I can’t mention Europe or anywhere outside of North America, but in North America (Canada, USA & Mexico) have you not noticed the lack of public pay phones that used to be everywhere??? They used to be in every entrance to every shopping mall, in a phone booth at every major intersection (sorry superman) and in a reasonable walking distance to the nearest bank or restaurant.
We all say it’s because of the use of cell phones (and maybe that’s true), but what happens when your cellphone battery dies and you need to make that phone call??? I hope you have a friend nearby with a charged cellphone because pay phones are no longer…
That being said what do you do with the infrastructure already installed for these aging devices??? Well one company in New York came to the realistic idea of putting public charge posts in place of the public pay phones, and another company went to the next step: let’s put free wi-fi and android tablets in place of the public pay phones… Hmmm great idea (we already have every coffee shop on the market doing just that – less the tablet)… Just think you have a data plan and you don’t want to abuse it but you have 20 minutes waiting for the bus / taxi and you have time to kill, you could go to the local coffee shop (they are now everywhere) but you might miss your ride… Well you can now use the free wi-fi from the city (with a lot of limitations mind you… Someone has to be protected against the evils of the Internet), just don’t think it’s gonna be full broad band internet (like your own home internet), but texts / small emails / live games and maybe not HD video you can use while waiting…
Sounds like a great idea (with current technology moving forward while replacing the old technology) until you run into a digital / physical hurdle…. It seems that a unpredictable problem was happening in New York and the free Wi-fi areas: homeless people were using the system to have public sex (either using the tablets, or their own Wi-Fi devices)…. Wow, didn’t see that coming (pun not intended). The company rep mentioned that filters for such explicit material were always being updated to prevent this from happening, but is seams harder then one thinks…. How do you filter what someone considers porn while another person says its for the gay community??? Not a job I would like….
It seams in New York anyone can view explicit material in public (no matter who finds it offensive), but you cannot have public sex of any kind… (Their Laws, not mine)…. But moving forward I still think it’s a great idea to have public free wi-fi and charging docks for the mass digital public of today (maybe no tablets at the stands???, just a thought). It just might get the public out of the coffee shops and back into society!!!
