New York's Super-Fast Wi-Fi Is Live, and Free

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By Rebecca Greenfield

January 19, 2016 at 8:43 PM UTC

Corrected

January 20, 2016 at 2:50 PM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

Want to watch Cats in HD on YouTube, with no buffering or disruption, free, while walking the streets of New York? If you're strolling a four-block sliver of Manhattan's Third Avenue, you can, thanks to CityBridge, a consortium of companies that on Tuesday launched four super-fast WiFi hubs branded as Link NYC.

The one-gigabit kiosks started offering free Internet services, in beta, at 8 a.m. on a bitterly cold Tuesday morning. Six other kiosks will go online during the next few weeks. In the meantime, CityBridge will erect more 9.5-foot-tall pillars throughout the five boroughs, first along Eighth Avenue, then up to northern Manhattan and into the Bronx. The initiative plans to install 7,500 such hubs around the city over the next eight years. In addition to Web services, the kiosks offer free phone-charging ports. Eventually they will offer free phone calls and a tablet for Web browsing.