AT&T seems to have added free Wi-Fi for its lowest-priced DSL customers: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the only one with this story, and they’ve garbled a few of the details, but checking AT&T’s public sites seems to confirm it. Previously, AT&T customers had to either have a fiber-optic U-Verse subscription, or a DSL line running at 1.5 Mbps downstream or faster to get free Wi-Fi Basic. The Basic pool covers most of the 17,000 U.S. hotspots, excluding some hotels and premium locations.
AT&T now says that any “FastConnect” subscription, even its DSL Lite offering of 768 Kbps down/128 Kbps up, qualifies for Wi-Fi Basic. The new statement reads: “AT&T Wi-Fi Basic service is FREE and already included if you subscribe to AT&T High Speed Internet, AT&T U-verseSM High Speed Internet, or AT&T FastAccess DSL—all speed plans included.
There’s still a $10 per month fee to upgrade to Wi-Fi Premier, which includes over 70,000 locations worldwide, along with the missing U.S. hotspots, but their Web site says that you have to have a 1.5 Mbps or faster connection to get the $10 per month upgrade. That may be out of date. That ordering page also says you need 1.5 Mbps or faster for free Wi-Fi, so that tends to confirm it hasn’t been fixed. (It’s even hosted at sbc.com, so perhaps that’s part of the vestige of an older system, harder to update.)
Please note that iPhone subscribers still don’t get free Wi-Fi on AT&T’s Basic network.
Wee-Fi: Share Cell Connections over Wi-Fi; Mile High-Fi Salaciousness; Giga-Fi; and More
McCartney resists pressure to scrap Israel concert
(Reuters)
Atom Feed (xml)