For-pay Wi-Fi is played, so played
In my old neighborhood, there was a Starbucks and a Panera Bread at opposite corners of a small shopping square. Panera had free wireless and Starbucks offered T-Mobile for $10 a day. You’d see people in Starbucks chatting and maybe studying or reading the newspaper. Everyone with a laptop, however, was in Panera and there were a LOT of them.
The thing is, free wireless internet doesn’t cost businesses all that much to provide aside from the potential lost revenue. And as a consumer, paying $10 for one-time access to the internet when I pay $50 a month for it at home seems silly. I’ll just plug my hot-ass, trendy Moto Q (the old one) into my laptop and glom off the marginally-slower Sprint network. I’ll pay for Wi-Fi in an airport from time to time, but I expect to get screwed buying anything in an airport. The point is, if there’s a Starbucks and a Barstucks right next to each other, I’ll buy my coffee from whichever place has free wireless access.
I don’t know how it is in your neck of the woods but where I live, just about every small, independently owned coffee shop offers free wireless because they know it attracts customers. If they can offer free internet, so can the big boys.
Prediction: Starbucks Wi-Fi will soon be free [Computerworld]