A bite out of your wallet, that is….
Free WiFi access, as at Krystal restaurants, has been noted on the blog before [here]. In fact, their website boasts,
This free service is currently available in over 200 of Krystal’s 425 restaurants throughout the Southeast!
Not bad for starters.. that’s almost half of their total restaurants!
This already tells me that this service is destined to be provided for free– since, well, it already is. Imagine if a motel chain suddenly came along and said, “What’s going on? Why aren’t we charging people extra for a tv in their room?” Some things just come to be expected. Yesteryear, it was the television set in the motel room. Tomorrow, it will be internet access at fast food joints.
So I’m happy when I walk into my local McDonald’s and see that the restaurant is now offering Wi-Fi access. The phenomenon, I’m pleased to see, is spreading. But… no.
McDonald’s, like a greedy motel owner trying to charge extra for basic cable tv, wants to “sign me up” at a rate of $2.95 for a 2-hour session. Simply obscene! The day is coming when travellers will either get free internet access at your restaurant or they’ll be looking for a restaurant down the road where it is free. The idea of charging outrageous fees for this access is short-sighted and destined for failure.
John, I think the problem is leechers who show up, order a coffee, and use the broadband for hours.
To get around this, McDonalds should offer it free for an hour with the purchase of a meal.
Either that, or have the balls to kick out the leechers.
Whilst stopping by a Duncan Donut, I inquired about their WiFi signs. Service there is also FREE– they say that the college kids often come and sit at their notebooks for several hours, and they are happy to have them!
Yeah, I’ve switched from doing work at Carabou and B&N to Panera since the Panera here in town offers free wireless while the others don’t. Yay for free wireless!
Um, I get charged for Internet access in hotel rooms all the time. $10-$15 AD isn’t unheard of.
This seems pretty well right in line with that. (Not that I don’t agree that it should be free. It should. But it isn’t.)
Me: “I’d like a BigMac value meal, and a WiFi session please.”
McD’s: “Would you like Vaseline with that?” 🙂
McD’s has teamed up with WayPort who provides the WiFi service. WayPort also supplies WiFi to airports and hotels. And they charge different rates depending on if you access it from your room, or common areas such as the lobby.
I think Ima’s idea about giving 1 hour free is a good one, athough that price isn’t bad at all, depending on the quality of service you’d get.
You could just auto disconnect anyone who overstayed their welcome… By MAC address (no pun)? Could be spoofed, I heard, but with a bit of work there’d be ways around that also?
*Most* people don’t leech, they just want to check their email and check some websites. Of course, most people who go to Macs (at least here in Portugal) are teenagers, so maybe I’m wrong there. Maybe they’d just want to BitTorrent freely for days on end.
As for leechers, there’s ways of identifying them, I suppose? Maybe those could be offered a choice of Big Mac or Big Mac deluxe, hold the Wifi thank you!
Good! Maybe this will keep people from eating that garbage they sell. Their food isn’t fit for human consumption.
Correct me if I’m wrong but the hardware and internet access that McDonalds provides isn’t maintained without them paying for the service, right?
It’s not like McDonalds is in the business of providing Internet service. They are in the buisness of providing food. McDonalds doesn’t want customers to sit in their booths all day using their WiFi and refilling on free refills, and this is probably a good reason to charge.
OK, where the heck are all those people clamoring on yesterday’s forum for free Govt-provided broadband/Wi-Fi???? Today’s it’s ok to let mega-corp McD’s fill their coffers with $ for something that should be “free”? All the while, clogging your children’s arteries with heart-disease causing Happy Meals? Hmm…
Maybe cafes will move to a European style of two-tier pricing: one price for to-go orders, and one if you are going to sit down and use a table.
Then the wireless users who sit down and work for hours will drive up the price of a sit-down coffee to $10.
Oh wait, you’re too cheap to pay for your wireless addiction (or your own office!), so you’ll just move to some other sucker’s cafe.
Many cafe owners in the Bay Area are saying no to wireless access. Some are in busy enough areas to get away with it, but it’s a true Catch-22, as Rick and John’s attitude suggests.
How come you guys aren’t outdoors — at the beach or the top of a mountain — to get your inspiration?
To paraphrase “When Harry Met Sally”:
Sally: We never used wireless in Paris at a moments notice, or broke
out our laptop on the kitchen floor.
Friend: Never?
Sally: No, never. It's this really cold, hard tile.
We can’t all eat at Chez Panisse, meetsy.
Does their “cafe” have free wireless access?
Strange, at my local McDonald’s in Lubbock the wi-fi is free… Maybe they are experimenting with charging for it or maybe it’s because Lubbock is a college town with over 90,000 students.
Lou’s another fake conservative & an idiot to boot.True conservatives don’t like the fact that the USA & it’s “government” is run by corporations to the detriment of the country, people, & the world. Hey Lou, are you also wearing a Mussollini shirt, you lunkheaded apologist?
Mr. Dvorak, thank for the post on McDonald’s. I’ve included a comment in an article on our site – I would trackback, but we haven’t made the switch over to WordPress yet.
McDonald’s supersizes wi-fi prices.