New York City's massive plans to offer free Wi-Fi to the entire city have officially gone live. As recently noted, LinkNYC started to retrofit older pay phone stations last month, replacing them with the first of what's expected to be 7,500 Wi-Fi kiosks that -- through a partnership with Vonage, provides users with free phone calls anywhere in the country, as well as access to 311, 911, 411 and city services (via integrated Android tablet).
Last week the first two kiosks went live; one on the corner of 15th Street and Third Avenue, and the other at 17th and Third.
The first speedtests we've seen suggest the service doesn't reach its gigabit promise, with users seeing download speeds of 280 Mbps and upload speeds of 317 Mbps. That's not particularly surprising given the load these kiosks are expected to see in crowded Manhattan, and it's a free service after all.
LinkNYC also pointed out to us in an e-mail that your ability to get gigabit speeds will be highly dependent on the device you're using to connect to the network.
"We are pretty confident the system will be able to handle the load, and we’re already prepared for future upgrades to make the system even faster," LinkNYC tells us in an e-mail. "Right now, the device is the bottleneck on speed, and as devices improve, users will see greater and greater speeds as well."
The city says it hopes to have 500 of the kiosks in place by July, with a general goal of installing around ten a day. Kiosks will be placed around 150 feet apart, and have an effective range of around 450 feet. CityBridge, the company contracted to install the kiosks, says it's running $200 million of new fiber to feed the encrypted connections.