Bloomberg Challenges Techies to Invent New Payphones

Maybe ask if they're actually needed?

With more than 11,000 payphones that need to be replaced by October 2014, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is tapping into the local tech community to come up with radical new payphone ideas.

Today at the New York Tech Meetup, NYC's Chief Digital Officer announced Reinvent Payphones, a new initiative to collect virtual and physical prototypes for new payphones from the public.

"We want to invite your prototypes and help build something that could potentially impact the future of payphone infrastructure in NYC," Haot said.