Those big poles on Center Boulevard? They’re 5g antennas, and they may not be doing much.
If you have walked along Center Boulevard recently, you have probably noticed them: tall metallic poles, about 32 feet high, planted on the sidewalk near the waterfront. They are not new lampposts. They are Link5G towers, part of a citywide program run by a private company called CityBridge under a franchise agreement with New York City.
Here is the part worth knowing: as of mid-2024, the vast majority of them are not actually providing 5G service. The four in Hunters Point South are live, and transmitting 5g.
What is Link5G?
Link5G towers are the larger cousin of the LinkNYC kiosks that replaced phone booths across the city. Where the kiosks offer public Wi-Fi, phone calls, and device charging, the towers are designed to house 5G cellular antennas for multiple carriers stacked into a single structure. The city argues consolidating carriers onto one pole reduces the total number of installations required.
CityBridge installs and operates the towers under a franchise agreement with the city. In exchange, the city receives a share of revenue — the LinkNYC program has generated over $115 million for the city since launching. Some towers also carry digital advertising screens; 86 percent of the roughly 200 Link5G towers installed citywide have them.
Why are they so big?
The short answer is physics. Because the towers are designed to carry equipment for multiple carriers at different frequencies, the antennas have to be stacked vertically to avoid interfering with each other. That stacking is what drives the height.
The problem: some are not actually providing 5G
Carriers including Verizon have been slow to sign lease agreements, and CityBridge had reached an agreement with only a single telecommunications company. What the towers currently provide is the same basic service as the original LinkNYC kiosks: free Wi-Fi, device charging, and a tablet connected to city services.
The delay reflects a broader industry retreat. Crown Castle, one of the largest wireless infrastructure developers in the country, recently scrapped thousands of planned 5G installations nationwide. The promise of 5G as a transformative technology has cooled considerably since the program was conceived in 2021.
Are the towers even necessary?
Critics have raised a separate question: whether this type of large standalone installation is needed at all, given that 5G micro-transmitters are already present in the neighborhood. Smaller cells can be attached to existing lampposts, traffic signal poles, and building infrastructure. They are less visually intrusive, and requiring no new sidewalk footprint. Several other cities have taken that approach. New York’s choice of a large standalone structure has drawn criticism as an off-the-shelf solution that prioritized convenience for the installer over fit for the streetscape.
The installation pause
In April 2023, the FCC ordered CityBridge to pause new installations to ensure compliance with the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, a review that community and preservation groups had pushed for. At a subsequent City Council hearing, CityBridge confirmed it had paused all future installations. Nearly all proposed Upper East Side towers were subsequently cancelled after the historic preservation review concluded.
New applications remain on hold. Towers already installed, including those on Center Boulevard, remain in place and operational as Wi-Fi kiosks.
What the critics said
Opposition came from community boards and preservation groups across the city. By one count, 16 community boards voted against the program. Critics raised three main objections: the towers are visually out of scale with their surroundings; they take up significant sidewalk space in corridors already crowded with street furniture; and the siting process gave communities little meaningful input.
The city’s position is that the program went through an 18-month public design review and that siting included 60-day public comment periods. Whether that constitutes meaningful engagement is a matter of dispute.
What about the towers on Center Boulevard?
The Hunters Point Ledger has confirmed that there are four Link5G towers in Hunters Point South, and eight overall in LIC.
Read more
- Typology.city – where our bodies meet public policy
- CityBridge‘s Link5g page
- LinkNYC Franchise Documents
- The original Link5g presentation to the City (pdf)
- NYC Open Data: LinkNYC kiosks, LinkNYC Kiosk Status
- Village Preservation and their opposition to Link5g
- Carnegie Hill Neighbors and their opposition to Link5g
- Companion episodes:
editorial
Our take
The Link5g towers were sold to the city and the public as 5G infrastructure. As of now, they are expensive advertising poles with free Wi-Fi attached. The carrier equipment they were built to house has not arrived, and given the industry’s retreat from large-format installations, it may never arrive in this form.
The strongest argument against the Link5G rollout was never really about aesthetics. It was about the permanent use of public space. Our sidewalks in HPS are already narrow. Once these structures go up, they stay.
We are not opposed to better connectivity. But New York should be able to deliver it without trading away sidewalk space for structures that, two years in, are doing little that a lamppost-mounted transmitter could not do more discreetly — and at a fraction of the footprint.
