The Music That They Constantly Play Says Nothing To Me About @InLinkUK

Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief

Pr0n on the streets of London. Pr0n on the streets of Manhattan. I wonder to myself. Could life ever be sane again?

It’s not been a good week for InlinkUK, the joint venture between BT, Primesight and Intersection, what with some smarty-pants from The Metro newspaper first of all picking up this; ‘People are looking at porn on free Wi-Fi booths on the streets of London‘ and then this picture taken in Camden** by our very own intrepid reporter.

Ok so we’ve seen both p0rn and the homeless make news for all the wrong reasons in Manhattan but on the streets of London? Heaven forbid that by now, lessons should have been learnt with these deployments. BT in particular, a credible corporate, experienced you would have thought with the Internet, should seriously be lambasted for this cock-up (no pun intended).

The picture above was taken, not far from Camden Lock and you might say that it can be quite “urban at night” but this scenario played out in the middle of the day.

Actually I am going to explore some of the issues involved here in more detail in my speech and panel moderation at the SEGD #XLab2017 event on November 2, 2017 during New York Digital Signage Week but let’s just say briefly; we don’t see similar issues with the Amscreen design(s) for Clear Channel’s New World Payphones (no USB charging points, visited and cleaned regularly we understand), or any other street or indeed Mall furniture put together by the likes of Esprit Digital. It’s very likely that the USB charging facility doesn’t help – perhaps it could be limited to 5 or 10 minutes (somehow) or better still removed completely but I wonder as well if free Wi-Fi is actually also of concern? (IMHO free Wi-Fi is there in reality, in all cities that offer it as a FREE service, for ‘poor people’ and is purely a vote-gathering exercise for City Mayors. Think 4G. Think 5G).

** We think it has replaced these (old) phone boxes which were outside Camden Town tube station (click on the link to see).


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