Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Google Links With Starbucks On Wi-Fi

Google announced this morning that it will begin powering high speed, Wi-Fi access at all of the locations for Starbucks, a move which could potentially have dramatic influence on Dallas-based AT&T. According to Google, it will provide high speed wireless connections to all 7,000 Starbucks company-owned stores, providing 10x increase in throughput and up to 100x increases in throughput in Google Fiber cities. Until now, Starbucks had provided free wireless service powered by AT&T, which AT&T had inherited through its purchase of Wayport back in 2008. Wayport had reached the deal to provide Wi-Fi to Starbucks back in 2008. AT&T has not announced anything about the change in wireless provisioning at Starbucks.