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US McDonald's Wi-Fi Going Free In January
Knowzy writes "After five years behind a paywall, McDonalds plans to stop charging for its Wi-Fi in mid-January in the US. According to the Dallas Morning News, you aren't even required to make a purchase — 'free is free,' a spokesman said. It's also been widely reported that they won't impose time limits on your surfing. With around 20,000 free hotspots between McDonald's and Starbucks (who went free[ish] earlier this year), anyone still charging for Wi-Fi is going to look foolish, if not downright greedy."
Unsure how successful it has been in the UK though. Never seen anyone use it.
Free wifi won't make me eat a fried burger.
Flame Broiled, or nothing.
-JJS
For everytime I wished I had Wifi when I was at McDonalds... I'd have the exact same amount of money I do now.
You see, Coffee Shops like Starbucks make sense. Thats where you go to prop open your laptop, pretend to be a professional writer while blogging, while pompously talking to other "professional writers" over your Peppermint Mocha Extra Pump Extra hot no foam Chai Late Fusion Coffee.
There is nothing Arrogant or pompous about pretending to write while stuffing down a big mac.
Panera wifi is free. I just used it the other day.
Perhaps to use the wifi, but you cant sit in the building or on the lot unless you bought something. " parking for customers only"
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Is it just me, or free wifi from Starbucks is just some wishful thinking? I've traveled to San Deigo, Denver and Boston in the past week and tried on several occasions to get wifi signal. And in each case, Starbucks was requiring me to pay. I don't know why I thought it was free ... may be it was trumpeted in some earlier slashdot article?
In my smallish city (200k people) we have had free wifi all over downtown for a while. All the businesses downtown are part of committee and they basically all agreed to provide free wifi; everything from Subway, to Starbucks, to some random bar. Seems like a good way to do it. If a business tried charging it'd just look ridiculous.
I've never been in a St. Louis Bread Co. (same company as Panera) and charged for access. They have a splash screen that you have to click "log-in" before you can get on and agree to their terms of service. But that has never required a purchase. Granted their web is useless for anything other than email and surfing to CNN and a few web sites as anything of interest seems to be block and they also seem to block ports like FTP/SSH starting a little over a year ago.
Coffee shop I'm setting at now requires you purchase a drink for 3 hours of internet time. And has for years because it is a college town and it's a popular study hang out. If you didn't you'd get people come in, sit down for 6 - 8 hours, and never buy anything. Meanwhile paying customers are leaving and going somewhere else because there aren't any seats available. (They had free wifi when they first opened. And Free was costing them too much in lost revenue. At least $150 - $200 a day.)
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
AT&T worked out a deal where the hotspots at McDonalds are partnered up with them, so iPhone customers can automatically get signed in and use them for free. It's been that way for months now. I've used the one in my neighborhood a number of times, as well as a couple of them when I was on a road trip.
Only complaint I've had, in general, with Mc Wi-Fi is, I think someone needs to do site surveys on those things and improve the reception! I've always gotten pretty weak signals that are still generally usable, but worse than I get throughout most of my house with my own wireless router.
Unrestricted free WiFi in places where one might be expected to be for some time (sit-down restaurants, conference rooms, hotels, waiting areas) makes sense. People are already sitting around bored and generally looking for something to do, so allowing them to get online with their laptop or smartphone and get stuff done or goof off is great.
Starbucks and McDonalds business models are based on rapid customer turnover. Get 'em in, get 'em fed/caffeinated, get 'em out. People taking up the generally limited space for longer than needed cost them money. What makes sense for these type of places is "free" WiFi with purchase. Every receipt has a code printed on it valid for that day at that location which allows one hour of access. Ran out of time? Go buy a drink or something. I'd also recommend they partner up with one or more of the nation-wide hotspot networks to allow subscribers of those services to get on as well, as long as the payout to the local store makes sense.
There are also a lot of McDonalds and Starbucks locations within a short distance of residential areas. I could see the local McDonalds' front window from my back porch at my last apartment. If they had offered purely open free WiFi, I'd sure as hell have tossed one of my cantennas up and used it as an extra internet connection.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
Nobody going into a McDonald's should be allowed to sit for more than the time it takes to scarf down the food.
In fact, all McDonald's should be placed at the top of long flights of stairs; or better, escalators running backwards.
So I guess all those folks living in apartment or condos right next to McDonalds will get free Internet access (albeit, minimal speeds). Or even better, a competitive fast food chain next door can set up an cantenna to leech bandwidth and then stick a 'Free WiFi!' in their window too!
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Sue McDs? Will McDs have any filtering?
Nice try, but that's a different market. At McDs, they want to lure you in and keep you there as long as possible. Even if you don't order anything, at least you will be immersed in their branding. The airport is just the opposite - they have a *captive* audience, and they're the only game in town. That's why a soda at the airport costs 5.00 while the same one at McDs costs $.79. Basic supply and demand.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
All AT&T DSL customers get "free" wifi too. At many McD, Starbucks, Barnes & Nobel, and a few others. Usually the SSID is "attwifi"
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
My city had the opportunity to have free city wide wifi (probably just for a year) because a local company was trying to start up and wanted to show off their service (and test their equipment). The city council decided the city's citizens were not interested in such a thing as wireless internet.
One of our neighboring cities now enjoys said city wide wireless.
Course my city decided that using a point to point wireless system using radio (maybe micro wave) was a great idea for their internal infrastructure.
