AT&T partners with New York design firm Pensa to bring branded cellphone charging stations to the streets
AT&T and Brooklyn’s design firm Pensa have launched a new initiative on Manhattan’s streets - Street Charge, a solar-based unit that can charge cellphones.
The first Street Charge unit will debut at Fort Green park, with more being rolled out across numerous city parks and public destinations throughout the next three months.
"There really is no existing elegant solution for power that can just be dropped in where you don't have to wire anything and there's not a lot of infrastructure that needs to be added in order to achieve it," Pensa’s design director Mark Prommel told The Verge.
Each AT&T branded unit has six USB ports in total, allowing iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry users the chance to charge up 24 hours a day for free.
They have been placed in areas with heavy foot traffic but that are also well-lit with a regular police presence (to prevent gadget theft as far as possible).
If successful AT&T may roll the project out to other cities.