Link.NYC: Putting Links Through Their Paces.

Links, multi-purpose digital advertising platforms devices, have begun appearing along Third Avenue in Manhattan. Links are a product of CityBridge, a consortium of advertising and technology companies that was granted a monopoly franchise to replace thousands of traditional public pay telephones in New York. Links are eventually expected to replace thousands payphones in the 5 boroughs with modern communications depots offering free Wi-Fi, phone calls, and mobile device charging.

The Links initiative potentially represents either a turning point in public telephony, or an advertising-fueled boondoggle offering marginally functional public access to Internet services. I am staying positive in my feelings about Links in these early days of the product.

This image illustrates how tall Links are, with an average-height gentleman standing next to one:

In their first prototype iteration I was not positively impressed by the æsthetic appearance of these devices. They looked overbearing and bland. On the sidewalks of Third Avenue, however, I think the Links cut a somewhat more noble profile. I don’t think they will come to be considered visual icons in the spirit of the red British phone box or, for that matter, the American style phone booth such as the one elevated to national landmark status in Prairie Grove, Arkansas. But they look alright. Links are æsthetically okay.

At present Links are found along Third Avenue from 15th Street (site of the first-ever Link installation) up to around 50th Street. Most Links are not yet functional. Non-working Links are flagged with “coming soon” type signage. These Links presently either do nothing or they display advertising screens which alternate paid advertisements and public service announcements.

The Link in the first photo functioned only as an advertising platter. A couple of blocks down I found a fully-functioning Link. From that device I accessed my personal web site and played back one of the piano music videos found there. It worked. It was alarming to hear my piano music suddenly emanating onto Third Avenue from this Link device, and at a surprisingly loud volume. I let the music play for anyone passing by to hear, moving on to the next Link where I repeated this little bit of random broadcasting to passing strangers. (My attempt to record video of these moments unfortunately failed.)

It took me some usage to realize that I could hardly stand to use the QWERTY keyboard that appears on the Link’s LED screen. It is awkwardly situated at about waist-level. The digital keys had to be punched repeatedly before letters appeared. I had similar difficulties with other buttons on the touchscreen interface. If the QWERTY keyboard appeared at the top of the screen instead of at the bottom I think that would improve its usability considerably.

Audio embedded on web pages plays through these Links at full volume, or at least they did in my attempts. Unfortunately the idea of effectively broadcasting my piano music from one Link after another didn’t go far. Web browsing sessions on Links time out after about a minute of inactivity, which is too short a time to effectively reach any listeners. Links are obviously not intended to be tiny broadcast portals. Or are they? Keep reading for my thoughts regarding Link-based telecommunications anarchy.

As an aside I found this interesting: Lurking overhead on the side of a building was a telephone number in the old-style telephone exchange name format: ORegon 9-6060. I found some pleasant irony in the fact that a vestige of long-retired telephony lingers over the scene of what could be a defining moment for public communication in the 21st century. The past is always with us.

 

Making a Phone Call

I tried to make phone calls from Links. To me this was the most important task to be accomplished, even though I am fully aware that Links’ ability to make phone calls is hardly their primary purpose.

Results were mixed. I did not keep count but of the limited number of Links supposed to be in working order at least three and as many as five were unable to make a phone call or reach the Internet. That’s a pretty bad ratio, and not a promising sign so early in the program. Citybridge inherited thousands of traditional payphones from Titan and several other companies, and has done a surprisingly excellent job of maintaining these phones and keeping them operational. In these very early days of this project the same cannot be said of their Links, which displayed an uninspiring number of messages like these:

But the Links project is just getting started and I remain positive about its future. Progress, after all, comes with compromise, and I have come to realize that the general public is surprisingly receptive to technology that does not work. Just slap “BETA” on your software or hardware product and all its shortcomings are excused.

CityBridge press comments indicate that each Link device will be inspected twice a week by consortium personnel, creating a whole lot of jobs. With such a complex underbelly of technology inside each and every one of these devices it seems like nothing short of a large army of specifically-skilled technicians will be needed to maintain the 10,000+ Links projected to line city streets in the coming decade.

Unlike traditional payphones Links have no handset. This eliminates a need for maintenance and also erases concerns about sanitary cleanliness. This efficiency comes with a cost. If you expect any modicum of privacy in a call made from a Link then you had best arm yourself with an appropriate set of headphones. By default the voice of the person or service you call will fill the air around the Link for all to hear.

