’ll have free Internet for everyone, no matter where you are.

We wonder when some enterprising telecom company plans something similar in select Indian cities. Hey! Reliance Jio… are you listening?

Master Image Source: landmobile.co.uk

Tags : Free WiFi