In May, AT&T set up a free Wi-Fi hot zone in New York City’s Times Square. Now AT&T has added free public Wi-Fi hot spots in Charlotte, N.C. to help alleviate network congestion. It’s free only to AT&T customers.
AT&T announced today that it will provide free Wi-Fi in large outdoor Wi-Fi hot zones in Charlotte, with coverage from South Brevard Street around the NASCAR Hall of Fame Plaza to East Trade Street. It also offers customers waiting to use the nearby Lynx light rail free Wi-Fi.
AT&T plans to further expand the pilot project with the launch of a third AT&T Wi-Fi hot zone in Chicago in the coming weeks.
AT&T wireless and broadband customers get Wi-Fi access free in the hot zones. The hot zones are meant to offload some of this traffic from the AT&T cellular network. Customers can log onto AT&T Wi-Fi hotzones or more than 20,000 AT&T Wi-Fi Hot Spots nationwide without it counting toward their monthly smartphone data usage. AT&T said usage in the Times Square hot zone has been higher than expected.
- Starbucks offers free and unrestricted Internet access over Wi-Fi in its stores. By Fall 2010, Starbucks also plans to give Internet users in its stores free access to paid sites, including the Wall Street Journal. All U.S. company-operated Starbucks hot spots previously supported AT&T Wi-Fi service. A $5 or more Starbucks Card, would get you two consecutive hours of complimentary AT&T Wi-Fi daily. Now it’s all free.
- Barnes & Noble, the largest book chain in the United States, provides free WiFi for patrons, in a deal with AT&T. Barnes & Noble’s agreement with AT&T provides free Wi-Fi to all its customers because the company hopes to bring more customers into the store, and expand its current e-book catalog of 700,000 titles.
- Borders, the second-largest bookstore chain in the United States (after Barnes & Noble), will provide free wireless Internet access in about 500 of its U.S. stores.
- McDonalds now offers free wireless Internet access at its U.S. restaurants, lifting a $2.95 fee that it had charged customers for two hours of wireless Internet access. It’s available at about 11,000 of its 14,000 domestic locations.
- Verizon is partnering with Boingo to deliver free WiFi access. Free Verizon Wi-Fi hot spot locations include hotels, airports, restaurants, coffee shops, retailers, convention centers and public locations across the U.S. Boingo’s network of Wi-Fi hotspots – which includes more than 100,000 locations around the world – IF you’re a Verizon FiOS or DSL broadband subscriber.
AT&T reported a significant second-quarter traffic increase on its Wi-Fi network, dominated by Starbucks and McDonalds locations.
In other news, AT&T plans to fix a software glitch that cut speeds for the new iPhone 4 and laptop modems over the next 2-3 weeks. AT&T had said on July 7 it was working with network equipment maker Alcatel Lucent to fix the glitch, which it said affected less than 2 percent of its mobile user base.
HSUPA technology can deliver up-link speeds up to 5.76 Mbit/s. An Alcatel-Lucent software patch for the network’s basestations is expected to restore uplink speeds, and “will be deployed on a phased basis over the next two to three weeks,” AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said.
Apple has also had to provide free cases with iPhone 4 to help mitigate problems with the phone’s antenna, a saga that was nicknamed “antennagate.”
Meanwhile, a stalled plan to provide Transit Wireless in all 277 underground subway stations in NYC is back on track, says the NY Daily News. Under the deal, cell-phone companies pay Transit Wireless to carry their signals, and the MTA gets half the revenue. Transit Wireless is expected to cover all construction costs.
