For several years now we've been hearing stories about New York City's public payphone kiosks being turned into Wi-Fi hotspots, and it finally looks like something's going to happen. LinkNYC - a group that includes tech, telecom, and ad firms, as well as the Mayor's Office of Technology and Innovation - plans to begin work next year converting the city's thousands of payphone kiosks into Link 'connection points' offering: The group behind the plans, which includes chip giant Qualcomm, is promising "the fastest and largest free municipal Wi-Fi deployment in the world," with the high-tech connection points coming to 10,000 locations throughout the city's five boroughs.