According to the Irregulators submission to New York City on Link5G Jumbo Cell Towers.
“Verizon et al. created the Digital Divide, and yet Verizon is being paid billions for state upgrades to the network. First, the fiber optic services that are used for FiOS, wherever they were put, are actually put in as ‘Title II’, common carrier networks and are part of the state utility. And the plans for the last three decades were to claim that the companies would be replacing the aging copper with fiber optics.”
“The LinkNYC Wireless plan is another wireless bait and switch.”
“LinkNYC has been a disaster on so many levels that it is hard to count them all. First, the original plan was to replace the existing payphones with these monolith kiosks, but there was only a partial deployment — about 25-30%. This left 60- 80% of the payphones not replaced and millions of callers were left without basic public phone service. Next, when done, there will only be Swiss-cheese coverage, because the range of Wifi is so limited using 5G. The maps provided clearly show that 70-80% of the supposed coverage areas with the upgraded WiFi will still not he able to get the service. But the real subplot is worse. The story told is only the Wifi-public face, and it leaves out that these cantennas were designed to have wireless carriers rent space for retail 5G and other services and moreover, this plan is being renewed with the claim that the City will lose advertising revenues and franchise fees–It is not solve the Digital Divide. And, on top of all of this, there has been a failure to pay over $70 million in fees to the City, and some penalties have been applied.”
The NY City Council had a hearing on the LinkNYC Kiosks and the addition of 5G “cantennas” held on June 7th, 2023.
- IRREGULATORS submitted Testimony (written)
- The IRREGULATORS summary of our NY City Council filing:
- The Verizon Fiber Optic History of New York State and NYC.
- Read IREGULATORS Medium article.
Learn more about 5G in New York City here.
