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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."
That ubiquitous, free (if slow) wifi is going to be the way of the future?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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.....
Aside from airports* and some hotels, wireless is free everywhere that has it. (And what are you going to do, use another airport?)
Seemingly everywhere now has free wireless: coffee shops, my car dealership, bars, etc. Why on earth would I go to Starbucks and pay $2 for a coffee (not a double soy quad shot latte, a COFFEE) and then pay an extra $10 for a wireless connection?
That deal was doomed from the start and in today's climate is just silly. The new one is quite realistic.
* Fort Lauderdale and Jacksonville, I believe, have free wireless at the airport. Nice of them!
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.
just announced today that starbucks here in KY is closing some of their shops. they are closing 100 stores across the country because they opened too many of them (and the economy stinks).
nature loves variety::society hates it get your variety at http://www.monkeypantz.net
Somebody call a whaaaaaambulance. For God's sake, the only reason T-Mobile's service had any operating costs was because they were trying to charge customers money. When you give away wi-fi for free, as most places are doing now - and not just coffee houses - it costs virtually nothing. What, $400 for a cheap PC and wireless router that any 15 year old employee knows how to run backwards and forwards?
A-Bomb
... we charge you outrageous prices for the WiFi and give you free coffee.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
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).
First AT&T makes major deals with Apple, now with Starbucks? What's next - NPR, Prius and The Daily Show?
ps: joke.
http://www.coderoshi.com/
"Up to two hours of free Wi-Fi service per day will be available for Starbucks Card holders"
If I understand this correctly, if you go get yourself a card, fill it up with a minimal $5, you pretty much can get 2 hours of free wireless anytime?
Sounds like a good deal, most of the time you really only need to check your mail or "look something up" quickly anyway... and with Starbucks being pretty much everywhere, this seems like a nice convenience. Great for people like me with an iPod Touch.
Now many McDonalds, Krystals, Atlanta Bread Companys, Burger King, Denny's, Dunkin' Donuts, IHOP, Jack-in-the-Box, KFC, Subway, Taco Bell, Quiznos, and Wendy's offer free WIFI.
'Bucks will start losing customers who want to surf and schmooze. I'm sure they especially don't want to lose that extra $6 cupcake sale when someone has been hanging around the store for an hour and starts to get hungry.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
so basically its not free. Not a surprise there. Also means its not going to generate any more business than the current plan does, which is not exactly extravagant I'm sure. I guess it's going to be a while before they figure out that catering to customers is a good thing.
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.
Sheesh.
Nah, I don't really agree. At one time, I would have sided with you on this one. But at least from what I've observed, coffee shops have evolved in recent years to become much more like restaurants. The idea of a coffee shop being a social hang-out is dying off. (Just like restaurants, they also figured out people are only going to drink so much coffee during a visit.) When you encourage people to hang around playing board or card games, reading books, etc. - you wind up with a place that's half full of people who are done buying things, instead of freeing the space up for the next round of customers-to-be, who are all ready to buy that first cup of joe when they walk in.
On the other hand, what I think *is* happening that encourages free wi-fi is a restaurant (or coffee shop) design with a variation of the traditional restaurant theme. Places like Panera Bread Company are good examples. They give just enough of a "personal touch" (things like calling your first name when your food/drink order is up, instead of giving you a number) to make people feel welcome there. They encourage the feel of "We give you more reasons to come here than the competitors do!" with bonuses like free wi-fi and wall outlets conveniently placed at the booths. Yet they still lay everything out so you feel a little "uncomfortable" if you spend TOO much time there. You have that distinct sense that you're taking up space that other customers want, and they're taking notice of you. They carefully avoid things like placing too many couches around their restaurants, since those encourage the concept of sitting around longer. They don't provide any reading material or other visual cues that it's "ok" to spend the rest of the afternoon there. Yet, you do feel like it's "the norm" to go ahead and pull out your laptop and check your email while you're eating your sandwich. THIS is the balance that makes it all fit together.
I live in the Seattle area, and I work from Tully's pretty regularly because it's free. The coffee is good too. But they're not absolutely *everywhere*. Starbucks is, and so it's the de-facto meeting place to do business. If you're meeting a client, partner, friend, study-mate or whatever in this town the standard is, "I'll meet you at the Starbucks at X-o'clock." Then it's usually, "Which one, there are 3 in that neighborhood." They're ubiquitous, and it's a nice atmosphere to be in for an hour or so. And you can have a treat. Imagine saying, "I want to pitch this idea to you, I'll meet you at the McDonalds." Yeah right.
Starbucks is doing well enough without laptop campers, but offering semi-free access must mean that at least part of their business is being taken by the shops with free WiFi. Believe me they don't make a move without studying the numbers.
rj
Only when using Euclidean geometry, I get sqrt(1) using taxicab geometry, assuming radius measurements were taken using a car odometer.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicab_geometry
According to Google Bauhaus Books & Coffee(301 E Pine St, Seattle, WA 98122), and the startbucks located at 2200 Alaskan Way # 120, Seattle, WA 98121 are 1 mile apart but it would take 1.9 miles to drive between them.
Both of our calculations are based on the 1 mile figure being a radius,but measured differently, do you know how they measured? Would fifth graders know non-Euclidean geometry?
Um, sorry: Caribou, S'bucks et al are NOT really in the coffee business. Coffee's the apparent center, I'll agree, but the real foundations of the business are very different. S'bucks--at one time--said they wanted to form the basis of a new civil forum. A place to share with other people. Oh yeah, and have some coffee.
Look, movie theaters stopped being in the "movie business" when Hollywood took 100% of the door. (70's in major markets, ubiquitous by mid 80's) That's when they became "Quik E Marts with moving pictures on the back wall." McDonalds, I'm told, is not principally in the burger biz: they own/control so much primo real estate that their worth is not in meat served but in land owned.
Your store is trying to make a place for meeting, and hoping to capitalize on that by selling coffee and sundries to those who chose to meet there. So it's the place first, then the coffee. Wifi's part of the decor, do it right, sell more coffee.
Put another way: if WiFi were a cost in excess of return, your bosses would be enforcing that "one card per purchase" rule with an iron fist. So like you said, it's not worth the hassle: give it away upon request. That's a high enough bar for the boardroom, it should be for you too.
And relax about the schlubs in the seats. If turnover were an issue, your bosses' bonuses would depend on solving the problem. (Imagine: A norovirus policy, wherein the whole place needs to be bleached every 90 minutes. Turnover problem solved.)