Brad Feld

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Free WiFi At Starbucks

Feb 11, 2008
Category Technology

Starbucks announced that today that you can hang out, drink coffee, eat high calorie baked goods, and surf the web for "free" for two hours (assuming you are drinking coffee and eating high calorie baked goods.)  This is due to a very smart move on AT&T’s part where they have displaced T-Mobile as the WiFi provider at Starbucks stores. 

I’m really surprised that T-Mobile let this deal get away from them.  I happily pay $10 / month to T-Mobile for WiFi service – the two places I use it 99.4% of the time are Starbucks and the United Red Carpet Club.  If AT&T takes the Red Carpet Club deal, T-Mobile is going to lose that incremental $10 / month from me.  I realize that "free for two hours" at Starbucks might not have kept me paying this $10, but I probably wouldn’t have noticed (or done anything) for a while.