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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
Really it's free-WiFi-as-long-as-we-have-a-sponsor that's catching on. AT&T sponsored it for their own customers at McDonald's and StarBucks for a while... now there's a deal in place to open it up to everybody, but that will likely only last as long as there's somebody other than Starbucks paying for it.
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
Business adding more value for customers.
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!
I've always been lost as to the reason WiFi needs to be so heavily monetized.
I mean: It's a business, right? Presumably, in the course of running the business, they already have a need for Internet access -- that it exists, and is working, is a foregone conclusion.
Why is it that companies (like, say, Starbucks and McDonald's) have found that it's so bloody expensive to open the pipe up for random folks to use? The initial investment of cabling in an AP or two is pretty small, even with union labor. Configuration should be near-zero cost, as since there are thousands of devices and they can all be set up pretty much identically in advance.
I realize that the fact that it's cheap doesn't mean that it's free, but geez. Air conditioning is more expensive to offer than free WiFi, but we don't see ever see them charging extra (or looking for looking for sponsorships -- WTF?) for that.
My favorite local coffee shop has offered free 802.11 since before the term "WiFi" existed, and still has functional Ethernet jacks beside the tables that are left over from the time before anything wireless was common. I'd like to suggest that they've got more invested their network than any particular Starbucks, that the coffee is better and cheaper, and that the barristas are more nubile. Oh, and it's air conditioned, too. ;)
Someone please enlighten me.
Kid-proof tablet..
As I pointed out above, many sponsorless mom-and-pop style places whose prices are less than or equal to(and food and drink quality is much greater than) Starbucks have been providing free wifi for years, even on the beach in tourist-gouging San Diego -- where a mandadory 12% tourist tax is slapped on top of all hotel stays.
They lowered the price of a coffee to 1.50. With the card it's free refills and free flavored syrups. With the flavored syrup, it's getting damn close to being a good enough replacement for the $4 drinks. My wife and I have oddly started spending a lot more bread at starbucks since we discovered this.
They'll probably raise the price again.
In these parts pretty much every coffee joint offers free Wifi, plus much better coffee than Starbucks.
I don't think sbux is really competing on quality or value though. They're trying to be the "good enough" ubiquitous choice. Locals and those in the know may go to delicious and funky local coffee-shops with free wifi, but there's always a lot of people who don't know, or just don't care, and if there's a sbux every 5m, all of which offer products and atmosphere you're already familiar with...
[I think this sort of "comfortable homogenization" is sort of depressing, but it's clearly a business strategy that works. And I admit, when I want a quick coffee, given the choice between a 10 minute walk to a nice local cafe and the sbux right in front of me, I'll often choose the latter... my bad I suppose:( ]
We live, as we dream -- alone....
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.
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
I drink Brawndo, because Brawndo's got electrolytes.
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".
> Anyway, I have no problem with Starbucks. I just think they provide
> an inferior product to what I can get elsewhere. When I lived in a
> different place that had fewer choices, that wasn't the case.
See, here's the thing... In The City, Berkeley, and parts of San Jose, I know exactly where to go for a much better cup of coffee than I can get at Starbucks. In the rest of the Bay Area, Yelp can probably direct me to a better cup of coffee if I'm willing to drive to it. But if I'm somewhere unfamiliar, and outside an area that has lots of Yelpers doing reviews; I have no idea whether joe schmoe's local coffee shop is decent or if it's swill. But bad coffee is far more common than good.
With Starbucks and Peets I get at least a reliably better-than-average cup of coffee. And if I'm in an unfamiliar location, or a better coffee shop is too far away, and Yelp isn't helpful where I am; it's better than taking the chance of getting swill.
Imagine all the people...
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.
...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.
Inside the WalMart...Now has free WiFi...??