Wi-Fi Sparks New Life In New York Pay PhonesWi-Fi Sparks New Life In New York Pay Phones

Have you used a pay phone lately? Probably not. Thanks to the proliferation of cellular phone service, phone booths have rapidly gone the way of the dodo. But Verizon Communications breathed new life into the old boxes last week with a strategy to reconfigure them into wireless Internet hot spots.

The company plans to install Wi-Fi radio technology in more than 1,000 pay phones across New York City by year's end. It will provide a broadband Internet connection to users within a 300-foot radius of each phone. So far, 150 of the modified phone booths are already providing service.

Verizon intends to use Wi-Fi to attract more users for its wired broadband networks, offering consumers added value and flexibility, says Tony Price, VP of business DSL marketing at Verizon. Businesses will see increased productivity from employees who have untethered Net access and can check E-mail while eating lunch in a park or deli, he says. Plus, mobile workers who travel to New York on business can easily get online in nearly every neighborhood.

The wireless service is available only to Verizon Online's DSL customers at no extra charge beyond their monthly service fee. There are no plans to make the service available to nonsubscribers, Price says. If the service is a success in New York, Verizon, the nation's largest local phone company, could eventually blanket cities up and down the East Coast, including Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, with Wi-Fi-equipped phone booths.

That possibility intrigues observers. Using pay phones to blanket a city is a "stroke of genius," says telecom analyst Jeff Kagan. "Clearly, the future is broadband, and to enable these new applications and platforms we have to make broadband available to everyone, everywhere."

Other telecom companies are looking to use pay phones as foot soldiers in a Wi-Fi invasion. For more than a year, AT&T has been running a trial with pay-phone hot spots in several hotels and airports, says Bob Donnelly, director of corporate development at AT&T. Likewise, SBC Communications is "aggressively pursuing" the Wi-Fi market, a company official says; SBC sold 10,000 wireless home-networking gateways last month and is looking for ways to deploy public hot spots.

Wireline carriers are positioned to sell Wi-Fi because they can exploit existing customers, networks, and back-office capabilities, says John Donovan, CEO of wireless consulting firm inCode Telecom. Pay phones on the street give the phone companies thousands of sites where they don't have to run wire or pay rent to install antennas.

InCode is working with Bell Canada on a trial program installing pay-phone hot spots in airports and hotels, an effort that's convinced Donovan the system will take off. "This is the way Wi-Fi will spread," he says. "Not because it's the only way it's done, but because it's the shot heard round the world."

Photo by Sacha Lecca