The first four public Wi-Fi network hubs recently went live for use in the Big Apple. The hubs, located on Third Avenue between 15th and 19th Street, are part of a city-wide program to replace decommissioned payphones with speedy wireless connectivity.
First-hand accounts from those that have tried the service are overwhelmingly positive.
Bryan Lufkin of Gizmodo put the network to the test using Ookla’s popular Speedtest app. The public Wi-Fi network benchmarked at 436.37Mbps down and 360.55Mbps up with a ping time of 6ms. The nearby Starbucks (which also offers free Wi-Fi) managed just 7.59Mbps down and an upload speed of 1.60Mbps (ping was 7ms).
