Thanks to a friend from my YouTube Payphone Channel I now know what LinkPHL kiosks, the Philadelphia version of LinkNYC, sends out as its caller ID. If you received a call from (267) 691-2424 that most likely means someone tried to reach you from a LinkPHL Smart City kiosk in Philadelphia. If LinkPHL is set up the same as LinkNYC then all of LinkPHL’s 18 kiosks send out the same caller ID.

Calls to 267-691-2424, at present, send you to this message, stating there is a “technical problem.” I don’t know what that means in this context but it differs from calls to LinkNYC’s number, 917-341-5504, which send you to a recorded message explaining what LinkNYC is and that the kiosks do not accept incoming calls.

Casting about the various phone number websites turns up a few references to unwanted or threatening calls from LinkPHL kiosks. A WhoCallsMe user reports 8-10 calls a week from 267-691-2424. Someone at FindWhoCallsYou reports a “garbled harrassing tone.” If that is a reference to call audio quality that would certainly align with how awful calls sound from LinkNYC machines. CallDetective lists 5 reports of “Threats” and “Unwanted Spam” from LinkPHL.

LinkNYC’s 917-341-5504, by comparison, returns quite a bit more activity among these websites, which stands to reason given that there are 100 times more LinkNYC machines than LinkPHL. CallCenter users report LinkNYC being used for calls from a “No good person”. YouMail shows someone saying they got a “Spam from pakistan” call, suggesting the LinkNYC number has been spoofed by fraudsters. A report from telGuarder reveals that, as with the payphones of yore, people sometimes need to identify the location of a kiosk because someone who called from one of them is in trouble.

The number of LinkPHL kiosks as of this writing stands at 18. While that is far fewer than New York’s 1,800 LinkNYC machines it is interesting and even puzzling to see any activity at all in the Link realm. New York’s LinkNYC rollout should have reached something like 6,000 kiosks by now but new installations basically ceased altogether in 2018. The LinkNYC has proven to be a failure in New York. Why this trickle of activity in Philadelphia?

I don’t know the status of LinkNWK, Newark’s version of Smart City Wi-Fi For All. According to the LinkNWK official map the count of kiosks in Newark stands at 4, which is where it has been for at least a couple of years.

I visited Newark in 2018, when kiosks numbered only two. I observed at the time that LinkNWK already looked a lot like LinkNYC. One of the kiosks did not work, while the other was monopolized by a dude who had pulled up a chair and charged his phone for at least 45 minutes.