New York City is scrapping its pay phones to create Wi-Fi hot spots

(Image credit: Twitter/NBC DFW)

last updated 6 January 2016

New York City is giving its pay phones a 21st-century upgrade — by turning them into high speed Wi-Fi hotspots. The free service will offer broadband speeds of 1,000 megabits a second, which is about 100 times faster than the typical speed provided by most wireless carriers, Market Watch reports. After connecting for the first time, a client's device will be able to connect automatically to the hot spots throughout the city.

The service is being brought to New York via a $200 million investment from CityBridge, a collaboration between major tech companies Qualcomm Inc., CIVIQ Smartscapes, and Intersection, which is backed by Google's parent company, Alphabet. New York begins rolling the hot spots out this month, with plans to install 500 hot spots by July; eventually CityBridge aims to replace all 7,500 pay phone locations in the city.

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.

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