Starbucks Offers Wi-Fi Just for Registering a Card

I somehow missed a significant change in Starbucks revised rewards program launched last December: In the initial announcements from Starbucks about a reworking of its discount card (eliminated) and rewards attached to its stored-value Starbucks Card (revamped into tiers), I reported on 3 November 2009 that new card users would have to make five purchases to reach a new "Green" level, and be able to use two continuous hours of Wi-Fi each day at no cost, along with a bunch of free beverage add-ons. I also wrote that Wi-Fi access was enabled only for 30 days following the use of card. Neither turned out to be true in the program that launched.

But when I checked a couple of days ago for a forthcoming article in The Seattle Times, I found different verbiage--in fact, two different sets. On the main rewards page, Starbucks said the deal was as above; on the FAQ, the Wi-Fi deal was much simpler. After a couple of days of finding the right person at Starbucks, I've got the answer: the program changed, and they didn't make a fuss about it.

The deal as it stands requires just obtaining a Starbucks Card and making a single purchase or adding $5 to the card's balance, which qualifies you for the "Welcome" level. You must then register the card, and sign up for an AT&T account. After that, Wi-Fi is free for two successive hours a day. No further purchases are needed. The Web site is being fixed (you're welcome).

That's much closer to free than Starbucks has offered before, and a big turnaround from what it was promoting in its FAQ in November.

It's nearly free, even.

A huge swath of AT&T customers as well as Qwest DSL customers get access to Starbucks all day, every day, at no additional cost.

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Free Wi-Fi Access via Skype This Weekend

Skype is promoting its Skype Access pay-per-minute Wi-Fi option by making it free this weekend: From the start 20 March (0000 GMT) to the end of 21 March (2359 GMT), you can use Skype Access to access 100,000 hotspots worldwide at no cost. The service, available since last July, must just have left beta testing, even though it was unclear to me that it wasn't a released service.

Skype Access uses Skype software to handle a Wi-Fi login transaction, and normally costs (including Luxembourg's VAT) US$0.22, Cdn$0.26, €0.16 per minute; fees are debited from the Skype Credit in your account. Skype itself is a free download and free to use for Skype-to-Skype IM, file transfer, audio chat, and video chat.

That's expensive in the U.S., where you can pay $10/mo for unlimited Boingo Wireless service at the same or more locations, and where $8 to $12 is the most you'd pay for 24 hours (the equivalent of about 30 to 60 minutes at Skype's per-minute rate).

However, elsewhere in the world, being able to get 10 minutes of Wi-Fi for a couple bucks might seem much more appealing without having a service plan or paying ludicrous European hotel prices, which can be $20 to $40 per night.

A full list of supported hotspots networks is available.

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Wee-Fi: Careful on Planes; Boston, Washtenaw Updates

Here's today round-up of brief Wi-Fi items.

David Strom highlights the risks of in-flight Wi-Fi: David, who I have known for many years, writes about how much data people may wind up exposing on in-flight Wi-Fi networks, but not over the wireless network. It's a fascinating point of view. His seatmate on a recent flight revealed a ton of information to David's casual visual inspection, including passwords. He recommends privacy filters. 3M makes a host of these.

The Boston Globe looks at why Salem's free downtown Wi-Fi effort faltered: It's an interesting roam around that city, but doesn't precisely answer the question of why downtown businesses didn't continue to fund the group effort. Various shops have free Wi-Fi, but perhaps each wanted to have people come closer, instead of creating a commons. Boston's own OpenAirBoston municipal effort isn't even mentioned; the Boston Globe ran a long feature last August on the effort's small but interesting progress. (You can read the background about OpenAirBoston in this long article I wrote in 2006.)

Speaking of blasts from the past, the Washtenaw County effort appears dead: In Michigan, in the county that contains Ann Arbor, a long-running nearly unfunded private/public partnership has bit the dust, the local paper reports. The original firm, 20/20 Communications, bid on a plan with no funding to build it out, and a federal request for stimulus money was turned down. 20/20 apparently has sold the small number of current customers to 123Net, 20/20's president has left the firm, and the new company has no interest in county-wide service provision.

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NY/NJ Authority Puts out Bid for Wi-Fi on Trains

I'm not sure the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has any chance of practical bids for their RFP: A long-awaited RFP is out for providing Wi-Fi service on all Metro-North and Long Island Railroad (LIRR) trains and most stations. Those rail lines accommodate nearly 600,000 passenger trips each week. (The PDF of the RFP has disappeared from the MTA site, but Google has a text cache.)

The MTA wants a service provider who would operate a network to bear all the expense of installation and operation (including railroad labor costs for same), provide 24x7 customer support, and uninterrupted service.

But the proposal is pretty muddled. While digital advertising (changeable signs on board trains and at stations) should be part of a bidder's thinking to minimize the cost in installing such systems, there's no spec for those systems. A bidder can build a bid partly around offering such services. The MTA also likes bids in which the authority shares in revenue.

I don't see how this could fly. No sensible firm would propose taking on all this expense without any assurance of revenue beyond the public Wi-Fi side of the system. Despite the large number of passengers, many of those most likely to pay already have 3G service on smartphones or through laptop cards. There's no operational services component, and that should be the baseline for any new rail RFP of the last five years.

It's not so much that 3G service works perfectly along the various part of the system, but it certainly works well enough. A service provider would either need to be a cell operator that can use the system to promote and sell Wi-Fi by itself and a combination of 3G and Wi-Fi (AT&T and T-Mobile notably in this position), or build on another technology that would go well together to feed service to trains and mobile devices (Clearwire's WiMax).

