Free Wi-Fi for all? McDonald’s announces free Wi-Fi service
What do laptops, netbooks and smartphones have in common? All can access the Internet by Wi-Fi connection. Of the three devices, both the netbook and smartphone are new arrivals.
In a sense, the netbook is a laptop that is more portable but with less power. So it can be viewed as a sub-notebook computer. On the other hand, smartphones are totally new. When Apple debut the iPhone, it also introduced the smartphone concept to the world. It is now the engine that drives the cellphone market.
Both the netbook and smartphone have become items that people don’t want to leave home without. By extension, these people increasingly want to connect to the Internet while in public. Many businesses have offered Internet connection, for a fee, to their customers.
This is about to change because McDonald’s announced that more than 11,000 of its U.S. fast food restaurants will have free Wi-Fi in January. Its plan is to extend this free Wi-Fi service to all of its 14,000 U.S. restaurants.
The question that immediately comes to mind is how will McDonald’s finance it? The free Wi-Fi will attract new business but will it be enough for McDonald’s to more than break even in this undertaking?
Speculations are that the service will come with advertisements, and they pointed to an approach promoted by mobile media company JiWire in which customers agree to accept a certain number of ads in return for so many free minutes of access. JiWire has not commented whether it is working with McDonald’s on this project or not.
This certainly will put pressure on its competitors, such as Starbucks who is currently charging $3.99 for two hours of Internet access, however, Starbucks does have a rewards program for frequent customers who can get two hours for free. On the other hand, McDonald’s free access has no time limit.
Craig Mathias, an analyst at Farpoint Group, said AT&T has cooperated with McDonald’s on free Wi-Fi is that 3G cellular networks are becoming saturated. He sees Wi-Fi is essential to the success of the cell carriers. If Craig Mathias is correct, then we’ll soon be making calls on our smartphone using a free Wi-Fi access.
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