News

Link NYC and UK Wi-Fi kiosks destined for more extensive public projects

July 18, 2017

Intersection, the company managing the Link Wi-Fi kiosk projects in London and New York City, plans to upgrade the kiosks to support everything from augmented reality to autonomous vehicles, according to the MIT Technology Review.

Colin O'Donnell, the company's chief innovation officer, said the company is trying to figure out how it can leverage all the different data sets to make the technology as dynamic as possible.

Intersection is one of the few private firms that big cities have partnered with on public information projects — and its technology is likely to spread to other major U.S. cities where it holds municipal and transit advertising contracts.

Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Google-owned Alphabet, is an investor in Intersection. O'Donnell said he collaborates frequently with Sidewalk Labs on smart city ideas, with Intersection tackling the more immediate work and Sidewalk Labs focusing on longer-term projects.

Link kiosks could be outfitted with environmental sensors. Intersection worked with Argonne National Laboratory to develop sensors that detect pollutants and could negotiate with its city partners to add them to the kiosks.

Joseph Chow, a New York University assistant professor of civil and urban engineering, said future Link kiosks could help facilitate a Department of Transportation project researching ways to use roadside infrastructure to communicate information about accidents to other vehicles.