Free WiFi at Starbucks

Starting this spring Starbucks, in cooperation with AT&T Wi-Fi Service, will offer free WiFi internet at Starbucks locations. A paragraph from the press release is below.

Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX) today announced a new comprehensive communications agreement with AT&T that will enhance the enterprise networking capabilities for Starbucks by streamlining business operations and enhancing the customer experience. With this announcement, AT&T, which has provided Starbucks with network connectivity for point of sale and other store operating systems for more than 10 years, will offer consumer WiFi service in more than 7,000 Starbucks locations in the U.S. beginning in spring of 2008.

Like many $5 latte sipping Starbucks customers, I prefer paying zero dollars for WiFi and even seek out coffee shops/retailers who offer free WiFi. On several occasions, I’ve selected a local Panera Bread or Silver Diner over a Starbucks because they offer free WiFi. I usually spend more than $2 for coffee and pastry at Panera Bread and closer to $15 at Silver Diner for an old time diner style breakfast.

Based on my experience, offering free WiFi at Starbucks 7000 locations will benefit Starbucks the most by eliminating a reason for customers take their business elsewhere. The details of how the offering will work is covered in-depth here and here and info about requiring a Starbucks Card to use the free service is below.

The press release from Starbucks and three conversations I had with them yesterday finally made clear what the free 2-hours access requires. You need a Starbucks Card—not their Visa card, which will also work, but their stored-value card that you can recharge. These are available to buy with a minimum fill of $5.00. Once you have the card, free Wi-Fi service is activated by a single purchase of any amount on the card each month. Earlier reports (and what I thought I’d understood) indicated that either you needed the Starbucks Visa card, or that you simply needed a Starbucks stored-value card without a purchase.

Starbucks and iPhone

Since AT&T is involved in this free WiFi service and AT&T has an exclusive relationship with Apple regarding the iPhone it is possible that some special integration with Starbucks, AT&T, and iPhone is coming. Forbes has a nice article about a new Apple patent related to ordering using a “wireless device”.

In an application with the U.S. Patent Office published on Dec. 20, the Cupertino, Calif.-based computer and gadget company described a wireless system that would allow customers to place an order at a store using a wireless device such as a media player, a wireless personal digital assistant or a cellphone.

Someone has already designed an interface to make above possible and screen shots of the iPhone screens are shown below.

Someday, you may be able to walk into a Starbucks, order your “non fat half caff tripple grande quarter sweet sugar free vanilla non-fat lactaid extra hot extra foamy caramel macchiato” via your iPhone, sit down and start surfing the web for free, and when the drink is ready you’ll get a message sent to your phone or they may even bring it to your table along with the Starbucks “Eggs Florentine with Baby Spinach and Havarti” breakfast sandwich.

(I don’t have an iPhone…I’m happy with my Palm OS based phone.)

Starbucks Free WiFi and Technical Details

While the business side of the arrangement and how customers will access the free service is explained, the technical details of the WiFi network are not provided. One of the negatives of free WiFi at places like Panera Bread is that Internet speeds can be extremely slow at peak times in morning and during lunch. A few questions I have regarding the performance of the network are below.

• Has any performance and capacity planning been conducted on WiFi architecture per store to determine if additional users can be supported? Streaming videos on laptops and newer WiFi enabled devices like iPhones will require more network resources compared resources required for email and basic web browsing
• Are the access points being replaced/enhanced for this new service? The existing WiFi architecture is most likely not 802.11n or even 802.11a/802.11g, limiting the performance of the network to basic services.
• Will users with subscription service to AT&T Wi-Fi Service have guaranteed performance on network?

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Filed under: WLAN/WiFi News