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The Starbucks/AT&T Deal To Change Perception of Public Wi-Fi?
ericatcw writes "According to ComputerWorld, with two hours of free Wi-Fi soon to arrive at Starbucks consumers should expect more hotspots to go free as well as more attractive bundles from the likes of AT&T, Verizon and providers. While T-Mobile is hurting, indie coffeehouses and chains such as Caribou Coffee, Tully's and others that already offered free Wi-Fi, insist they are not, saying their ambiance and superior brew will help them retain customers."
Wifi in European Starbucks has been free for a long time now. Buy a coffee, get a free wifi scratchcard. When credit runs out, go back to counter and get another one.....
Right, that's what it says:
..."
TFS: "indie coffeehouses and chains such as Caribou Coffee, Tully's
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
WiFi in Oz is charged at exorbitant rates ($15/hr). Starbucks has got Telstra to put in the WiFi infrastructure. Telstra is the incumbant ex-public telco.
In Melbourne where I live I can name one free WiFi _location_ which is a food court.
With the advent of HSDPA/3G (Telstra call it NextG), I can see WiFi NEVER taking off. (Why be limited to 50m radius of a hotspot when you cal roam all throughout the capital city)?
Crispi
Panera Bread has had free wifi for years. You can use this page to find one near you. They typically don't hassle you even if you are camped out and not buying much.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Teach him to eat and he will fish forever.
It's only 2 Free hours - you have to buy a card for $15, and then the first 2 hours are "free", after that you start paying again.
Fellow Minneapolis chain Dunn Brothers offers free Wi-Fi with *no strings attached* at its 90 locations.
Caribou is 2nd (one hour free).
so you can have a cup of coffee while you shop?
No, pak9rabid, number 7 is not "Profit". It's "Go to Jail" for stealing service. It's one thing to piggyback on someone's unsecured wifi router (if they have it open in this day and age, they are obviously intending to share it), and another thing entirely to hack into a commercial and secured pay internet service. Just because you have the technical knowledge to do so doesn't mean that you should...
Its actually 2 free hours a day, which for a one off fee of 15 dollars is really not too bad.
Yes. One of the things that T-Mobile got as a concession for Starbucks breaking the contract early was protection for the T-Mobile UMA (HotSpot@Home) service to remain accessible to T-Mobile customers. T-Mobile wifi customers will still be able to access the wifi at starbucks for some period of years at no additional cost. Since AT&T provides many of the T1 connections to the starbucks locations, they can offer SBUX a sweeter deal than T-Mobile could. Going to the 2 hour pass would have been the offering regardless of the wi-fi provider. Plus they want to do some gimmicky stuff related to ordering coffee from your iphone. So they are betting their current wi-fi revenue stream is less than the coffee sales that the new offering will provide.
WRT-54Gl with suitable firmware. $60 per unit.
(My favorite firmware is Tomato Firmware)
Have them flashed and set up at a central point, and there would be no configuration at the deployment point.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me