Beach Wi-Fi And Charging Stations

We stumbled across these in Westport, at Horseneck Beach.

You can lock on to their WiFi signal while you're at the beach. This is important, because you can waste a lot of data on a beach day. Also, it allows you to buy a cheap phone for beach use. No need for any phone cards, nor any need to have an overachieving wave hit your fancy new I-phone or whatever the kids are using these days.

You can also charge up your phone. I should have memorized this process better, but you use your credit card, lock your phone in the little charging station, and come back for it after X amount of recharge time.

Rather than wasting a power line that will almost certainly get destroyed by a nor'easter, they power it by what looks like a removable solar panel. They were confident enough in her sturdiness to have it out in late-April/early-May. While the solar-based charger power may be weak on cloudy/rainy days, I'd imagine that demand for beach WiFi would also be low on those days.

I don't do my beaching in Westport (although I will in the future, Horseneck Beach is charming), so I haven't field-tested this Bad Larry. I have no idea if the signal reaches very far, Energetic beaches could actually trot them out to where the people are and remove them when the seas are threatening. Horseneck Beach has them up by the snack bar.

It seems like a good idea to me. Charlie Baker has his name on it, so maybe it is exclusive to State beach reservations or some such stuff. Larger beaches may want more than one, to spread them out some and avoid massing the phone phreaks in one spot. 

I have no idea what one of these costs (Editor's Note: $96,500 bought a dozen of them), but it might be a nice investment for a town with a beach. 

Places that have these presently:

Artesani Playground and Wading Pool - Boston
Constitution Beach - Boston
Southwest Corridor Park - Boston
Castle Island - South Boston
Murphy Rink - South Boston
Nickerson State Park - Brewster
Lynch Family Skate Park - Cambridge
Nantasket Beach Reservation - Hull
Nahant Beach Reservation - Nahant
Wollaston Beach - Quincy
Salisbury Beach Reservation - Salisbury

Horseneck Beach Reservation - Westport