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Starbucks Frees Wi-Fi
CWmike sends in this excerpt from Computerworld: "Free unlimited Wi-Fi is coming to nearly 7,000 company-operated Starbucks stores in the US beginning July 1, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said on Monday. Schultz also said that Starbucks is partnering with Yahoo! to debut the Starbucks Digital Network this fall. Starbucks customers will have free unrestricted access to various paid sites and services, such as wsj.com, as well as other free downloads Starbucks didn't detail. A spokeswoman said the access will be 'unlimited' and 'simplified, one-click.' By comparison, first-time Wi-Fi users in Starbucks stores now get up to two hours free after registering, but then must purchase additional time at the rate of $3.99 for two consecutive hours. That Wi-Fi access is already free to AT&T DSL home customers and AT&T mobile customers, according to the Starbucks website, but the connection process requires up to nine steps. McDonald's added free Wi-Fi to 11,500 locations earlier this year."
Now I can get a small cup of coffee and free WiFI for only $7!
The joke is that it took them this long. Paying for wifi is such a 2004 thing.
For a long time, our local Starbucks was primarily dominated by Apple laptops. About a year ago, seemingly overnight, the ratio shifted; hardly a MacBook to be seen. Now, it's gotten back to 50/50, but the majority of Apple users there are either holding an iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad.
Has anyone else noticed this kind of shift at their local haunts?
Living With a Nerd
I see the business model here.
People willing to pay $5 for mediocre coffee and the chance to overhear inane babble conducted by other people willing to pay $5 for mediocre coffee will, pretty much, pay for anything.
But if what they're paying for wants to pay the fee for them, we'll give them free access to that.
Uff... make it a "to go" please, there's no seating place right now. Thanks
Did nobody else catch this?
"Starbucks customers will have free unrestricted access to various paid sites and services, such as wsj.com, as well as other free downloads Starbucks didn't detail."
It's not "free unlimited access." It's "free unlimited access to select Starbucks-chosen sites, most of them you have to pay for."
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Interesting here that WSJ is willing to open a hole in their paywall for users at Starbucks... typically this is done so that customers will get hooked on the concept and pay to have access everywhere. Could they be behind paying Starbucks' Internet service bill?
Business adding more value for customers.
We hear that people just sit around and use the internet without buying anything. I don't see this. I see people sitting around and studying, often not using the internet, taking space, without buying anything. Mostly what I see is people getting coffee to go. The only time I have been to a starbucks when there are no seats is during a widespread power outage after a storm. Even so people did not linger for hours.
I like firms that give me a simple deal. Starbucks has never been this way. Even the Starbucks card, which should be useful for more than wifi, is not useful at the Starbucks branded outlets. How Lame.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
ATT Customer here, been enjoying free wi-fi at Starbucks for a long time...it's not a difficult setup, and only done once. That said, I'm not a fan of exclusivity deals, so if Starbucks is making it easier, more power to them. Hopefully the "Starbucks Digital Network" partnership with Yahoo that is most assuredly funding this free wifi isn't going to be too intrusive.
I'm not even sure what this story is talking about. For the past few years, all the Starbucks in my area (Denver) simply require you to get a (free) Starbucks gift card and sign-up for free wifi. As long as you have some activity on the card within the past 30 days (either putting money on the card or using it to pay for something), then you get free wifi. They say that you only get 2-hours of wifi per day (not two hours total, as this story implies), but I've never been kicked off their system. And there are no restrictions on which websites I visit. (No, I don't have AT&T.)
"There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch - or drinks would cost half as much"
RAH
Please bring this to Japan. It is impossible to find free wifi here. SBC used to have it but they seem to have completely folded.
You mean that SSID "very poor Mom-n-Pop shop" I use all the time for donwloading iTune HD content is not Starbucks'?
Oops!
Partnering with Yahoo! I guess they also are buying stock in BP....
By registering a Starbucks card and buying with it once a month, customers already got 2 hrs/day of free wifi with the AT&T hotspots in Starbucks coffeeshops, and I'm pretty sure I occasionaly stayed longer than that without being disconnected. Also most of the Starbucks in my area are, for example, Verizon hotspots that could be used by Verizon customers, and I noticed that because I am one, it could also apply to other ISPs.
