In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.

In this photo taken on Thursday, Dec. 31, 2015, a man walks near a covered wireless kiosk at an intersection in New York. The 9-foot-tall, narrow structure installed this past week on a Manhattan sidewalk... (Associated Press) 
  
 NEW YORK (AP) — Operator, won't you help me replace this call? 
  
 A 9-foot-tall, narrow structure installed this past week on a Manhattan sidewalk is signaling a plan to turn payphones into what's billed as the world's biggest and fastest municipal Wi-Fi network. 
  
 The first of at least 7,500 planned hot spots are due to go online early next year, promising superfast and free Wi-Fi service, new street phones with free calling, ports to charge personal phones and a no-cost windfall for the city. 
  
 With some cities nationwide making renewed pushes for public Wi-Fi after an earlier wave of enthusiasm faded, New York officials say their project is democratizing data access while modernizing outmoded street phones. 
  
 For now, the first hot spot is still being tested and sits under a gray cover. But some passers-by like the sound of what's in store. 
  
 "It's always helpful" to have Wi-Fi to reduce the bite that apps and web-surfing take out of cellular data service, which is capped in many consumers' plans, Jack Thomas said this week while texting near the dormant kiosk. 
  
 But others have qualms about New Yorkers linking their devices to a public network as they stroll down the street, though the city has said data will be encrypted and any information harvested for advertising will be anonymized. 
  
 "I think it makes us all more vulnerable to wrongdoers," Bee Mosca said as she eyed the future hot spot. 
  
 Payphones may seem like telecom relics when 68 percent of Americans own smartphones, according to the Pew Research Center on Internet, Science & Technology. But about 8,200 payphones still dot New York streets. 
  
 Some were pressed into service amid outages after 2012's Superstorm Sandy, but their numbers and usage have declined overall, and 37 percent of those inspected last year were inoperable. 
  
 The city experimented with providing Wi-Fi from a few payphones in 2012, then hatched the current, eight-year "LinkNYC" plan. 
  
 A consortium of companies, including wireless technology player Qualcomm Inc., is to pay the estimated $200 million installation cost and take half the revenue from the kiosks' digital advertising, projected at $1 billion over 12 years. The city gets the other half, more than doubling the $17 million a year it gets from payphones now. 
  
 Each hot spot covers about a 150-foot radius with what's pledged as one-gigabit-per-second service, about 20 times the speed of average home Internet service. Officials have said the service is intended for outdoor use; it's not clear whether it might extend inside some businesses and homes. 
  
 Though many Americans now carry Internet connectivity in their pockets, the network "can be a win for users who can save on their data plans, and it can be a win for (cellular) networks if they're really overtaxed," said Erik Stallman, general counsel of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a group that advocates for Internet liberties and access. 
  
 Tourists without local cellular service also could benefit, noted John Breyault, a National Consumers League vice president. 
  
 LinkNYC isn't without opponents: A payphone company has sued the city, saying it created a monopoly for the new consortium. The city has said it believes the arrangement is legal. 
  
 Many U.S. cities strove to cover themselves in Wi-Fi in the early 2000s. But a number of the plans foundered as home access proliferated, usage and ad revenues disappointed and some Internet service providers complained the city networks were unfair competitors. 
  
 But some cities have recently recast and reinvigorated their efforts. Boston is working to expand a "Wicked Free WiFi" network with over 170 hot spots, and Los Angeles is encouraging private companies to provide free basic wireless to all homes and businesses, with outdoor coverage as a goal. 
  
 Still, some question whether it's wise for city governments to get into offering Wi-Fi, rather than leaving it to businesses. 
  
 But "New York is not a typical city," said Jeff Kagan, a telecommunications analyst and consultant. 
  
 ___ 
  
 Reach Jennifer Peltz on Twitter @ jennpeltz. ||||| The lowly pay phone is getting a high-tech makeover, a change that aims to challenge the speeds and high prices charged by wireless carriers. 
  
