介绍:
Lincoln: New York is to build city-covering wifi. About 500 hot spots will be installed by July, and eventually roughly 7,500 units will be replaced. Michael, maybe you can tell us a little bit more about this. This sounds very interesting. What exactly is the story here?
Michael: OK. So, I’m sure we’ve seen in many major cities all these disused payphones. Obviously, everybody used to use them back in the 80s and 90s, but then, obviously, with the advent of mobile phones and internet and wifi, they’ve fallen into disrepair, nobody really uses them any more, and they’re just a target for vandalism and graffiti, and things like that. So, what New York has tried to do – this is a project called LinkNYC, and what these kiosks aim to do is take the place of these former payphone booths. It’s got a built-in touchscreen tablet for making video calls, and two large screens for displaying advertisements. According to the New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, he said the city is not contributing any taxpayer money at all to the construction and operation of these so-called Link kiosks. [Operating company] Intersection plans to generate about 500 million dollars over the next 12 years. It’s the same sort of technology that you see in football stadiums nowadays.
Lincoln: Wu You, what do you make of this?
WY: I think it is a very good idea, because nowadays we can still see the public facilities, just like the free bikes that you can borrow and then put back, or the free umbrellas, and this time it is free wifi. I think it is very convenient.
Lincoln: I’m a little bit more skeptical in terms of how these things are going to be maintained. I know a lot of foreigners in Beijing love to complain about the Chinese wifi situation, which they say is quite bad, but to me, it’s like a wifi utopia. It’s incredible to me! I remember the first time I was on a bus in Hong Kong, I could get access to wifi, and I thought, “This is amazing! This is what we can do, this is amazing!”
WY: In Taipei, there have been free wifi hotspots since 2011, and also in the Chinese Mainland, there have been lots of buses that provide free wifi, and subways provide free wifi, and even nowadays, for Chinese airlines, there has been free wifi on the plane.
Michael: And Chinese people love wifi, don’t they, Wu You? (Lincoln: It’s true.)
WY: Yeah, we do! Nowadays, [around] 80% of the restaurants I’ve been to all have wifi, free wifi.
Michael: But in terms of – when you’re taking free wifi in a restaurant, it’s not really free, is it? Because, you know, you’ve got the wifi in addition to the meal that you’re paying for.
WY: That’s true. I can still say that it is a kind of advantage for the restaurant. If you can choose between two similar restaurants, you’d better take a restaurant that provides free wifi.
Michael: I have to confess that what I’ve sometimes done is I’ve gone to a restaurant, and I’ve had my meal and I’ve logged onto the free wifi while I’m there, and then, if I’m in the neighbourhood nearby [later], just hang around outside the restaurant and access the free wifi without actually going in.
Lincoln: Yeah, to me, this kind of thing is actually amazing, because this seems like the future to me, because in South Africa is nowhere near as good as this, it’s actually quite dire, in many ways.
Michael: Oh, really? So how do you get online in South Africa?
Lincoln: Well, you don’t! No one has wifi, really. No one that I know actually has wifi, to a large extent. You use little data bundles that you put on your phone, or on your tablet, or whatever, but that’s the only way you can get wifi.
Michael: Just using your phone to get online?
Lincoln: You use your phone to get online. We don’t have streaming services, really. To put it into perspective, we still have DVD stores, and if [the movie you want] isn’t there, well, then you don’t watch that movie, so this, to me, is actually quite unique.
Michael: I’m going to tell you about the situation in Helsinki, in Finland, because in Helsinki, there’s a free hotspot almost everywhere (Lincoln: Oh, wow!) and this hotspot is fast enough to allow video calling and HD streaming, and you don’t even need to sign up. You show up, and you get online, and according to the news source Quartz, this free hotspot service is actually faster than the home broadband provided by Sky in London.
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