Verizon to cut back number of hotspots in New York
Verizon Communications claims that 500 phone-booth access points are enough to cover Manhattan and as such is planning on cutting in half the number of hotspots available to DSL subscribers in the city. The company offers its DSL subscribers free access to Wi-Fi services. The New York City trial was to have been the test bed for a broader deployment in other metropolitan regions across the country. An article in Telephony’s Broadband Barrage suggests that if Verizon can’t make a case for free Wi-Fi in the United States’ most dense metropolitan area, then it’s unlikely the company can find a more compelling business in Boston, Washington D.C. or Los Angeles. "Still one of the basic premises and key attractions of a public hotspot network is ubiquity, and cutting out half of the network’s access points would seem to leave some awfully big holes in the network. Maybe Verizon can keep a scaled-down experiment going, but the project’s future certainly looks bleak," writes Kevin Fitchard.

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