A majority of the city-commissioned towers that have been installed in low-income neighborhoods across NYC to provide high-speed 5G internet are still not equipped with the necessary cell signal technology more than two years after they were initially set up.
The tech firm CityBridge initially installed the Link5G towers in 2022, and has admitted to the lack of service provided by these structures. Company officials reported to Gothamist that just two of the nearly 200 5G towers installed have been fitted with 5G equipment.
The 32-foot tall towers offer the same services as LinkNYC electronic billboards put around the city in 2016, which were also installed by CityBridge. Both the Link kiosks and the 5G towers provide free limited-range Wi-Fi, charging outlets, and a tablet to connect users to city services.
Data shared by the company with Gothamist shows the 16 million people have used the internet kiosks since 2016, and the attached tablets are used to call for city services thousands of times every month. Yet, unlike the LinkNYC kiosks, each new tower is topped with a 12-foot-tall cylindrical mesh chamber containing five empty shelves reserved for companies like Verizon and T-Mobile to store the equipment they use to transmit high-speed 5G internet service to paying customers.
Experts say the delayed installations and the diminished use of 5G technology in the cell service industry have discouraged carriers such as Verizon from using the towers to expand their networks. Currently, CityBridge only has an agreement with one telecommunications carrier to deliver high-speed internet. In short, the towers may already be obsolete.
Henning Schulzrinne, a computer engineer and professor of engineering and computer science at Columbia University, told Gothamist Link5G program’s slow rollout corresponds with an industry-wide retreat from 5G installation. The firm Crown Castle, one of the nation’s largest wireless internet infrastructure developers, recently announced it was scrapping thousands of 5G signal boosters it had planned to install nationwide.
CityBridge has admitted the 5G expansion’s rollout has been slow. Company officials say they anticipate signing agreements with an additionally telecom company “very soon,” and expect others to follow.
The shortage of access to reliable high-speed internet in NYC’s lowest-income neighborhoods became exacerbated during the pandemic, as the city’s school system pushed to get around 1 million students online daily for remote learning. Additionally, nearly 1 million households in the city lost access to key federal broadband subsidies that helped pay for services last month.
