Your office-away-from-the-office, otherwise known as Starbucks, will now have free Wi-Fi. On Monday, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announced that one-click, free Wi-Fi will be available at all U.S. stores, beginning July 1.
The AT&T-provided service will also offer the Starbucks Digital Network in the fall, in partnership with Yahoo. The network will provide Starbucks patrons with free, unrestricted access to such paid sites and services as The Wall Street Journal’s site, as well as exclusive content, previews and downloads, and local community news.
‘Free,’ ‘One-Click’
The company said “free” means no Starbucks card is required, and “one-click” means no username or password. A user just needs to click to connect in a browser on a laptop, smartphone or tablet at a Starbucks. Usage is unlimited.
In 2008, Starbucks attempted to provide free Wi-Fi, but it came with a two-hour usage limit, and a Starbucks card was required. In addition, AT&T’s terms of service prohibited using the connection for video streaming, phone calls, IMs or uploading media.
Other content providers in the network include iTunes, The New York Times, Patch, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo and ZAGAT. The network is a project of Digital Ventures, a new business unit inside Starbucks that is headed by the company’s CIO and general manager, Stephen Gillett. Gillett told news media that the company doesn’t expect the free Wi-Fi and content to cause people to linger much longer than they would normally.
At a business conference in New York where the announcement was made, Schulz said the company wants to create content you can only get at Starbucks, adding that “this is a thing that doesn’t exist in any consumer marketplace in America.”
‘Newspaper in Coffeehouse’
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