Absent in Central Harlem, Time and Security Keep LinkNYC Kiosks at Bay

By Everic White

September 18, 2016

As Midtowners crow about the homeless watching porn, playing music and loitering around the new fleet of LinkNYC kiosks, the sight is a foreign one in Harlem. In the kiosk map on the company’s website, a look at the uptown neighborhood shows a dead zone in central Harlem for the free Wifi and standing computers offered. Still, Harlem’s business and tech communities, as well as cybersecurity experts are confident there will be kiosks dotting Lenox Avenue and Adam Clayton Powell and Frederick Douglass Boulevards in due time, even with the increased scrutiny and recent loss of Internet access at the locations.

Of the forty-six current active LinkNYC kiosk locations between 110th Street and 155th Street in Manhattan, four are on Amsterdam, thirteen are on 3rd Avenue, and the rest are on Broadway. This leaves out a vast stretch of Harlem where the majority of its businesses and population are located. According to ReferenceUSA’s database and Social Explorer’s 2014 ACS 1 year estimates, Central Harlem accounts for 11,381 businesses and 132,027 people, while West and East Harlem, where the majority of the kiosks are, accounts for 2,798 and 12,604 businesses and 130,739 and 129,713 people, respectively. East Harlem, though, has been the focus of the LinkNYC initiative, according to one Harlem business leader.

“Historically, East Harlem is the last to get these types services, if they ever get them. We were really committed to ensure that East Harlem got them first,” said Bruce Lincoln, Co-Founder and Co-Executive producer of Silicon Harlem, an organization dedicated to fostering a tech community uptown. Lincoln was guarded in his assessment of new locations for LinkNYC kiosks. “They’ve already had some of the CityBridge trucks look at the locations where there had previously been payphones,” he said, being sure not to specify where these locations were or when they would have kiosks installed.

He was not the only one to see the difficulty in implementing the kiosks. Matti Kon, a cybersecurity expert was also guarded in his estimation, outlining the challenges facing such a vast undertaking. “I believe there would be the same kind of difficulties here as with any public technology project that is rolled out,” Kon said. “In reality, you have to roll out a system and test it in a real life setting, to be able to truly see how the system works and what improvements need to be made.” That reality, though, has been sullied with controversy, as squatters, drug users and the homeless descended on the first rollout of kiosks. As of Wednesday, September 14th, LinkNYC kiosks have had their sidewalk Internet access disabled.

Ruth Fasoldt, a LinkNYC spokesperson, responded to request for comment via email, saying the program is “still in the early phase of deployment, learning how New Yorkers and visitors are using the Links and how they would like to see them improved.” She referenced the spat of kiosk misuse by saying LinkNYC is testing “potential adjustments to LinkNYC in response to (neighborhood resident) concerns to prevent any of the Links from being monopolized by any individual or groups of users.”

Fasoldt’s comments of testing and adjustment mirrored that of Kon, who opined the expansion over the “next several months” and claimed LinkNYC “decided to rollout in places where they believed they would get the most user traffic and therefore, the best testing scenarios.” Lincoln said similar claiming, “This deployment is gonna happen over several years, and they’ve fast-tracked it to make sure that the kiosks were deployed first in East Harlem and then for fiber infrastructure to be implemented in Central Harlem.”

Lincoln and Kon were effusive about the prospects for business and community improvements that these kiosks would bring to Harlem and the rest of the city. “We see them as being a boon to the tech startup community, but to the community overall,” Lincoln said. “People need to have access to the type of free WiFi they could get using their smartphones and devices. Smartphone usage is widespread in Harlem, so that’ll be a real resource.” Kon added, “This is and will continue to be the way of the future and the direction we are headed, as a "linked and wired" society. There will be more and more link-ups and other cheap and easy to access hock-up options in the future.”

They’re right. Bill Cromie, Director of Emergent Technologies of Blue Ridge Ridge Labs at the Robin Hood Foundation, an organization dedicated to ending poverty in New York City, agreed that Internet access was a necessary good. “Many low income folks go to the local McDonald’s just to get online. Having high quality, free WiFi can be tremendously powerful,” he said. With Harlem’s business community growing and its poor population mixing with an upwardly mobile one, that power is much needed. Bruce Lincoln is confident that need will be met, saying, “There’s a commitment here, and (LinkNYC is) making good on that commitment,” said Lincoln.