Free for up to 2 hours (per-day, may not be split across multiple login sessions) if you've registered one of their Starbucks stored-value cards and you've used it to make a purchase sometime within the last 30 days.
So more "free with purchase"-style.
I was waiting for a flight at Dulles International in Virginia just last week and the Boingo hotspot there was free. Google basically paid for wifi for everyone as a "holiday gift" (read, advertising). No strings attached either. Made the 2 hour wait less painful.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
We've had this for years in Aus and there's no easy way to p2p, there's a nice filter stopping pretty much all mainstream porn sites etc.
I read somewhere that back in the 80's McDonalds in the US inner cities had problems with crack addicts. They'd stay all day, maybe buy a coffee or fries occasionally. Hardcore crack addicts don't eat much but they need small amounts of water, salt, sugar, caffeine and fat which were supplied by the coffee and fries. They smelled bad and were abusive and scared away the regular customers who'd spend more and leave quicker. The revenue per table hour started to drop in the crack addict infested restaurants. McDonalds Corporate was made aware of the problem and asked for directions.
McDonalds is a bit like the bugs in Starship Troopers - lower level drones are able to implement policy and are interrogated about falling revenues but not trusted to make policy. That was done by MBAs - the McDonalds equivalent of Brain Bugs - in the headquarters. Now clearly forcefully evicting the crack addicts though possible would create a bad atmosphere. Studies were commissioned. It was found that crack addicts dislike bright lights but the good customers - people who wolf down this months's special premium burger supersize meal ("SwissMac Meal! With real Swiss Cheese!") and then got the hell out - weren't bothered by them. Or indeed anything else.
A decision was made to increase the ambient light levels. The crack addicts left and revenues increased. My guess is geeks leaching wifi will need to be repelled in the same way, and for much the same reasons.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Jesus when these go 802.11n there's going to be pretty serious municipal coverage.
Android users (and apparently Nokia n900) are experiencing seamless voip integration... looking bad for the telecos!
I've noticed that, in general, the more expensive a place is the more likely it is to charge for WiFi. Hotels are especially bad about this. Inexpensive chains usually offer free WiFi whereas expensive hotels generally charge. Hiltons, in particular, often charge unbelievable rates: $15/night in some hotels. Far from competition bringing the price down, some have actually increased their rates over the years; $10/night used to be fairly standard. As best I can figure, they're targeting business travelers with expense accounts. For example, many hotels charge extra for the ability to use a VPN, which makes no technical sense but is a great way to price discriminate.
I've also found that the terrible WiFi rates at many high-end hotels actually make sites like Priceline less useful. Yeah, you might get a great rate on a 4-star hotel, but when you figure in the cost of WiFi and parking it often ends up being nearly a wash. I think in the end it'll actually be the cell phone companies that kill overpriced WiFi. If you can use your tethered cell phone, why pay for WiFi? Sure a tethered data plan might be $60/month, but that's for 30 days compared to just 4 nights of WiFi at a Hilton.
What is your Big MAC address? Have you enabled your Wi-Fry connection?
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
By blocking ports and protocols related to VPN. Blocking all outbound tcp/1723 as well as GRE will block most PPTP traffic, blocking all outbound udp/4500, udp/500, ESP and AH will block most IPSec traffic, blocking all outbound udp/1701 will block most L2TP traffic just in case it isn't secured by IPSec in the first place. Decent firewalls can inspect HTTP traffic and make sure you're not using it to tunnel traffic. HTTPS traffic can be dropped once the connection has passed more traffic than you think could reasonably be a webpage, and so on.
Can you find some way around those rules if you know what you're doing? Sure. But it's not particularly hard to make sure 99% of all users you're going to come across are not going to be able to use VPN without significant outside help.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willingness_to_pay
If you willing to dish out $500+ per night for a double queen room, then you're probably ok with $13 per night wifi and $32 cheeseburgers (Actual prices from a hilton I stayed at).
I was sent on a short-notice (36 hours) emergency deployment to hawaii a while back; base housing was under construction so we had to stay downtown. I wound up living in the Waikiki Beach Hilton for about 2 months. That sounds great, and for the most part it was, but I was an E-5 living in an environment designed for the very rich. I had a nice view of the beach, yes, but like I said earlier the internet prices were outrageous. It turned out to be much cheaper to find a local t-mobile store and buy a usb wireless internet dongle. A month later I returned it and ultimately wound up paying only for the one month of service with no termination fee (under 30 days trial period).
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
Some airports that have free Wi-Fi have seen an increase in people setting up Wi-Fi from the parking lots in an attempt to go on a Phishing expedition. They basically take advantage of people that don't really pay attention to what network they are connecting to.
Anyone really expect McDonald's customers to check such things?
McDonald's is simply making this as easy as possible. Buy a cup of coffee in the drive-thru, go back around to the parking lot, bait ya hook, and start Phishing.
Hiltons, in particular, often charge unbelievable rates: $15/night in some hotels.
I had heard they were promiscuous socialites, but had no idea they were hookers.
I went to a university that happens to be in one of the fanciest parts of one of the most expensive cities in the world. They owned some nearby houses, which were rented to first-year students.
It was cool to have a Lamborghini parked outside my window for a year, next to the Porsche and the line of BMWs and Mercedes. But the novelty wore off when I realised the nearby shops charged 50%-100% more than elsewhere (even the food shops -- although in their case the prices were the same, but they only stocked luxury brands).
The problem solved itself though, as there was no way I could afford to rent a place nearby for the rest of my course.