Up to the Hour Monitoring to Launch for LinkNYC Public Phones
New tool will allow for better maintenance and upkeep
New York, NY – Information about the availability of LinkNYC’s free phone service will now be shared online. This real-time, up to the hour monitoring will ensure residents are able to find free phones that are working whenever they need one. In the past, public payphones often didn’t work: picking up a handset that had no dial tone or had been damaged became normal; sometimes booths were empty with no phones inside. With the upgrade from payphones to LinkNYC kiosks offering 911 and free phone service, the City is hoping to make broken public phones a thing of the past.
Since 2013 when he was a candidate Ben Kallos was supportive of Mayor Bloomberg’s “Reinvent Payphones” initiative raising awareness for information sessions and the upcoming request for proposals. The following year in 2014 Council Member Kallos advocated in Fast Company for upgrading phone booths. In 2016 payphones on the Upper East Side got their first upgrade in decades as the Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications(DoITT) expanded the LinkNYC program into the Upper East Side.
According to CityBridge, during the last quarter, system-wide wi-fi service has had 99.8% uptime. During that same time, all tablet services were above 95%.
Council Member Kallos noticed that in his district, some LinkNYC kiosks had down tablets, meaning residents could still use the free wi-fi but could not make free calls. Those tablets were subsequently fixed by CityBridge, the City’s franchisee who operates the LinkNYC program. As a software developer, Kallos suggested that DoITT use existing internet protocols to determine whether tablets were online in real time in order to improve service quality. DoITT worked with CityBridge, the City Council Technology Committee chaired by Peter Koo and Council Member Kallos to develop a real-time monitoring system based on newly available hourly Link service information supplied by CityBridge. The system will ingest the information into a new dataset that will be available to the public on NYC OpenData next month.
Even in a world where almost everyone has a smartphone, my battery still dies every day, and I find myself relying on LinkNYC terminals to make calls while I charge my phone, more often than I thought,” said Council Member Ben Kallos. “Upgrading our payphones into free phone and wifi kiosks has created an opportunity to use new technology tools to keep our city’s infrastructure online and up to date.”
Council Member Peter Koo, Chair of the Technology Committee, stated, “Whether taking advantage of the free phone calls or checking on the next bus arrival, there is endless potential for LinkNYC kiosks to serve as a one-stop shop for a variety of NYC needs. A robust monitoring and maintenance program will ensure this innovative new program lives up to its potential. Thank you to Council Member Kallos, LinkNYC, and the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications for working with me on this effort.”
“More than 3.7 million people have already used the more than 1,500 Link kiosks active across all five boroughs. This shows how important the program has become in a relatively short time, and why it’s paramount that we make sure Links are operating at an optimal level. In a matter of weeks, New Yorkers are going to be able to see that for themselves when we publish a new Open Dataset showing real-time status of all the functions of each kiosk,” said Samir Saini, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications. “We thank Council Member Kallos for his focused attention and diligent efforts to help us improve transparency and monitoring of LinkNYC, and for his steadfast support of this pioneering technology program.”
“Across the five boroughs, LinkNYC is proud to offer a high level of service that millions of New Yorkers rely on for free, super-fast wi-fi, free phone calls, and so much more. We are happy to work with DoITT and Council Member Kallos, in providing additional data for the City's Open Data portal so New Yorkers can see the status of Links throughout the city,” said Ruth Fasoldt, Link’s Director of External Affairs.