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WiFi A Manger at Pret A Manger – Free WiFi with your coffee at Pret

Mike Butcher

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Mike Butcher is the European Editor for TechCrunch. A former grunge rock drummer, he became a long time journalist, and has since written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. Mike is also a co-founder and shareholder of TechHub, a co-working space/service/community with several locations... → Learn More

Monday, December 15th, 2008
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As of today coffee chain Pret A Manger is offering consumers free WiFi in 60 stores in the UK, with all its 130 stores expected to be WiFi-d up in December. After a six-month trial, they selected The Cloud to provide the access, which will be “restriction free”. This will make a change from having to hunt down paid-for WiFi in places like Starbucks, which has a deal with T-Mobile. MacDonalds provides WiFi in many UK stores already, but it looks like Pret is the first national coffee chain to move on free WiFi. Handy for startups…

  • http://housley.me Alex Housley

    This is great news – well done to The Cloud and Pret! I really hope this initiative is a success, and for many more leading chains to follow in the near future.

    There are now more ways to connect whilst mobile, which means the traditional pay-as-you-go and subscription wi-fi business models have to change in order to compete with technologies such as 3G.

  • Peter

    great photo for the article btw.

    about time the UK had free wifi, starbucks is crazily expensive.

  • http://wifi.omani.ac Dave Butler

    Great to see another chain seeing the sense in having free wifi. MacD’s, Coffee Republic and Wetherspoons beat them to it though!

  • http://www.ukstevieb.com/2008/12/16/steviebs-shared-items-december-16-2008/ StevieB’s Shared Items – December 16, 2008 at Lost in Cyberspace

    [...] WiFi A Manger at Pret A Manger – Free WiFi with your coffee at PretDecember 15, 2008 [...]

  • http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2008/12/pret-a-manger_offer_wifi_in_all_their_shops_now.html Pret-A-Manger offer WiFi in all their shops now | Mobile Industry Review

    [...] Mike Butcher from Techcrunch reports that this has now gone nationwide, with all 130 UK stores set to offer free WiFi by the end of [...]

  • http://www.myneuhausen.de neuhausen

    well this laptop is such a nice stuff. I simply love it.

  • http://www.scroobl.com Jon M Bishop

    This is such good news that it inspired me to draw a cartoon about it: http://www.jonin60seconds.com/blog/2008/12/17/know-where-to-get-free-wifi-across-uk.html

  • http://james.cridland.net/blog/2008/12/18/a-trawl-around-the-web-november-23rd-to-december-17th/ A trawl around the web, November 23rd to December 17th – blog – James Cridland

    [...] Free WiFi with your coffee at Pret [Techcrunch UK]Excellent news. Free wifi is being much more ubiquitous. More excuses to find a Hidden Location and actually get on with some work. Meanwhile… [...]

  • http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2008/12/19/what-wont-happen-in-2009-and-what-will/ What won’t happen in 2009 – and what might | Online Journalism Blog

    [...] can also expect to see increasing numbers of retailers offering free wifi to attract customers, as Pret A Manger have done, or government investment in wifi clouds to stimulate growth. So those who do access the web on the [...]

  • Greg

    “Restriction free” for 60 minutes…

    Hopefully I can just change my mac address and log back in with new details when my session runs out.

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