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."

Comments

Yay!

[WrongSizeGlass]

Now I can get a small cup of coffee and free WiFI for only $7!

Re:Yay!

[selven]

You do realize that you can, even before this change, use Starbucks's wifi without ever buying a single thing from them?

Also, try tea. It's cheaper.

Re:Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

Starbucks offera real coffee, in three fairly standard sizes, for prices not out of line with similar establishments. In spite of their lack of Fair Trade credentials, they pay more to the farmers who grow their beans than most companies ( contributing to the price ). Restaurants may also be offering you discounted coffee as a lure to customers who may also purchase meals.

Most of what Starbucks offers is espresso or cappucino... with flavors... toward the goal of making them delicious. It doesn't seem terribly pretentious to me. It would seem more pretentious if they refused to offer anything but drip, espresso, or cappucino on grounds of purity.

They haven't brainwashed hipsters with a ray gun. They offer products that people like to drink, at prices they are willing to pay, in a clean, pleasant establishment.

Starbucks is what happens when many people have money. The two conclusions one can draw from your original statement are that nobody deserves to make enough money that they can enjoy an occasional trip to Starbucks, and/or that everyone who enjoys it enough to pay the asked price is stupider than you.

Racing is dangerous, and being a cowboy would be, for many people, tedious and unfulfilling. And yet both professions boast a stylish, dramatic wardrobe. A character in a cartoon once said that a great man once said that to be truly human is to be constantly experimenting. If people feel like dressing up to change how other people view them, or they view themselves, do they deserve to be pissed on? They're trying something. Kudos to them. They're meeting their friends at a location they enjoy. Is that something that should be frowned upon? Are "real" racers and "real" cowboys superior human beings? Is it because they're so damned authentic in their attire? Many racers are initially drawn to the sport for the "cool" it lends. Is it still authentic, as long as they risk their lives for it?

Starbucks is a place for normal people to purchase a good tasting drink, which they may or may not consume on a comfortable couch in subdued lighting. Some of them are pretentious. Some cowboys are pretentious, too.

Re:Yay!

[Yvan256]

Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.

Finally

[areusche]

The joke is that it took them this long. Paying for wifi is such a 2004 thing.

Re:Finally

[nine-times]

Exactly. 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 don't know how Starbucks expects to compete.

But then, I live in an area that has a lot of independent coffee shops and not a lot of Starbucks locations, so I guess they're not competing.

Re:Finally

[michaelhood]

And I'm still not interested in using any wifi device in a coffee shop. And not interested in drinking coffee either. Or hanging out with the sorts of people who hang out in coffee shops.

Sometimes it's nice to actually NOT be connected to the internet.

Thanks for sharing. I'll look for next week's post about you not watching TV.

Re:What the?

[TheKidWho]

You read it wrong, they are providing free access to paywalled sites like wsj.com. Similar to the system a University has in place with research journals.

Re:sure.

[adolf]

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.

Re:What the?

[Graff]

It's not "free unlimited access." It's "free unlimited access to select Starbucks-chosen sites, most of them you have to pay for."

You already get free, unrestricted access to any site if you use a Starbucks card. You get the card for free, throw a few bucks on it, and use it for purchases. As long as you make 1 purchase a month (of any amount) you get free access for the month. They also give you other perks like free addons (flavored syrup and such), free refills, and every so often they send you a card for a free drink of any kind you want.

I'm not big on using cards like this but they do compensate you pretty well for using it.

My big quibble with all of these "click to log on" types of systems is they are a pain in the butt. Say I just want to check my e-mail or do something else that's not HTTP, I can't do it unless I load up my web browser, visit any web site, get redirected to their landing page, and do their login dance. It's a huge waste of time, there should be some way for them to build their login directly into the wifi login to avoid HTTP if we aren't currently using it.

Not to mention that they all have some odd reasons for timing out the login and I'll be in the middle of doing something (like a Slashdot post!) and it fails because I have to re-login. What a pain in the ass!

Re:What the?

[Graff]

It's not "free unlimited access." It's "free unlimited access to select Starbucks-chosen sites, most of them you have to pay for."

Oh, and if you go directly to the Starbucks press release linked in the article:

As part of this commitment, Schultz recognized customers' desire for a better in store Wi-Fi experience and announced that on July 1, Starbucks will turn on one-click, free Wi-Fi through AT&T in all U.S. company operated stores.

Building on the Wi-Fi update, Schultz also revealed plans for a new online customer experience called the Starbucks Digital Network, in partnership with Yahoo!, which will debut later this fall. This online experience - available only in U.S. company operated Starbucks stores - will be unique in its content offerings, allowing customers free unrestricted access to various paid sites and services such as wsj.com, exclusive content and previews, free downloads, local community news and activities, on their laptops, tablets or smart phones.

So it's both free access to the entire internet and free, unrestricted access to sites that you might normally pay for such as wsj.com.

The coffee shop culture in Singapore

[rubenerd]

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.

And free electric outlets!

[Animats]

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.