Some NYC trash cans will soon give you 75Mbps of free Wi-Fi

By Lulu Chang Published July 21, 2015

Get 75Mbps of free Wi-Fi from New York City trash cans — Image used with permission by copyright holder

You may think that they’re only good for keeping litter off the streets, but like New York City inhabitants, New York City trash cans are capable of much more than meets the eye. Thanks to the innovation of Bigbelly, a company that has made its mark on the tech ecosystem by way of its smart waste and recycling plans, New York City trash cans will double as Wi-Fi hotspots, turning these oft-overlooked receptacles into some seriously important pieces of technology. Now, instead of being forced to stop by the nearest Starbucks to access a Wi-Fi network, New Yorkers may be seen congregating around trash cans, all for Internet access.

Already, there are around 170 “smart” trashcans scattered across Manhattan, and while these aren’t Wi-Fi connected (yet), their solar powered chips do alert waste management companies as to when the bin is full or too foul smelling. As an initial test for the Wi-Fi trashcans, however, New York’s Downtown Alliance has already worked with Bigbelly to take two of these bins and turn them into hotspots.

With speeds of up to 75Mpbs (pretty impressive, considering Starbucks caps out at around 9Mpbs), the trash can Wi-Fi would be completely free to use, paid for purely by advertising revenue (because who wouldn’t want their company logo on the side of a high-tech trash can?). As long as there are no obstructions between the bin and the user, Bigbelly doesn’t foresee any real roadblocks to the usability of this latest Internet source. And since trashcans are generally found at street level, there’s no real interference from skyscrapers or other infrastructure other than the receptacle itself, which hasn’t been shown to have a significant impact on signal strength.

Leila Dillon, Bigbelly’s vice president of global marketing, told CityLab, “We are a smart, solar-powered, connected technology platform that is literally sitting in the streets of New York. We are exactly where the people are.” The plan is to add significantly more of these high-powered, high-tech trash cans by the fall, with a particular focus on underserved neighborhoods where Wi-Fi is scarce.

So if you withstand the smell, you might want to cozy up to a New York City trash can sometime soon. You never know what kind of signals you may get.

[Image courtesy of m01229/Flickr]

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Fascinated by the effects of technology on human interaction, Lulu believes that if her parents can use your new app…

News

Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards

Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

News

Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards

Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Entertainment

AI turned Breaking Bad into an anime — and it’s terrifying

Split image of Breaking Bad anime characters.

These days, it seems like there's nothing AI programs can't do. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, deepfakes have done digital "face-offs" with Hollywood celebrities in films and TV shows, VFX artists can de-age actors almost instantly, and ChatGPT has learned how to write big-budget screenplays in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, AI will probably decide who wins at the Oscars.

Within the past year, AI has also been used to generate beautiful works of art in seconds, creating a viral new trend and causing a boon for fan artists everywhere. TikTok user @cyborgism recently broke the internet by posting a clip featuring many AI-generated pictures of Breaking Bad. The theme here is that the characters are depicted as anime characters straight out of the 1980s, and the result is concerning to say the least. Depending on your viewpoint, Breaking Bad AI (my unofficial name for it) shows how technology can either threaten the integrity of original works of art or nurture artistic expression.
What if AI created Breaking Bad as a 1980s anime?
Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."