Starbucks Switches Teams for Hotspots

On Monday, Starbucks announced that it would switch providers for its ubiquitous Wi-Fi hotspots, replacing T-Mobile with AT&T.  Starbucks also announced it will start providing two hours of free Wi-Fi for customers who buy coffee on their Starbucks purchase card as well as cheaper rates monthly (and after that two hour freebie).  AT&T’s broadband customers will apparently have unlimited free Wi-Fi access at Starbucks.

This is great news for Starbucks and AT&T, and obviously less so for T-Mobile.  A couple ruminations on the switch:

• Most of T-Mobile’s nearly 9,000 hotspots in the U.S. are in Starbucks locations.  Even though T-Mobile has a roaming agreement with AT&T, I’m pretty sure the Starbucks deal will negatively impact the network coverage boost T-Mobile gained by launching its HotSpot @Home service in June.  It will be interesting to see how they respond.

• AT&T now has 17,000 hotspots in the U.S.  Though AT&T has been silent on the issue so far, my money is on AT&T announcing free access to the hotspots for iPhone users - a quick band-aid for that pesky EDGE network problem AT&T has been having.