Sydney’s Streetscape Is Gonna Cop A Huge Digital Update Inc. Free Wi-Fi

The City of Sydney is looking to upgrade its street shelters and furniture for the first time in nearly 30 years, potentially transforming the city’s public areas into an internet-enabled tech utopia. Or a blinking Blade Runner hellscape. It depends on how you look at this kind of thing.

A contract between the City and firm JCDecaux to maintain bus shelters, bins, benches, information kiosks, and automated public toilets with the unnerving timers, expires in the middle of 2019, leaving the (dunny) door open for a new operator to take over with new gear.

Free public wi-fi capabilities, interactive info kiosks, and bus stops that can provide arrival times via digital screens, are just a few of the capabilities the City wants to explore in the new contract.

It all sounds wildly expensive, but the Sydney Morning Herald reports that new furniture has been estimated to cost less than maintaining the existing infrastructure. Of course, advertising will also come into it, and some proceeds will go towards the upkeep of the new structures.

Imagine: a world where you could check an app to see if your nearest public loo is currently occupied. A brave new world, indeed.

The City will reveal the results of the tender process in the middle of next year.

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