New York City Swaps Traditional Phone Booths with Gigantic Smart Screens

By: Jeff Stewart  |   November 23rd, 2012   |   Business, Living, News, Tablets

Phone booths came in handy for New Yorkers after super storm Hurricane Sandy struck the city and damaged buildings, residential colonies and wireless networks with little in the way of discrimination. As a result of that, people in New York not only had to spend nights out in the open, but they also lost touch with their friends and relatives due to the lack of wireless connections. These people went old school, using pay phones to get in touch with their loved ones.

 

This made New York City realize the importance of these reliable communication hubs, leading authorities to perk up the mainstay technology to allow added functionality above and beyond simple calls. As result of this decision, New York City has launched an official plan to convert all phone booths into huge touch screens that will give New Yorkers emergency broadcasts, information pertaining to the city, weather, parks, transit, business deals and much more. These huge iPad like screens can be found in the same sites where existing pay phones were erected.

 

New York City has made this endeavour in partnership with two firms; City 24/7 and Cisco, successfully conducting the pilot plan with the pair. People in New York can now use these gigantic smart screens on 10^th street, 3^rd Avenue and 12^th Broadway and many more in the near future as the number of these new screens will rise to 250.

 

Updating about the installation of these screens City 24/7 stated in an email that, “We’ll average a couple of installs per day. With the holidays approaching, they won’t all be in for a couple of months”.

 

Since these huge smart screens do not take in coins for providing information like traditional phone booths do, the new tech will generate funds from advertisements and coupon offerings from nearby merchants. These coupons and information can be retrieved by bringing mobile phones close to the smart screen and claimed through QR code, Bluetooth or other means.

 

Getting information and retrieving coupon from these huge screens signifies one of the most important aspects of this new platform; it has more to offer. This can be judged from the fact that in the case of a storm like Hurricane Sandy New Yorkers could use these screens to obtain instructions regarding safety, updates and they can also utilize them to call for help, allowing it to function as a two way means of communication. These new gigantic screens provide safety instructions and allow calling help because it is integrated with 911 emergency system and 311 information service for New Yorkers thanks to Cisco.

 

However, in spite having all these fine qualities, questions were raised that whether these large smart screens would also become business platforms for prostitute agents and drug dealers or a place of shelter for hobos like traditional pay phone booths?

 

In response to these concerns, CEO of City 24/7, Tom Touchet said that they have tested these big smart screens in different localities of the city and they have been well received and well treated by all communities. However, he also added that these machines were “over-engineered for a reason”, so they can bear up against anything that is thrown at them and in addition to this spray paint can also be easily wiped out from the surface of this platform.

 

Source: Gigaom