The end of Google's DooH vision?

The New York City government is threatening to sue the LinkNYC CityBridge consortium led by Google’s Sidewalk Labs. One of the reasons is that the rollout of the Smart City and DooH kiosk totems is been massively delayed. Furthermore. Overdue payments have accumulated more than 30 million US dollars.

With its 10,000 columns, LinkNYC was to become the largest DooH Smart City project in the world. That is how the CityBridge consortium started its very ambitious plan in New York a few years ago. All public pay phones would be replaced with a citywide network of smart city totems. In addition to DooH advertising on double-sided high-brightness displays, the outdoor pillars offer free WiFi, are fitted with many sensors, USB charging and offer free phone calls and internet access via an integrated touch screen. The rollout was planned to cover the whole city across all five boroughs.

But the actual expansion is considerably behind schedule. So far, the operator consortium around Google’s parent company Alphabet, out-of-home marketer Intersection, digital signage integrator Civiq Smartscape and chip manufacturer Qualcomm have only been able to bring 1,800 totems online. Two years ago, an agreement was reached with the city to stretch the overly ambitious rollout plan. In a first phase, only 4,500 totems were to be installed. Regardless of network size, the city would be entitled to USD 500 million in advertising revenue over the ten-year contract period. But so far, according to the city, it has not received much – neither the $30 million overdue fee nor the agreed share of the USD 43 million revenue share due by the end of June.

„My patience is at an end,“ says Jessica Tisch, head of the city’s department for information technology and telecommunications. „I am prepared to take all necessary measures against these multiple violations in order to collect the money owed to the city.“

According to local media reports, the consortium sees things differently. They have already invested 225 million USD and would be meeting their obligations in the longer term. However, it appears that CityBridge is overstrained with the world’s largest smart city project. A look at the map of current locations shows that although there is a large network of touchpoints across Manhattan along many of the main traffic axes, the project is far from covering the whole city. Mile away from the consortiums own ambitious to provide free WiFi to all New Yorkers.