From TFS:
two hours free after registering
1. Release DHCP (isc.org: dhclient -r)
2. Change Mac address (in Linux: ip link set DEVICE addr LLADDR)
3. Clear cookies, reconnect
4. ?????
5. Profit!
First Starbucks was teamed with T-Mobile. You got a relatively easy to find set of [pay] WiFi hotspots around the U.S. that all worked with a single account.
Next Starbucks teamed up with AT&T for limited free WiFi and gave free WiFi to iPhone users. Slow phase-out of T-Mobile from Starbucks.
Now Starbucks is offering unlimited WiFi through Yahoo!. Does this mean the slow phaseout of AT&T from Starbucks?
They did seem to hold on to the pay model for quite a long time. Perhaps they were just waiting for someone else to get in bed with them and foot the bill? My guess is that none of these schemes cost Starbucks anything. More likely they got free business internet access for their shops and perhaps a piece of the profits, if any, from selling the online time. All they had to do was provide the little bit of electricity to run the router.
In these parts pretty much every coffee joint offers free Wifi, plus much better coffee than Starbucks.
Our local chain offers really good food, super staff, good coffee, and they encourage people to hang out, chat, and work. They may not turn over the space as frequently as Starbucks, but the shop is always full, and people keep coming back.
Three Squirrels
It took Starbucks this long to get free Wi-Fi? The great purveyors of anti-corporatism has been *gulp* charging their customers for Wi-Fi all this time?
the coffee is better, the bagels are much better then the dreck that starbucks offers for pastr, and their is free, unlimited web access
This article is tagged "freethebsd". I'm not sure if that's the free thebs daemon (and, if so, wtf a theb is) or free the bsd, in which case I thought one was already free, another one was open, and the best one was net.
In any case, WTF has "freethebsd" to do with starbucks wifi? Or am I just high and seeing things?
So.. you pay $1 to register... and get a card... and then you can either:
1) Pay $3.99/hr after 2hrs.
2) Pay $1 again to register again, and get another card, which works for at least 2hrs each day.
Please choose.
(In practice, worldwide, if the bloody access points work, then it is rare that the time limit is enforced.)
This is the part that caught my eye. I have a friend who's apartment is within range of the Starbucks Wi-Fi.
I'm thinkin' I'll take one of my cheap laptops kicking around, leave it running in his apartment, and let my friends and I proxy through it to peruse Murdoch's prized possessions.
Anyone know if they have systems in place to prevent such tomfoolery?
I know people like to make fun of Starbucks for "$7" coffee, but last time I visited one here in Seattle, a 20 ounce drip was under $2.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Any idea when this will be coming to Canadian Starbucks and McDonalds? So far there's none. Must think we don't have laptops up here.
Who in their right mind would go to a public place just to then bury their face in a computer? No thank you, I can do that at home.
You guys are really blowing this out of proportion. Starbucks coffee isn't great, it's also not that expensive unless you order something that takes half an hour to say. i can get beans from a roasting house that cost more than the coffee at atarbucks if i wanted to. Why to people bring laptops there? I don't know, maybe for work. I work close to a starbucks, when our power went out, I was able to walk over, and get work done for most of the day... They've also had free wifi here at all starbucks for as long as i can remember. (yay canada!) Sure, starbucks caters mostly to trendy fucks with macbooks, but that doesn't mean they're a total wright off...
This is a great announcement for those that consider Starbucks the only "real" cafe in their vicinity, i.e. suburban areas. Before I started branching out for different places to work at, I thought the same way: Starbucks has huge sit-downs with tons of outlets and decent coffee, so why should I have to look anywhere else?
This year, however, I've learned how far from the truth that notion really is. While I still stop at some Starbucks places sometimes when I'm on the move, I always prefer to do my work at a smaller, more personal cafe. They are usually much smaller than Starbucks and are definitely not as widespread., but the key is that they usually serve REAL food (in fact, some coffee shop owners grow their own fruits/vegetables in the cafe's backyard) and REALLY good coffee at cheaper prices. Additionally, the handful of people that run these cafes actually like their jobs, which I'd wager is probably because the patrons of such coffee houses are not the type that only care about getting their morning fix, regardless of their attitude. (They are almost universally Mac users, though.) It also helps that these places almost always have free Wi-Fi and MUCH better music selections.