 New York City will begin this month replacing thousands of pay phones with free Wi-Fi hot spots. The city expects to have 500 hot spots installed by July, and eventually about 7,500 units will be replaced.... ||||| Good-Bye Pay Phone, Hello Link! 
  
  
  
 LinkNYC is a first-of-its-kind communications network that will replace over 7,500 pay phones across the five boroughs with new structures called Links. Each Link provides superfast, free public Wi-Fi, phone calls, device charging and a tablet for access to city services, maps and directions. 
  
 The LinkNYC Team 
  
  
  
 LinkNYC is brought to you by the City of New York and CityBridge, a NYC-based consortium of leading experts in technology, media, connectivity and user experience that includes: 
  
  
  
 Intersection Qualcomm CIVIQ Smartscapes 
  
 Paid for by Advertising 
  
  
  
 LinkNYC is completely free because it’s funded through advertising. Its groundbreaking digital OOH advertising network not only provides brands with a rich, context-aware platform to reach New Yorkers and visitors, but will generate more than a half billion dollars in revenue for New York City. Interested in advertising on LinkNYC? . ||||| It’s the biggest, fastest public wifi project on Earth: Starting today, New York is unveiling street-side internet hotspots that will blanket America’s biggest city and provide unprecedented wifi access to over 8 million people. 
  
 It’s called LinkNYC, and each “Link” is a nine-and-a-half-foot tall futuristic mini-monolith that beams wifi signals to all. (Each Link also used to be a payphone which is fun.) That means no more ducking inside the nearest Starbucks and being guilt-tripped into buying a latte, or venturing into a public library when you’ve hit your data limit for the month. 
  
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 In 2014, the de Blasio administration started looking for a company for help bringing this all to fruition. It picked CityBridge, a media and tech consortium, to devise a plan that’ll bring 7,500 gigabit-speed units to all five boroughs in twelve years. 
  
 Today, the city will literally pull a veil off of the first two Links—which are already installed in the streets of Manhattan but covered in veil. In the next week or two, they’ll open up to the public for actual use. One’s located on the corner of 15th Street and Third Avenue; the other, at 17th and Third. The city hopes to have 500 of these Links in place by July, aiming to install ten a day. 
  
 To say this is a massive undertaking is a massive understatement. It involves hundreds of miles of brand-new, purpose-built fiber optic cable, and while your exact speed will vary depending in your device, LinkNYC delivers connectivity speeds of 1,000 megabytes per second, which the project says is 100 times faster than average public wifi in the US. They want to place each unit roughly around every 150 feet from each other, and each has a signal radius of up to 400 feet. 
  
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 Here’s how it works: Pedestrians can huddle around the wifi tower (the same size as a bus stop) and connect to the network. Nestled on the side of each unit, in between the two video screens that play ads, is an Android tablet. At first, it will handle basic features, like mapping and internet browsing, but developers are invited to build more apps for the platform over the coming years. 
  
 The city’s partnering with Vonage to also allow free calls anywhere in the US to LinkNYC users. You can make video calls using the tablet. The downside is that it’ll be very public—everyone can see, and hear, your conversation. But simply plug in your earbuds or headphones to make it more private. Each Link also offers two USB chargers for charging your device on the go. And like any wifi network, it remembers your device, so you can leave NYC for six weeks, come back, and seamlessly have instant wifi back on your phone on your walk to the office, even after an extended vacation. 
  
 You’ll also notice the very prominent, red 911 button that lets you make emergency calls for free. The team told members of the press on Monday afternoon that it’s working with the NYPD and the engineers to avoid any prank calls or accidental 911 calls. This means, for example, configuring the phone’s keypad buttons to respond only after being pressed for a certain time or sending back prompts to double-check with users if they’re really in an emergency. 
  
 Speaking of ne’er-do-wells: The team told us that, even though nothing is vandalism-proof, the scratch-resistant screen is built to last. And since the units take advantage of the holes from the existing payphone infrastructure, they’re built pretty firmly into the ground. 
  