If this strange arrangement of making your phone calls public is not for you then you might want to keep an eye on where you can still find traditional payphones. Contrary to how much of the media has reported it there are still expected to be payphones in NYC, primarily in certain MTA subway stations and at transit hubs such as Grand Central Terminal. The payphones being replaced by Links are only outdoor phones, but a quantity of those is expected to be around for a while. Pending litigation from Telebeam, the payphone service provider suing the city over the legality of Citybridge’s monopoly franchise, has kept that company’s traditional payphones on the streets for the time being.

I made a phone call from a Link. Call quality was atrocious. Skype voicemail, which captures audio with no problem, recorded about 16 seconds of what sounded more like a droid from “Star Wars” than me talking:

After these 16 seconds the rest of the call went completely silent. A call made to Skype from another Link device was also completely silent.

As bad as the outgoing sound quality was it should be noted that the party being called sounds quite good.

Something I found slightly deceptive about the Links and their ability to make phone calls is that I expected to be able to use a full headset, with microphone and headphones. in fact the audio input jack only supports headphones. This is contrary to the logo appearing next to the audio jack, which seems to communicate that a headset and microphone combination device would be supported:

As with today’s payphones the Link devices primary rai·son d’ê·tre is not to make phone calls. These devices exist to display advertising. The communication services provided by Links will amount to a very lightly-used afterthought, not unlike the traditional payphones of today.

Caller ID

One trivial bit of information had particularly piqued my curiosity: What shows up on caller ID when calling from one of these devices? Links utilize VOIP telephony so I assumed caller ID would show something quasi-obfuscated, à la Skype, which is known to identify itself with stuff like “Unknown” or “(111) 111-1111”.

Alas, Links are assigned actual phone numbers using Manhattan’s (646) overlay area code. Two of the Links I used showed up on CallerID as (646) 693-7875 and (646) 693-6092. Attempts to call these Links, as expected, were unsuccessful, but returned this friendly pre-recorded announcement:

 

Links as Broadcast Portals?

I found myself more and more put off by how phone calls made through Links are loudly and clearly heard by caller and passers-by alike through a built-in loudspeaker. This user experience could help guarantee that Links are rarely used for legitimate phone calls.

It also creates what I found to be an unsettling array of possibly anarchistic scenarios. The default behavior of outgoing calls being effectively broadcast onto city sidewalks could create embarrassment for the person being called, who would unexpectedly find themselves the star player in a very public conference call.

But I see further potential mayhem. If you use a Link to call a number with a pre-recorded outgoing message then that message will play through the Link’s speaker until it ends, or until someone hangs it up. Anyone passing by might hear this content and become engaged with it, no matter what it is. An average pedestrian might not know how to turn it off.

I wanted to test my theory that one could just call a number and let it play into the air, but off the top of my head I could not think of any phone numbers that led to interesting pre-recorded telephone programs. I will try again next week. Years ago call-in lines such as The Apology Project (a.k.a. the Apology Line, which I was involved with for a couple of years) received hundreds of calls a week. Broadcasting an Apology call from a Link would have made for interesting street theater. 

Today the genre of virtual community experienced through telephone call-in lines is probably best represented by the myriad array of “Donut”, “Raven”, “Blade”, and other free chat lines listed at Talkee.com. It would be quite bizarre, I think, if Talkee.com’s call-in programs randomly filled the air on city streets.

It seems inevitable that telephonic conspirators will use Links as back doors into public space, turning them into platforms for propaganda or even malicious pursuits. You could simply call your own cell phone from a Link and effectively use it as a megaphone, speaking your mind to anyone passing by while spying on them and gauging their reactions from a safe perch.

Such a scenario reverses the original inspiration of The Payphone Project, which encouraged people to call payphones and make contact with random strangers in a safe and harmless way. Links (as with most traditional New York City payphones) do not allow incoming calls. But using Links to broadcast to passing strangers brings new life to this web site’s original inspiration. If David Letterman still did television I think he would be all over this, filling the air of Third Avenue with his very familiar voice, engaging passing New Yorkers in ribald hilarity. But others with less wholesome intentions will see opportunities here. I see phone pranking and harassment taken to new levels via Links.