I know I'm already way off-base (go ahead and mod me down if you think so, though if you've read this far, why would you?), but it also saddens me how Starbucks managed to turn the cafe into a McDonald's like franchise, drive-thrus, working conditions and all. From the many baristas that I've shot the shit with, their jobs really suck and are akin to working at McDonald's (minus the low pay and usually inept managers), which is exactly OPPOSITE to the way working at cafes should be. They're experimenting with starting a new tea house branch; I wonder how that'll work for them in the long run.
Nonetheless, free Wi-Fi is always good Wi-Fi.
It's hard enough trying to find a place to sit down, now with people getting free "unlimited" (exact details to be clarified at some point) without having someone use their local starbucks as a library and occupying the seating while they research their doctoral thesis or pontificate how they'll write the next great blog.
I just want a place to sit for 10minutes while I drink my beverage. I don't care if they give away free wifi, but they should install "parking meters" on the seats.
Probably not all that relevant to this discussion, but my SG$0.02.
All the Starbucks branches here in Singapore have free WiFi provided you register first, it's part of the government's Wireless@SG initiative, which I can forgive the corny 1990s name for because it Just Works. The irony is this free internet is faster and more reliable than the ADSL I was paying a small fortune for back in Australia!
There's a huge coffee shop culture here. It's really fascinating to see Starbucks (and Coffee Bean, and Killiney etc), even at 11pm they're absolutely packed with students studying on their MacBooks and business folk frantically typing away. I asked a few local friends why, and mostly it's because apartments here are so small an overpriced cup of coffee is a small price to pay for a comfy chair, relaxing music and a place to do some work on the Internets without your siblings making noise in your ear.
Cheers, ~ Ruben
So much of the rest of the world (eg Europe, bar stupid Germany) has had free wifi in these places for so long now, its odd to see the US only just catching up on this stuff...
Try your tea with milk (the way many people in other countries drink it). Starbucks will also make it this way upon request. Chai tea lattes are great. :D
I drink Brawndo, because Brawndo's got electrolytes.
The last time I lived in the US, all wifi at starbucks was free (circa 2003 or so). Some of the locations would leave their routers on 24x7, so while traveling in a campervan I would park near one of those for free service and to get my work done (travel writing). I guess things changed when I left, but now are coming back full circle. The paid wifi hotspot experiment in America must have failed...
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
Every independent coffee shop I've gone into in the past 5 years has had free WiFi. It's often better coffee, cheaper, nicer atmosphere, and free WiFi.
I have little interest in Starbucks coffee myself but "better" and "nicer" are subjective in this case and I've rarely found any coffee shop in the last 10 years that was actually much cheaper. They won't stay in business long selling just $1.00 cups of black coffee. Not enough profit and not enough differentiation to do that.
You're right about the free wifi though.
I don't know how Starbucks expects to compete.
Starbucks competes the same way McDonalds and Coke compete. A familiar product that enough people like that is consistent no matter where you go and available everywhere. They don't have to make YOUR favorite product to succeed. Face it, Starbucks makes a product that a lot of people like. Maybe its not for you personally but they sell billions of dollars of coffee a year so they clearly are doing something that appeals.
Their coffee's so-so, but the free wifi will be a boon to those of us iPad'ers with only WiFi.
The Starbucks map at their site is brutal to use, which is why I use this map
http://www.spatialdatabox.com/map-demos/starbucks-map.html
It's easier to use, and lists 18 thousand or so Starbucks (good grief!) and lets you filter by WiFi (there's 8,000), iTunes, etc.
"then must purchase additional time at the rate of $3.99 for two consecutive hours" Unless you've got macspoof... or a dns tunnel... or an icmp tunnel... or a separate computer... or a separate starbucks...
Sugar in tea? Seriously? That ruins it.
You clearly are not from the southern US.
So drink it strong...and it won't taste like water.
Strong does not automatically mean tasty. In fact bad tea that is strong is worse than bad tea that is weak.
