Connected Payphones and Smart Cities

Take a second to remember the last time you made a call from a payphone. Safe to say, it’s been a while. We know that these things still exist in 2018, but many of us are unaware that the payphones of the future are evolving into integral fixtures of smart city ecosystems thanks to the Internet of Things (IoT).

Smart, networked payphones go beyond just making calls. They are digital installations that offer a variety of services to citizens and advertisers including free gigabit Wi-Fi, emergency broadcasting capabilities and responsive LCD panels for contextually targeted ads.

Cities around the world are already beginning to implement this concept. As an early adopter of smart payphones, New York City projects that its smart payphone initiative will generate $500 million in revenue over the next 12 years according to the Washington Post.

Besides the previously listed services offered to pedestrians, manufacturers of smart payphones also stand to benefit significantly in terms of cost savings and operational efficiency. But ripping and replacing thousands of installed payphones is expensive and time consuming. How can an OEM integrate a secure connectivity solution into their legacy equipment? Leave it to Lantronix.

The Challenge:

A global manufacturer of payphones needed a cost-efficient, edge-to-cloud solution that would streamline remote maintenance operations for their thousands of installed phones. This would allow the OEM to monitor the condition of payphones and receive notifications when systems needed to be updated or serviced. The analog phones also needed to communicate with the management system in the cloud through an analog modem to report statistics, connectivity status and to remotely update firmware.

Key Requirements:

• Visibility into your installed units
• A cloud-based management application that centralizes data and formulates insights
• Secure network connectivity between payphone systems and the cloud
• TLS1.2 security
• Scalable, reliable and cost-efficient

The Solution: The Lantronix XPort EDGE

The Lantronix XPort EDGE wired Ethernet gateway made it possible for the OEM to simply integrate secure networking into their solution without a complete redesign of their controller device. By embedding the XPort EDGE in each payphone unit, the device is now capable of transmitting real-time data regarding usage, quality and maintenance through a TLS connection. The TLS connection serves as a private protocol that enables the secure exchange of information between the phone system and the cloud. The OEM’s end-user customers can now access this data through the cloud and receive immediate notifications when a replacement or servicing is needed.

If you have legacy equipment that you want to bring into the digital age, try the XPort EDGE Wired Ethernet Gateway today.