 New York City has also considered loitering. To prevent people from staying too long, there are no flat surfaces anywhere on the unit. That means there’s nowhere to stick a Burger King cup or to sit down like you own the place. And even if 500 people decide top congregate around a Link and stream Netflix movies? The team says the gigabit wifi can handle it, but they also doubt that people would be doing that. Of course, the system might need special rules in densely populated areas like Union Square, but generally, the city isn’t expecting people to camp out for hours on end in front of these things. They’re expecting quicker sessions, like checking email or verifying a restaurant location. 
  
 None of this comes for free. The project has a price tag of $200 million, with investors that include Qualcomm, CIVIQ, and Intersection. Instead of the city subsidizing the payphones of yore, each unit has big video screens on either side that’ll play digital ads, which will help fund the installation and maintenance costs for the Links themselves. 
  
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 Each Link is manufactured in a factory in Long Island City in Queens. Each unit is modular, and different parts of it can be replaced and repaired of upgraded, in an effort to future-proof each Link. The team also says that each unit is weather-proof and can handle all of Mother Nature’s assaults, from blizzards to flash floods to hot summer days. 
  
 You may be freaking out about, well, the security of this extremely public, widely-used internet portal. You’re sharing a wifi network on the streets of New York City with potentially dozens of strangers—what could go wrong? Well, the team says the network offers encryption, so you don’t need to worry about your private information being slurped up and sent to advertisers. CityBridge says that it’s worked with the mayor’s office to devise a privacy statement that forbids sharing users’ personal data with any third party. 
  
 This is clearly a game-changer for New York—the same city that’s been criticized for being such a huge metropolis of global importance, and yet often falling flat in some tech respects, like wifi on the subway. But with LinkNYC, the city’s taking a big step toward the commodification of the internet. 
  
 Goodbye, collect calling on payphones. Hello, future. 
  
 Images courtesy LinkNYC 
  
 Contact the author at bryan@gizmodo.com, or follow him on Twitter. ||||| Pay Phones 
  
 Since 1995, DoITT has regulated public pay telephones (PPTs) installed on the City's public sidewalks. As of March 2015, there were 8,178 active public pay telephones on the City's sidewalks, regulated by DoITT. While usage has decreased significantly, PPTs are still used for regular and long distance calls, and also provide free access to 911 and 311. 
  
 Pay Phone Legacy and Transformation 
  
 DoITT began piloting payphone WiFi during the summer of 2012, which expanded to more than 25 locations across the five boroughs. Announcement of this pilot program was coupled with the release of the “Future of the Payphone” Request for Information, or RFI. 
  
  
  
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New York City still has thousands of pay phones on its sidewalks, but many have been gathering dust in the cellphone era. This month, the city will start replacing them with free WiFi hot spots, the Wall Street Journal reports. Ultimately, more than 7,500 phone booths will be turned into hot spots, with 500 expected to be up by July, as part of the LinkNYC project. The 9.5-foot-tall WiFi hubs, called "Links," will have Android tablets that can be used to browse the Web and make free phone calls, or users can access the free WiFi using their own devices. They can also charge those devices via USB port, and there will be a dedicated red 911 button at each Link. Of course, there will also be two 55" HD displays on each one featuring sidewalk advertising (and public service announcements). The free WiFi at each Link will cover about a 150-foot radius and be able to service hundreds of users simultaneously, per LinkNYC. As the Journal notes, other cities have experimented with free public WiFi, but typically speeds are so slow (or users are required to watch ads before connecting) that not many people use it. CityBridge, the joint venture running LinkNYC, says its broadband will be up to 100 times faster than typical free public WiFi and about 20 times faster than average home Internet service, and users won't have to watch ads. The city says data will be encrypted and any information collected for advertising purposes will be anonymized, the AP reports. CityBridge, which is putting more than $200 million into the project, expects to make $1 billion over 12 years from advertising and will pay the city $500 million or a 50% revenue share, whichever is more. The first two Links are being unveiled in Manhattan Tuesday and will be available for use within a week or two, Gizmodo reports.