Uh, if water tastes something, you may want to check into getting a different source of water.
Virtually all water (except distilled) has taste. Trace amounts of various impurities can actually be desirable. If it tastes BAD you might want to get a different source.
Yeah, but if you want good coffee, you're better off staying at home and making it yourself. You would have to be in a bad way if you have to drink Starbuck's coffee just to get an internet connection.
Would you like a coffee with "full release"?
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
A few years ago, there was a modernistic little tea shop in Palo Alto which not only had free WiFi, but electric outlets at every table. So the place was full of people with laptops. It was very quiet. Nobody talked.
They didn't buy much, though. The woman behind the counter had so little to do that she was usually reading (a book, not a screen, typically some 19th century classic; she was a philosophy major.) The place lasted about six months. Then it went over to being a coffee bar. That didn't work either. Now it's a yogurt place, with few tables and no available power outlets.
Enjoy your free WiFi - it won't last, most likely. Governments around the world are tightening the screws on copyright infringement, and open WiFi is in the cross-hairs - see one example here: http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2010/the-death-of-open-wifi
This is part of 'graduated response', also known as 'three strikes', which is the copyright owners' term for various actions to discourage infringement short of lawsuits - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduated_response or http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/tag/graduated-response/
The New York Times best-selling author heralds the future of business in Free. In his revolutionary best seller, The Long Tail, Chris Anderson demonstrated how the online marketplace creates niche markets, allowing products and consumers to connect in a way that has never been possible before. Now, in Free, he makes the compelling case that, in many instances, businesses can profit more from giving things away than they can by charging for them.
Far more than a promotional gimmick, Free is a business strategy that may well be essential to a company's survival. The costs associated with the growing online economy are trending toward zero at an incredible rate. Never in the course of human history have the primary inputs to an industrial economy fallen in price so fast and for so long. Just think that in 1961 a single transistor cost $10; now Intel's latest chip has two billion transistors and sells for $300 (or 0.000015 cents per transistor - effectively too cheap to price). The traditional economics of scarcity just don't apply to bandwidth, processing power, and hard-drive storage.
Yet this is just one engine behind the new Free, a reality that goes beyond a marketing gimmick or a cross-subsidy. Anderson also points to the growth of the reputation economy; explains different models for unleashing the power of Free; and shows how to compete when your competitors are giving away what you're trying to sell.
In Free, Chris Anderson explores this radical idea for the new global economy and demonstrates how this revolutionary price can be harnessed for the benefit of consumers and businesses alike.
In Santa Cruz (CA) downtown: Lulu Carpenter's for nice ambiance and good coffee. Pergolesi's for more alternative younger crowd.
Midtown, The Buttery rocks. The pastries are delicious as are a good many of the staff.
...so all of the Apple fanbois can position themselves in such a way as to reflect the light from the little silver apple directly into the eyes of customers coming into the store.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
all your free wifi are belong to me now mhaw hah hahaa
I like this idea I hate the fact of having buy coffee then buy internet. Thanks Starbucks and Yahoo.
http://www.thetechnologygeek.org
Inside the WalMart...Now has free WiFi...??
Eh... not really much of a story these days.
All these people with laptops, and now I can't find a seat. This is why I bought a good coffee grinder and a French press for about the cost of 30 cappuccinos. This makes me wonder, how does free wifi increase revenue? Does free wifi increase the need for espresso?
If people in Germany use these free unsecured wireless networks to download copyright infringing material, the owners of Starbucks are going to get in some legal troubles.
If I want great coffeehouse atmosphere and free wifi, I go to locally-owned Luv A-Da Coffee. Panera, McD, and Denny's all have free wifi if I want to go to a chain joint. Starbucks is overpriced. No reason to go there.
Lol one of slashdots most prolific Apple-haters somehow weaselling Apple into a non-Apple story just to diss them. Amazing! You must be wicked popular outside of the internet...
Ogre Wedding Planners llc.
Their coffee tastes like shit.
Do you work for Starbucks marketing?
That seems to be something of a large and strange assumption you have made... so you're basically saying that it's impossible to have a wide circle of social friends if you don't like Apple?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.