Free Internet access is a wonderful and glorious thing. It’s especially useful if you’re on a limited wireless data plan or you’re traveling to another city where you don’t want to pay for some nasty roaming charges. The next time you head out to the Big Apple, you could be bathed in the glory of free gigabit Wi-Fi thanks to the deployment of LinkNYC. It’s finally here. Almost.

Announced late last year, the LinkNYC project will see several phone booth-like contraptions placed around New York City. Each of these will provide residents of and visitors to New York with free public gigabit Wi-Fi access, each covering a range of about 150 feet. The first Wi-Fi booth is getting installed near Union Square in Manhattan, outside a Starbucks on the corner of 15th Street and 3rd Avenue.

As the year goes on, we can expect to see the erection of some 500 other gigabit Wi-Fi hubs around the city and these should be ready to go by the middle of July. The first unit near Union Square should be operational in a couple of weeks. By the time the project is done, there will be more than 7,500 of these hubs and they’ll each have USB charging ports, touchscreen web browsers, and a couple of 55-inch advertising displays that will generate some $500 million over the next dozen years.

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While we were fortunate enough to stay connected during our trip to New York a few years ago, having gigabit Wi-Fi certainly would have been appreciated. Here in Vancouver, Shaw customers can access a number of Shaw Go WiFi access points around the city and Telus is setting up free Wi-Fi in many public spaces too. With LinkNYC, New Yorkers and its tourists can more easily tweet, Instagram and Periscope their journeys in Manhattan too.

Via The Verge

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