Payphones are getting a new lease on life—16 payphones in the Boston area will soon begin delivering free Wi-Fi, and officials at companies leading the effort hope to expand that to about 400 payphones citywide by the end of next summer, according to a report in Boston.com.
RCN Business Services, LCC International Inc., Pacific Telemanagement Services, and DAS Communications are the companies behind the effort. “The partnership is giving new life to telephone booths that have almost become extinct due to the evolution of the cell phone,” said Jeff Carlson, vice president and general manager at RCN Boston, in a press release.
A pioneering payphone-to-hot-spot conversion effort got underway in New York last summer. The project was launched by the city and the Van Wagner advertising company. At the time, NPR quoted Van Wagner executive Pete Izzo as seeing payphones as buried treasure: “Basically the conduits under the street—bandwidth and electric—bring magic to the street corner.”
The installations in Boston support small-cell technology as well as Wi-Fi. “It's interesting and a little ironic that capacity demands from the cellular market has allowed for the repurposing of existing phone infrastructure, like payphone kiosks,” said E.J. von Schaumburg , vice president of advanced mobility solutions at LCC, in a press release. “Utilizing small-cell technology, we can take advantage of the excellent kiosk locations throughout an urban area and deliver high-quality cellular capacity at the street level.”
RCN Business Services, DAS, LCC, and PTS announced their payphone rehabilitation effort at the WiFi and Small Cells North America Conference held in Boston April 24-25.