It’s a Tale of Two Wi-Fis.
A mayor who won office citing inequality between rich and poor New Yorkers has approved a citywide wireless Internet system that gives superfast service to Manhattan and upscale Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods, but puts everyone else in the broadband slow lane.
Mayor de Blasio’s “five-borough Wi-Fi Network” will operate 10 times slower in Staten Island and poorer neighborhoods of Brooklyn and the Bronx, a Daily News examination found.
The speedier systems are flanked by advertising — and advertisers prefer wealthier eyes. As a result, all of the 2,500-plus locations in Manhattan are high speed, giving the borough with 20% of the city’s population fully 65% of all the fast kiosks.
Meanwhile, the Bronx will get speedy Wi-Fi at 361 kiosks — just 6% of the fast Wi-Fi stations in the city. The borough will have slower service at 375 non-advertising kiosks, which replace old payphones.
In some neighborhoods, speedy broadband will be even rarer.
In Melrose’s Community Board 3, where the population is 85% black or Hispanic and 61% receive public assistance, just four of the former payphones will get the speedy service.
And in Brownsville’s community board, where the population is 93% black or Hispanic and 50% receive public assistance, just 10 payphones will get the speedy service. In Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Community Board 3, which is 77% black or Hispanic, there are 11 speedy payphones. In Crown Heights’ Community Board 8, where 79% of the residents are black or Hispanic, there are nine.
“The Internet is knowledge, and knowledge is power — and they don’t want us to have the power,” fumed June Bennett, 51, as he shopped in Brownsville. “We never got our 40 acres and a mule: Give us Wi-Fi!”
Just a few miles away is Brooklyn’s Community Board 2, which is 60% white and where only 19% receive public assistance. Those neighborhoods — DUMBO, Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene — will get 59 superfast payphones.
Yet when he announced the 3,900-station Wi-Fi network last week, de Blasio said: “Affordable access to broadband for all New Yorkers (is) essential for everything we need to do to be a fair and just city.”
“We can’t continue to have a digital divide that holds back so many of our citizens,” he added.
The group of companies that will run the system based its winning bid on the current locations of payphone advertising — ensuring that the class-based hierarchy would remain tethered to the current infrastructure.
The mayor’s office said the two-tier system is only temporary.
“We’re inheriting a history and we’re trying to … change the equation,” said Maya Wiley, counsel to the mayor.
“We’re expanding the infrastructure into communities that have not had enough (WiFi) availability,” Wiley added. “It’s a good incremental step. No, it’s not everything, but we’re going to get more.”
She said the slower service — 100 megabytes vs. 1 gigabyte — is “excellent,” faster than the typical home Wi-Fi.
But an industry insider said the slower system will become overwhelmed by multiple users.
City officials said CityBridge, the joint-venture that won the bid to run the system, determined they couldn’t afford to install speedy service in all 6,000 payphones citywide.
“As part of their business model, they couldn’t justify the expense of making all of them 1 gigabyte,” said Stanley Shor, an assistant commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications.
CityBridge comprises four companies, but will be managed by one, Titan Outdoor Holdings. The contract calls for the consortium to sell enough advertising at these sites to generate at least $500 million in revenue for the city over 12 years.
But there are questions about Titan’s track record. Several years ago, the MTA awarded Titan a 10-year, $882 million contract to handle advertising on buses and trains.
Titan promised to deliver $5.4 million a month in revenue — and did so in 2007 and 2008. But after the recession hit, payments fell to about $4 million a month in 2009 and into 2010.
An MTA audit then found Titan “has demonstrated a continued pattern of non-compliance with its financial reporting” — and Titan was fired in February 2010 as the MTA claimed the company had stiffed the agency out of nearly $20 million in promised advertising revenue.
On Friday city officials acknowledged they have “concerns” about Titan’s track record, but said the city will carefully monitor the firm’s performance and there’s a safety-net performance bond to fall back on.
“Of course it concerns us,” said Shor. “That’s why when we negotiate a contract, we make sure there are all kinds of protections… There’s a lot to it. We feel comfortable with this proposal.”
The network still needs the approval of the city’s Franchise and Concession Review Committee and Controller Scott Stringer.
That process will take months, but if all goes as planned the city expects the first Wi-Fi “link structures” with touch screens and charging stations to begin appearing in late 2015.
Within eight years, there could be up to 7,500.
With Ben Kochman
