Tisch testified that CityBridge was a “delinquent” and paid the city only $2.6 million of the $32.3 million earned to the GJ19 as part of its agreement. As a result, the city was only $30 million of projected revenue for this fiscal year. It also stated that CityBridge had failed to install and activate LinkNYC kiosks and remove the old payphones as described in the agreement. In fact, Titan (part of the CityBridge consortium) sent a letter dated July 15, 2013 to Stanley Shor (Deputy Commissioner of DoITT) stating that the allocation of a single public pay telephone franchise provider was contrary to Section 253 of the Telecommunications Act! See the letter below. Here`s a quote from Titan`s letter to the city: Titan asks the city not to go ahead with a PPT franchising scheme that artificially limits the number of TPP franchisees in each district`s city. We appreciate doITT`s realization that a single-provider scenario would not bring more advertising revenue to the city than a multi-franchised model. We also believe that all the benefits that the city could derive from a “broader and more systematic urban approach” to TPPs would also be accessible by many franchisees if they were to accept reasonable and consistent design and operating methods. Last year, CityBridge tried to change its agreement with the city council again, said a source familiar with the consortium. The source found that Link invested US$250 million in the establishment of the kiosk network and provided New Yorkers with more than US$225 million in free wireless data. In testimony before the New York City Council on Tuesday, Information Technology and Telecommunications Commissioner Jessica Tisch CityBridge condemned the fact that she had not complied with the terms of a franchise agreement for the installation and service of LinkNYC kiosks. The New York Concessions and Franchise Review Committee (FCRC) unanimously approved the proposed 12-year franchise agreement between CityBridge (a consortium comprising the control group and Titan Outdoor) and New York City, despite allegations of preference and conflicts of interest. The scandalous bidding process for the project, which aims to turn thousands of traditional payphones in New York into advertising posts (with Wi-Fi), has attracted at least one complaint (by Telebeam, a company that was not selected for the project) and complaints from neighborhoods outside Manhattan that will not benefit from gigabit connections. CityBridge paid the City only $2.6 million of the US$32.3 million due to GJ19 under its franchise agreement, and to date, at GJ20, it has paid none of the US$43.7 million under the terms of its amended agreement.

This is despite the existence of $105 million in advertising revenue, Tisch testified. In 2014, CityBridge signed a franchise agreement stating that it would install 7,500 operational kiosks in a decade. Commissioner De DoITT, Jessica Tisch, has condemned CityBridge for breaching the terms of its franchise agreement. CityBridge called the testimony a “fictitious account.” This included amending the agreement in 2018 to give more time to infrastructure development and defer some debt-based compensation. “The time to talk about the obstacles is over,” she said, noting that the city renegotiated the franchise agreement in 2018 to give CityBridge more time. The second objection is the structure of the project itself: the creation of a monopoly franchise on the city`s telecommunications infrastructure. Telebeam filed a lawsuit in federal court against New York City, which alleges that the city violated the 1996 Telecommunications Act (47 U.S.C. Section 253), which expelled other payphone providers from the market for the benefit of a single company. This objection is also raised in the above letter to the FCRC.

In accordance with the franchise agreement signed in 2014, a total of 7,500 LinkNYC kiosks are expected to be installed in the five boroughs by 2022.