100 BT InLinkUK Free Ultrafast WiFi Kiosks Now Live in the UK

Telecoms operator BT has announced that they’ve just completed the installation of their 100th InLinkUK smart kiosk, which can offer “ultrafast” public WiFi, free UK phone calls, USB device charging and a range of other digital services to help people passing within the vicinity.

The InLinkUK kiosks reflect a partnership between BT, Intersection (LinkNYC) and advertising company Primesight. The plan is that they will eventually replace over 1,000 pay phones in major cities across the United Kingdom. Funding for the kiosks is extracted via revenues from advertising on the large 55″ HD digital displays.

The first kiosk went live last summer and since then they’ve spread across parts of Camden, Southwark, Islington, Hackney, Lambeth, Wandsworth and Tower Hamlets in London, as well as Leeds city centre. Apparently this has helped to attract a further 49,000 WiFi subscribers, while users have also made more than 305,000 calls and there have been over 239,000 sessions on the built-in tablet.

Neil Scoresby, BT’s General Manager for Payphones and InLink, said:

“We’re really excited by InLinkUK from BT and the popularity of its services, such as free ultrafast Wi-Fi and free calls, show that it’s proving a hit with customers as well. We’re in discussion with many local councils about installing more InLinks and we’re looking forward to rolling out InLinks to more London boroughs and major cities across the UK.”

Interestingly BT has perhaps wisely chosen to leave out the old claim of their kiosks being able to deliver “speeds of up to one gigabit per second (1Gbps) to Londoners.” Some testing conducted last year (here) revealed that you’re much more likely to get a speed of well below 100Mbps than 1000Mbps, not that this is a major concern to most people. We all know how variable WiFi performance can be.

On average, two ordinary phone boxes are removed for the installation of every InLink installed.