Payphones vs. LinkNYC: The N11s Compared.

At some point in recent months LinkNYC kiosks began allowing access to 711, the Telecommunications Relay Service for individuals who are hard of hearing, deaf, have speech disabilities, etc. Until now anyone dialing 711 from LinkNYC would see a message instructing them to please dial a valid US phone number.

Blocking 711 appeared to put LinkNYC in direct violation of FCC rules, which state that VoIP providers “must offer 711 dialing service“.

But then it seems other VoIP providers get away with not allowing direct 711 access to the relay service. I cannot get to it through Skype or Google Voice.

This development prompted me to revisit the differences between LinkNYC and the city’s payphones in terms of access to the N11s.

Payphone and the N11s.

For the purposes of this comparison I only used CityBridge payphones. CityBridge has monopoly franchises not just on LinkNYC kiosks but on the remaining stable of outdoor payphones in New York.

Dialing 211 from a payphone is supposed to connect you to a community outreach service run by the United Way. Unfortunately, in a significant number of instances, access to 211 via CityBridge payphones has been hijacked, sending calls to one of a variety of prerecorded announcements promising $100 gift vouchers and free vacations in exchange for taking a survey. The prerecorded programs reached differ any time you dial 211, sometimes even returning an old-school busy signal.

I did not descend too deep into this murky little world, but I have found that a lot of retired payphone numbers now send you to this sort of thing. Hey, at least the calls are free. If you hit the 1 key you can listen to Chopin’s “Minute Waltz” until a human answers.

In other instances, however, calls to 211 from CityBridge payphones connect you to the United Way resource. It seems like calls to something like this should be free but, when you find a CityBridge payphone where dialing 211 actually works as expected, a coin deposit of 25¢ is required. You can dial 211, or you can try 212-639-9675 instead. Both numbers connect to the same service, but neither call is free.

311 can be reached for free from any CityBridge payphone.

411 from CityBridge payphones will cost you 50¢.

511, the all-in-one New York State travel information hotline, cannot be reached from CityBridge payphones. Access to 511 from payphones is possible by dialing 888-465-1169. That’s 888-GO511NY.

611, historically used to report maintenance issues at a payphone, today does not connect to anything from CityBridge payphones. A notice printed on the phone’s required information placard instructs you to call toll-free, 866-363-1054, to report problems with a particular payphone. That number connects you to the LinkNYC support line, but one assumes they handle payphone-related calls there as well.

Note that some payphones are not programmed to recognize 866 as a toll-free exchange. Such phones might ask you to deposit 50¢. Don’t do it!

711 is accessible from all CityBridge payphones.

811 is not reachable from any CityBridge payphones, though a scenario where anyone would use a payphone to report possible excavation or digging is hard to reckon. Try 800-524-7603 instead.

I’ll assume 911 works from all CityBridge payphones, so long as they have dial tone.

LinkNYC and the N11s

Dialing 211 from a LinkNYC kiosks returns a message instructing you to dial a valid U.S. number. Instead of dialing 211 you can instead dial 212-639-9675

311 is free to call from LinkNYC.

411 is free from LinkNYC. The service utilizes a voice response system. A robot voice asks you for the city and state where you want to look someone up, then drills down to whether you want to look up a business or an individual. That’s as far as I ever got with LinkNYC’s 411. The only way I got this voice response system to understand anything I said was to absolutely scream. I just do not have it in me to scream at a public Internet kiosk.

As with CityBridge’s payphones, dialing 511, the all-in-one New York State travel information hotline, gets you nothing on LinkNYC. Access to 511 should be available from LinkNYC by dialing 888-465-1169. That’s 888-GO511NY.

The MTA promotes 511 pretty heavily on its bus stops, frequently found near LinkNYC kiosks. For that reason alone you’d think CityBridge would program the kiosks to recognize 511.

One of the most hilarious glitches I encountered with LinkNYC involved 611. After CityBridge switched from Vonage to RingCentral as its VOIP service provider you could dial 611 and connect to RingCentral’s customer service department. This mirrors the way most if not all cell phone service providers allow easy access to their customer support by dialing 611.

But in the case of LinkNYC this curbside connection to customer support presented a real security lapse. All you needed to do was procure or guess the PIN for LinkNYC’s RingCentral account and away you’d go, modifying the RingCentral calling plan in ways such as allowing for international calls, changing the CallerID, or even just canceling the service altogether. All it would have taken was a rogue or disgruntled employee at CityBridge with access to the account PIN for someone to shut down the LinkNYC phone calling feature.

CityBridge patched that security lapse after I detailed it in a since-deleted post to this website. You are welcome, CityBridge.

Dialing 611 from LinkNYC today does nothing.

711, as stated above, can now be reached directly via LinkNYC. This was not true for over 2 years.

Dialing 811 from LinkNYC gets you nothing, although as with payphones, a legitimate scenario in which someone would use LinkNYC to report potential excavation and digging is hard to imagine. Try 800-524-7603 instead.

911 probably works.