Sandy Five Years Later: Phone Charging Stations

Hurricane Sandy destroyed many underground power wires, and a significant amount of internet and telephone connections were completely cut off. 

 

Neil Giacobbi is the Associate Vice President for Citizenship and Sustainability for AT&T. Giacobbi said the company was coordinating with New York City officials to make people's lives as  easy as possible as Con Edison worked to restore power. Giacobbi said they had to find a solution - as more and more people were unable to contact loved ones.

 

"In the spirit of doing whatever to make it work we used our generators to create these charging stations," Giacobbi said. 

 

He said while they didn't look technologically advanced, they got the job done.

 

"They basically were these daisy chain surge strips, and you know what I mean by that, plug one into another into another into another connected to our diesel generators that people used," Giacobbi said. "[They] brought their phones and their cords to plug into, so they can power their phones. Once they did power their phones they can reconnect with the world."   

 

But AT&T wasn't the only one working on a solution. Another company that was trying to make phone charging stations more available in Sandy's aftermath was a start-up called Brightbox. Billy Gridley is the founder the phone charging company. Gridley said he was inspired to create this start-up because of the value we place on phones. 

 

"Smart phones are such valued pieces of technology that they deserve great love, care, and security," Gridley said. 

 

When Sandy hit, Brightbox was only entering it's second year of business. Gridley said he knew that the company should be helping the victims of Sandy in whatever way it could. 

 

"We took a bunch of our secure, public phone charging stations and we set them up outside the Ace Hotel at 29th street and Broadway. For a better part of five days, we charged up all sorts of customers, and created a fair like little ecosystem."

 

After Sandy hit the once small start-up boomed. Brightbox became more commercially focused in their business. The company's phone charging stations became fixtures in restaurants, sports stadiums and even amusement parks. And like all technology these days, when an idea is out there, people find a way to make it better.  5 years after Sandy, Brightbox's phone charging stations look a lot different. 

 

One station has several rectangular shaped metal boxes stacked on top of each other. It's all attached to a stand with the company's name on the front. These are where you can put your phone. There's an electronic screen on the top, where you can open and pay for the system. 

 

Neil Giacobbi, of AT&T, said AT&T's design is also a far cry away from what it used to be.

 

"Unlike the solution for Hurricane Sandy, street charge is an entirely portable charging unit," Gicobbi said. "It requires no infrastructure hook up, it's solar powered, the batteries inside the stem of the charging unit can go from 0 to 100 percent charge with three hours of direct sunlight."

 

New Yorkers can now charge their phones practically anywhere in the city. Public phone charging stations are in city parks, boardwalks and shopping centers. So there's a lot of them. While AT&T is working with municipalities to increase the availability of phone charging stations, Brightbox is working on doing the same thing through commercial ventures. All with on goal in mind: to make sure people don't lose connectivity as they did after Sandy.