AfterDawn: News

Google to establish massive scale free WiFi in New York

Google-owned company Sidewalk Labs has announced acquisition of Control Group and Titan, two companies that are building a free city wide WiFi. The project will launch in September in New York City, Bloomberg reports.

The project aims to bring free and "superfast" WiFi to the city of New York and especially for tourists to exploit. It will use old phone booths – which there are thousands of – to provide WiFi hotspots as well as free phone charging, phone calling, and internet browsing.



It's been estimated that over $500 million can be made from the advertisements over the next 12 years.

Google has been interested in global free WiFi for quite some time and this is the first big push into that area. We will certainly hear more about similar plans in new cities in the future.

Written by: Matti Robinson @ 28 Jun 2015 11:55

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• 2 comments

• hearme0

  500 million? Don't bet on it. 1/100th of a percent of people that click on ads won't yield this profit IMO.
  
  And who figures 12 years out? Forecasts typically span 10 years. 12 seems like an odd number.
  
  Clearly this is why they chose NY over less populated cities, a numbers game.

  28.6.2015 12:12 #1

• Dragon3000

  Google will make their money from the ridiculous amount of data they will collect from everyone using their free Wifi. Money from advertising is just pocket money in comparison.
  

  ZX Spectrum 128K

  30.6.2015 08:38 #2