New York’s payphones are becoming free gigabit Wi-fi kiosks

You might remember a couple years back, New York was trying to figure out what to do with our payphones, since everyone has spacephones now and nothing every goes wrong with those. Well, we have our answer as to what’s going to happen to our poor neglected payphones now: they’re going to become kiosks offering free high-speed Wi-fi. That sounds cool, as long as Time Warner and Cablevision never have anything to do with it.

Business Insider has the details on the plan to turn our payphones into the kiosks, through a plan called LinkNYC, which if all goes well, by the end of next year our payphones will be 10,000 kiosks delivering gigabut Wi-fi for free. And who’s ever heard of a large-scale public works project in New York City being delayed? Still, even if it takes two years, all of our Instagrams and selfies on the streets of New York will be uploaded faster than our grandparents ever imagined we’d be able to upload them.

Aside from being magic Wi-fi boxes, the LinkNYC kiosks will also allow you to charge your phone and provide touch screens that people can use to look up directions and other city information, so tourists can stop asking you. It’s all going to be paid for by slathering the LinkNYC kiosks in ads, but whatever, you can just turn on your real-life version of AdBlock, otherwise known as not even looking at all the ads surrounding us everywhere.

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