Short Nerd Chief

Starbucks has announced that it is dumping T-Mobile in favor of AT&T to power Wi-Fi access at its 7,000 company-owned stores.  With the move, Starbucks is moving closer to free wi-fi, but is not quite there yet.  Wi-Fi will be free for AT&T customers, and it will be free for two hours per day for Starbucks Card holders (Starbucks Cards cost only the value you put on them, so that’s pretty much everyone in the world).  This has allowed Starbucks to claim they’re offering “free” access, and caused the coverage to skew that way , but it’s not really true.  Everyone else will pay $3.99 for a two-hour session or $19.99 per month for unlimited access at Starbucks and any other AT&T hotspot.  This makes it quite a bit cheaper than the existing plan - T-Mobile charges $39.99 for unlimited national access, although it does offer a $9.99 DayPass, which may be a better deal than the two-hour AT&T pass if you plan to use the service for more than four hours in a day.

Given the incremental cost of providing wi-fi, there’s little economic justification for charging $2 per hour for wi-fi.  It’s nice to see Starbucks getting cheaper, but there remain plenty of free alternatives.  Panera provides free wi-fi at about 1,200 cafes, and local options abound. In Richmond, you can get free access at Bakers Crust, Captain Buzzy’s, Coffee Nostra, the Daily Grind, Stir Crazy, Ukrop’s and probably a whole bunch of other places. The java’s better at most of those places, too.