The service is provided by Boingo. It allows Verizon to match the free WiFi available from AT&T which has been available for more than a year.
Verizon Wi-Fi is not available for PDAs, phones, desktop PCs or Macs — only laptops. Only 3 Mbps DSL or faster and 20 Mbps FiOS or faster customers qualify for free Boingo service and it’s not yet available for Macs.
AT&T’s free Wi-Fi plan, available at Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, and other locations, requires their 3G Dataconnect service plan for $60 per month or their broadband landline service.
Boingo also resells AT&T’s Wi-Fi service, notes IDG News. Boingo has 30,000 hotspots in the US, but only some of those are from AT&T’s network, including nearly 7,500 Starbucks outlets.
Cablevision also supplies free WiFi for cable modem subscribers in New York.
Barnes & Noble, the world’s largest chain of bookstores, last week announced it will now provide free Wi-Fi in all 777 of its stores throughout the United States.
Barnes & Noble signed a strategic agreement with AT&T to provide free Wi-Fi to all its customers. No AT&T subscription required.
The company hopes to bring more customers into the store, and expand its current e-book catalog of 700,000 titles — 500,000 of which are free public domain e-books from Google — over the coming months.
