“Walk around New York City long enough, and you’ll likely encounter an abandoned pay phone kiosk. Encountering this kiosk will likely make you a little bit sad, and that will likely be because the kiosk will have been not so much abandoned as abused: its phone removed, its exterior surfaces covered in grime and/or graffiti, its interior surfaces covered in grime and gum. This will possibly strike you as an undignified way for a thing to meet its demise, even if that thing is a piece of increasingly obsolete technology. On behalf of abandoned kiosks everywhere, then: good news. New York City is going to be converting a group of them into wifi hotspots. YES. The connectivity will be time-unlimited, free to users, and free of ads — at least for the pilot project. And it’ll offer a wireless range of up to 200 feet. New York’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications is providing the service through a partnership with Titan, the city’s largest payphone provider, and Van Wagner Communications” (via Take Heart, Pay Phones: When You Die, You Become WiFi - Megan Garber - The Atlantic).
