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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New Mexico Train System Uses WiMax for Backhaul

Onboard Wi-Fi for a new 95-mile rail system in New Mexico relies on WiMax for backhaul: The folks at Azulstar, working with INX, built out the service, which will be free to passengers, and available along the route and at 15 train stations. Having driven some of that route (Albuquerque to Santa Fe), I reckon that the flatness of the terrain coupled with some mesas and higher points made the install feasible with just 22 base stations.

Azulstar, which I wrote about two years ago for its plan to use a special shared, cheap licensed band to run WiMax services, says it gets 6 Mbps downstream and 4 Mbps upstream.

The company's head, Tyler van Houwelingen, told me via email that the system is redundant and mostly wireless. 5 GHz and 18 GHz are used for backhaul combined with some wired connections along the route, and WiMax at 3.65 GHz (that special band) is used with a 900 MHz fallback. Base stations are powered by solar and electrical with a 24-hour battery backup. Given winter and summer conditions in New Mexico, redundancy won't be extraneous.

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Cisco Convinces Press That Router Is News

I don't blame Cisco for pulling this stunt, but the company got mainstream media to buy in: Typical is this USA Today story, which follows the press release that the Cisco Valet is the company's "first consumer router," despite having purchased Linksys years ago and sold tens of millions of consumer routers during that time. The Valet has the same footprint, and likely similar innards with a new skin on top of it as most of the modern Linksys models.

Late in the story, the USA Today reporter notes the Linksys subsidiary, but has fallen for the marketing line that the USB dongle that lets you supposedly easily set up every device is somehow unique to Cisco, new, and exciting. The real news, I suppose, is that the Pure Digital team that made the Flip video recorder, acquired by Cisco, was thrown onto the home networking product line. But that's hardly a revolution in hardware, is it?

The notion of using USB drives (not one that comes with the device, necessarily) goes back several years to Microsoft's short-lived Wi-Fi product line, and some other companies--including Linksys!--let you write settings to a USB drive to move around to computers. (Amazingly, this time support comes in the first version out of the box for both Mac OS X and Windows!)

The notion of making Wi-Fi easy to set up dates back to, oh, I don't know, 1999? And it is far easier. Six years ago, I wrote "Beating the Wireless Blues" for PC World, which explained how to fix Wireless Zero Config problems in Windows XP and other troubles of the time.

At that time, about 35 percent of Wi-Fi routers bought at retail were returned to stores. Cisco says its number today is about 20 percent. That's closer to the return rate for all personal computer peripherals, but it also explains why Cisco is trying to change the narrative without necessarily offering anything new or different, just a further iteration of industry-wide efforts underway since Wi-Fi's inception.

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Verizon Drops Palm Hotspot Price to Zero

Verizon will let you use the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus Wi-Fi sharing service for free: Verizon was charging $40 per month to use the hotspot software you could download for the two Palm Plus models; it's now zero. Which means you get the functionality of a MiFi without the $60/mo cost of that device for a 5 GB plan. No mention was made of the total data allowed and the 5 cent/MB overage fee for the Palm and MiFi plans.

Palm's fortunes are seeming fairy dismal, with missteps on product introductions and rolling out an application store and the like, even though reviews of its WebOS are generally positive. Verizon now charges just $50 for a Pre Plus and $30 for a Pixi Plus, and some other bargains thrown in, Engadget reports.

Existing Plus subscribers using the hotspot feature will no longer be charged for it. Although you pay a data fee for the Palm, it's about the industry standard at $30 per month.

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Ryanair and OnAir Halt In-Flight Mobile Partnership

OnAir put out a terse press release this morning that its deal with Ryanair is off: OnAir had equipped 50 of RyanAir's 200+ aircraft, but the two companies apparently couldn't push further on. The deal for OnAir to put mobile calling, texting, and email via Inmarsat's satellite backhaul into all Ryanair craft was first announced in September 2006. (It was the lead point in my article for the Economist on 7 September 2006 called "Would you fly in chattering class?" [subscription required].)

It took until early 2009 for the regulatory and other details to be settled to allow in-flight calling via an onboard picocell. As of now, only 50 planes were equipped with the service, which charged a few dollars a minute for calls, and hefty rates for email and texting. These rates were comparable with international roaming costs when OnAir first proposed them, but European Union regulators have forced lower intra-EU roaming, which may have taken the shine off.

While OnAir claims it "operates with six airlines and has a portfolio of 23 signed agreements with national carriers worldwide," only a handful of equipped planes with production equipment are flying regular routes. That's pretty paltry for six years of work. When Boeing's Connexion service failed, it had many dozens of planes in the air.

OnAir (and its owners SITA and Airbus) were counting on Inmarsat to deliver an affordable and on-time satellite-backed solution that would eventually allow in-flight broadband. Back in the early days, the roughly 500 Kbps service that could be bundled with multiple modules for higher speeds was being touted to me as a real broadband offering.

Then OnAir started to backpedal on broadband, looking entirely to mobile service revenue. Now, you don't really hear a peep about it, because it's simply not affordable.

Inmarsat took years to get its Asia-Pacific bird in the air, and that prevented OnAir from pursuing modern agreements with trans-Pacific carriers.

I don't quite see how OnAir proceeds with what must be hundreds of millions of dollars spent to date, and no large-scale deployments on the horizon.

One would think the firm should have spent the last several years lobbying for a harmonized pan-European air-to-ground spectrum alignment to allow Aircell-like service over Europe. Aircell has over 700 planes equipped across several U.S. airlines.

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Boingo Adds Hour Purchase Option to iPhone Platform

Boingo Wireless has a new app for the iPhone, iPod touch, and, soon, the iPad that lets you buy an hour of service at a time: The Boingo Wi-Fi Credits app will let you connect from any iPhone OS device for $1.99 for 60 minutes at a single location in Boingo's aggregated worldwide network. You can also purchase 11 credits for $19.99.

Boingo has a $7.95 per month mobile plan that all iPhone OS devices qualify for; the company reiterated today that the iPad would be supported out of the gate. That's why two bucks for one hour seems a bit steep, since Boingo doesn't require a contract commitment to use its mobile service.

The only other worldwide pay-as-you-go system is Skype Access, formally launched a few days, which charges US$0.22 per minute for on-demand access. (See my article from 18 March 2010.)

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US Airways Launches First Internet-Equipped Planes

US Airways plans service on its 51 Airbus A321s: US Airways signed a deal for testing with Aircell for its Gogo Inflight Internet service in mid-2009, and now is deploying. Five of its 51 Airbus A321 craft now have Internet access, with the rest of that model planned for completion by 1 June.

Customers will get a free session between now and 1 June when they register. Then US Airways will offer free service for everyone during the week of 1 June to 8 June.

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