The system described would likely cost many tens of millions of dollars to build to the specifications that the MTA is requiring, without any substantial potential to reclaim that as revenue.

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Apple Reveals More iPad 3G Data Plan Details

Apple started taking pre-orders for the iPad this morning, and provided more details of the optional 3G data plan: Apple's deal with AT&T, assumed to be somewhat similar with non-US carriers when those plans are announced, called for $15 price tag on 250 MB of combined upstream and downstream data usage, and $30 per month for unlimited usage. Neither plan required any contract commitment.

[Update: To expand on a question and my answer in the comments, Apple and AT&T market the iPhone and iPad 3G unlimited plans as truly unlimited. Average iPhone user is a few hundred MBs per month; heaviest use is likely on Wi-Fi networks. With no tethering, an unlimited plan isn't a huge risk for a carrier. If AT&T ever lives up to its promise to offer tethering, expect a separate fee and 5 GB limit.]

Apple made clear today that the 250 MB plan doesn't tack on overage fees when you exceed that quantity of data: rather, you can either upgrade to unlimited (presumably for $15, but that's not stated), or shut off 3G when you run out. That's the most humane offer I've seen to date.

As stated at the iPad launch announcement, iPad owners with 3G built in ($130 more than the Wi-Fi-only version) can sign up for a plan or turn it off from the iPad without having to visit a Web site or go through a separate process. Reducing friction always improves sales, and that also dramatically reduces AT&T's costs by making it a self-service, Apple-handled option.

All four major US carriers offer a low-bandwidth option for 3G service in which 200 to 300 MB of usage is included, but extra megabytes are charged at 10 to 20 cents a piece--$100 to $200 per GB. Virgin Mobile is the only firm that lets you buy preset chunks of data (which must be used within either 10 days for the smallest increment or 30 days for the three larger options).

Apple says that 250 MB subscribers will be warned when they have 20, 10, and no data left, and can then choose to upgrade. Because the plans are month-to-month, a subscriber could upgrade one month and return to the 250 MB level the next.

The lack of "gotchas" will definitely go a long way in getting more people to buy the 3G model and use the service.

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Zer01 Disappears from the Web

The firm that promised mobile everything for a low, low price but owned no network has disappeared: My friend Nancy Gohring at IDG News Service wrote a series of articles in mid-2009 about Zer01, a firm that said it was not a mobile virtual network operator, but somehow had access to a national network on which it would offer unlimited calling, mobile broadband, texting, and other features at a rate far below what operators charge. Unlimited mobile data seemed particularly impossible, given carriers cap at 5 GB for laptop use, and only a handful have specific unlimited smartphone (no tethering) data plans.

Nancy writes today that Zer01's Web site has gone dark, referring users to Google; its press spokesperson, Ron Dresner, didn't return calls and his Web site no longer lists Zer01 as a client; and Zer01 doesn't appear to be involved in the upcoming CTIA trade show.

I reiterate to anyone who doesn't know but will listen: all these deals that seem too good to be true are invariably too good to be true.

Meanwhile, the mainstream carriers now offer unlimited calling and texting plans that, for heavy users, are relatively inexpensive compared to previous plans that used pools of minutes and messages.

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T-Mobile Ups Ante by Lowering 3G Prices

T-Mobile cuts its 3G prices by $10 per month for unsubsidized hardware: It's long been an irritation of cellular customers that even when they pay the full price of a phone or 3G modem, the monthly data charge remains the same as people who get a subsidized version. That's changing, with T-Mobile in the lead. T-Mobile cut its unsubsidized monthly fee for 3G service by $10 per month for its 200 MB and 5 GB plans.

Last month, T-Mobile dropped the monthly data cost for some smarpthones by $20 per month for people who purchase outright. The New York Times noted that the MyTouch 3G is $400 without subsidy or $150 with a two-year contact. The most basic voice and data plan is $60 per month for the unsubsidized phone or $80 per month with a subsidy--a $230 difference over two years.

The latest deal comes with the announcement of a ship date and price for the webConnect Rocket, an HSPA+ modem that works at a raw data rate of 21 Mbps. The new 3G service plans for 200 MB and 5 GB per month (combined upstream and downstream usage) will be $19.99 and $49.99 with a modem purchased at list price; the $29.99 and $59.99 remain in place for subsidized modems. The lower price also doesn't require a contract commitment.

T-Mobile sells its HSPA 7.2 webConnect modem for $129.99 retail and $19.99 with subsidy; that's a $110 difference upfront for $240 worth of savings over two years, plus the flexibility to cancel at any time.

Of course, T-Mobile also charges the highest rate for data overages: 20 cents per MB ($200 per GB) above the 200 MB or 5 GB limits of the plan. Virgin Mobile Broadband's prepay plan is $60 for 5 GB (used within 30 days), but an additional 5 GB is another $60 even within 30 days, while T-Mobile would add $1,000 to your bill for that privilege.

If T-Mobile wants to be truly progressive, it needs to sort out that discrepancy, designed to keep down usage rather than truly penalize subscribers. With HSPA+ offering potentially three times or greater the speed of the current network, limiting users to 5 GB and charging $20 per GB for overage seems very out of sync.

The Rocket, by the way, will cost 99.99 with a two-year contract; the outright purchase price wasn't announced.

Of course, the carriers have risks in carrying your subsidy over two years, plus early cancellations, the costs of churn, and so forth. By having you pay upfront, they don't carry the cost on their books, and it likely on average costs them less to handle you as a customer.

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