For those of you jonesing for AT&T Wi-Fi and a highly caffeinated cup of Starbucks java, your wait is finally over — unless you live outside of San Antonio. A little more than a month after AT&T announced it was replacing T-Mobile as the branded Wi-Fi provider in local Starbucks, the denizens of AT&T’s hometown can enjoy free Wi-Fi with either an AT&T account or a Starbucks card.
The rest of you will have to keep using your T-Mobile access (and can continue to do so for the next five years) or just wait. AT&T will be unveiling the service in other markets throughout the year beginning May 1. This way AT&T can milk a steady stream of city-wide launches and positive PR.
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2 trackbacks so far
4:58 PM PT
[...] Clearing the way for Apple’s iPhones and iPod Touch handhelds to be used in Starbucks, AT&T began replacing T-Mobile as the Wi-Fi service provider in the Starbucks coffee houses in San Antonio. AT&T will [...]
3:07 AM PT
[...] In San Antonio and New York April 26th, 2008 | Category: Voip News GigaOm’s Texas Rose Stacey Higginbotham tells us that AT&T has hotspots running in San [...]
8 comments so far
9:27 AM PT
FYI - I hit the wifi of a mall Starbucks in Atlanta last weekend on my iPhone and they had a little AT&T login box up in the corner (the primary service was still T-Mobile). I didn’t connect because I have no idea what my DSL login is, but that blended provider approach might be part of their rollout strategy.
9:38 AM PT
I’ve actually been using my household AT&T login for a few weeks now — since maybe a week after the announcement? Like Cap’n Ken said, it was just deemphasized on the Starbucks login page.
10:59 AM PT
Here is a video I did last week when the first one in San Antonio opened.
(link)
1:24 PM PT
Friends of mine have had WiFi in San Antonio for almost two weeks, so I suppose this is a case of AT&T timing the “release” of this news to its shareholder meeting today, so it had something flashy to talk about.
3:08 PM PT
It is turned on at two Starbucks I frequent. One in San Leandro, and the one on University Ave. in Palo Alto. The link is in the upper righthand corner of the re-direct page when you open your browser (in my case, on my iPhone). You even get a specially formatted login page for Safari Mobile. Nice.
4:04 PM PT
It’s at one of the Starbucks in Morgan Hill, just south of San Jose. Its signal is stronger than t-mobile’s by a bar or two, so my phone/laptop latches on to it first.
6:21 PM PT
I have been using this in several starbucks in the bay area for the past 4 weeks (a little att customers log in here icon on the top right corner)
11:19 AM PT
We have ATT service in our SBUX here in Rye, NY but what is really sad is that 1. SBUX wants to encourage “cafe society” and get people to hang and (buy more) 2. The cost of providing WiFi in a store is deminimus - they could just slap up a cable modem and router! 3. To charge brings in little rev and actually discourages short term usage. Imagine how many (inc me would hang on a whim if it was free…and then buy more SBUX stuff? Tons. As it stands now most people in our SBUX surf on the free WiFi next door provided by Cosi. Brilliant.
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