Starbucks Expanding Wi-Fi With AT&T

I’ve been a T-Mobile Hotspot subscriber since the service became available in Starbucks. I find it to be very convenient, especially since Starbucks is almost a second office to me, mostly when I’m traveling away from Hawaii. There’s usually a Starbucks nearby where I can stop to do my work as well as take care of the coffee fix.

This new initiative between Starbucks and AT&T will further expand the AT&T network to more than 17,000 hot spots in the U.S. and 70,000 globally. Starbucks card holders can enjoy up to two hours of free Wi-Fi service per day at Starbucks, and qualifying AT&T broadband and AT&T U-verse Internet customers will have unlimited free access at Starbucks. Pretty soon I can stop paying my $30/month for the T-Mobile HotSpot service. That means I can have two hours a day for free with a cup of coffee that I would buy anyway. What a deal!


“This is what our customers have been waiting for - free Starbucks-quality Wi-Fi,” says Chris Bruzzo, chief technology officer, Starbucks Coffee Company. “Through our new partnership with AT&T, we also welcome their millions of current customers who can now come in and enjoy free Wi-Fi as part of their daily Starbucks experience. “Now more than ever, Starbucks is focused on the in-store experience for our customers,” he adds. “As we continue to build our technology offerings in ways that both enhance and expand the Starbucks Experience for our customers, we made a strategic decision to expand our existing relationship with our long-time technology partner AT&T to include consumer Wi-Fi.”

For the non-qualifying AT&T customers or non-Starbucks card holders, you’ll pay $3.99 per two-hour session, or an unlimited monthly access of $19.99, which is $10 less per month than what I pay now for the T-Mobile HotSpot. We’ll see how it goes, since T-Mobile HotSpot customers will be able to continue to access Wi-Fi services at no additional cost through an agreement between AT&T and T-Mobile. Perhaps T-Mobile will lower the price.

The AT&T change will roll out this spring to the nearly 7,100 Starbucks locations across the U.S. on a market-to-market basis. Unfortunately there are no specific dates Starbucks could give me for when this will be functional in Hawaii. I say just be on the lookout for it sometime early this year.