Hey T-Mobile! You suck, take your whining elsewhere
June 7, 2008
I just love this. T-Mobile is suing Starbucks because the coffee hawker has come to its senses and stopped charging a ridiculous 30 monthly dollars for its WiFi access.
http://gigaom.com/2008/06/07/t-mobile-vs-starbucks-free-wifi/
Can you believe this?
GigaOM also makes an interesting observation that iPhone users who hog bandwidth for a paltry 20 bucks a month need to use more WiFi, less 3G. I can’t find fault with that – God knows I use my iPhone way more than I ever did for my Nokia E62, and I paid 45 bucks a month for that connectivity. Now: 20 bucks flat.
T-Mobile is suing because Starbucks is providing free WiFi on *their* infrastructure that they invested heavily to set up. If AT&T and Starbucks set up their own infrastructure and offered free WiFi then there wouldn’t be a problem, but I agree that it’s pretty douchy of AT&T and Starbucks to be offering something for free that they don’t own.
I agree that it’s total bullshit to be charging for WiFi at all, but T-Mobile is getting the royal screw in this deal and it’s entirely within their right to be asking for compensation, AT&T should be sued as well.
Also, I think T-Mobile Hotspots is $20/mo, and free if you have unlimited data with T-Mobile (which I do). It’s awesome not only for Starbucks but for airports, Borders, Kinko’s, and a bunch of other places. Well worth it.
And no I don’t work for T-Mobile, in fact I’m switching to AT&T when the 3G iPhone comes out.
Hey Andy, sorry I’m clearly missing some details: how is Starbucks able to get away with this? If T-Mobile owns the hardware and the pipes in the thousands of Starbucks, can’t they just rip those out and walk?
yeah, I do agree that if you are a T-Mobile wireless customer, the hotspots are SWEET. But their service sucks in the SF bay area.
My solution: iPhone + Cingular laptop wireless card + comCast at home. Basically impossible to unplug
From what I understand T-Mobile had a contract with Starbucks for 7 years, which expired in 2008. AT&T won the new contract, and they worked out some kind of deal where T-Mobile and AT&T would share Starbucks until AT&T switched out the infrastructure, but as of right now they’ve only switched in two markets.