I am trying to stay positive about Links but I only found three devices with working Internet access, and at least three with none. Calls made through these phones basically failed, as the calls were inaudible. I am fine with the fully non-working devices with signage indicating as much, but the devices that look like they should work… should work!

The Third Avenue Rollout

Part of the spirit of the Links program is to address the so-called “digital divide” by offering free Internet to everybody — everybody, that is, who can afford and maintain control of a device with which to access it. In that spirit I would have expected the initial Links rollout to broadly include installations in all five boroughs, at least as a symbolic opening salvo to demonstrate that this program will not benefit wealthy communities over poor or one borough over another. The Links initiative received a fair amount of flack from pols who questioned whether the Links would be evenly distributed. On account of that I would have thought the initial rollout might make an extra effort to address that issue of inclusiveness by at least symbolically placing Link devices in all 5 boroughs.

Giving Citybridge a benefit of the doubt I will assume that this is a matter of logistics and available resources, and not a calculated choice demonstrating the consortium’s love affair with Third Avenue. I don’t know much about internals or what is under the sidewalk with this stuff but laying down miles of gigabit-ready fiber is probably done contiguously, not necessarily wherever one pleases.

This bird standing atop the world’s first Link device at 15th Street and Third avenue presages a future where bird poop is streamed down the sides of every Link device:

Conspicuous

I would have liked it if more Link devices were located off the Avenue. When attempting to use one of these things I find myself conspicuously sticking out into pedestrian space. In fact as I articulated this thought to myself I heard a woman mumble “SORRY!” It took me a ½ second to realize she was apologizing for jamming her Michael Kors bag into my southern rump as I attempted to use a Link (which had no network access). There is a genuine conspicuity factor in using these Links. I imagine this is by design and intended to limit usage.

This is a minor point but could someone have not come up with a better, more catchy name for these things? The name for this product is decidedly unclever. If “L.I.N.K.” was an acronym for something I might find the moniker to be a little more engaging. Given the public nature of phone calls made through Links perhaps L.I.N.K. stands for “Listen In Now Kids”. A name like LINYC, pronounced “LINUS”, might be a little too clever, and give needless deference to Linus Torvalds and/or Linus van Pelt.

Gigabit Wi-Fi

And of course there is the much-heralded free Wi-Fi, which to me is the most over-stated benefit of the Links project. I might never use it again but I begrudgingly connected to a Link’s Wi-Fi for the purpose of this story. As I quickly discovered after connecting it is really quite awkward and uncomfortable standing around on a street corner, tablet in hand, browsing the web or checking e-mail. It appeared that only two of the Links on Third Avenue are situated anywhere near a bench where one could sit and get out of the way while using the free Wi-Fi. Given Citybridge’s cozy relationship with the city it seems like they might want to explore working with planners to install some kind of public seating in the vicinity of a select quantity of Links.

Here are some facts and figures regarding one Link’s network info and speed. I downloaded a 6mb MP3 file. It came through in about 13 seconds. That is not particularly fast. I will explore more of the Link’s purported gigabutt bandwidth on my next visits.

Average speed: 3617.1875 kbit / second
Download time: 13226 ms
Total size: 6132674 bytes

This is about the same as download speed for the same file from my T-Mobile hotspot. I would have tried more of this type of testing but I was running out of time this particular day and couldn’t think of any huge files to download. I will be following up with more comments and observations on my experiences with Links.

For those interested in such things here is network information broadcast by one of the Links, captured by the Android app Servers Ultimate Pro:

Internet Information
Public IP: 147.75.206.153
Public hostname: 147.75.206.153
Request port: 27078

Connections
WIFI connected: yes
Ethernet connected: no
2G/3G connected: no
4G connected: no
Bluetooth connected: no

WIFI
WIFI IP: 10.85.159.235
DNS1: 8.8.8.8
DNS2: 4.2.2.2
Gateway: 10.85.0.1
Netmask: 255.255.0.0
Lease duration: 600
MAC: 68:05:71:B2:65:94
SSID: LinkNYC Free Wi-Fi
SSID hidden: no
BSSID: 38:ff:36:12:92:c8
Speed: 117 Mbps
RSSI: -32

Ethernet
Not connected

Network Interfaces
lo: ::1;127.0.0.1
p2p0: fe80::6805:71ff:feb2:6594
wlan0: fe80::6a05:71ff:feb2:6594;10.85.159.235