Chinese Cities To Re-invent Public Telephone Booths As Wi-Fi Hotspots

Chinese telecom operators are considering a novel proposal for making Wi-Fi widely available in cities: converting public telephone booths into Wi-Fi hotspots.

The plan would see the booths — which, in some cases, are used only once per day — re-imagined as useful public utilities that (1) beef up patchy, slow 3G mobile networks and (2) attract and retain the growing legions of smartphone customers. The proposal makes even more sense because the booths already require regular maintenance, yet return little value despite being nearly ubiquitous in cities.

Mobinode

[via @PopWuping]