US McDonald's Wi-Fi Going Free In January

Knowzy writes "After five years behind a paywall, McDonalds plans to stop charging for its Wi-Fi in mid-January in the US. According to the Dallas Morning News, you aren't even required to make a purchase — 'free is free,' a spokesman said. It's also been widely reported that they won't impose time limits on your surfing. With around 20,000 free hotspots between McDonald's and Starbucks (who went free[ish] earlier this year), anyone still charging for Wi-Fi is going to look foolish, if not downright greedy."

understanding is critical here

[poetmatt]

starbucks isn't charging for the WIFI. Some companies, however, are charging for the access. Panera does this - but I don't think they label it free wifi either.

So yeah, you have wifi, free and open, but it's still requiring a purchase at panera to just use the damn internet (which is horribly slow at their locations anyway).

Re:understanding is critical here

[TooMuchToDo]

Panera wifi is free. I just used it the other day.

No Purchase Required?

[nurb432]

Perhaps to use the wifi, but you cant sit in the building or on the lot unless you bought something. " parking for customers only"

Starbucks free?

[kharchenko]

Is it just me, or free wifi from Starbucks is just some wishful thinking? I've traveled to San Deigo, Denver and Boston in the past week and tried on several occasions to get wifi signal. And in each case, Starbucks was requiring me to pay. I don't know why I thought it was free ... may be it was trumpeted in some earlier slashdot article?

Re:understanding is critical here

[ducomputergeek]

I've never been in a St. Louis Bread Co. (same company as Panera) and charged for access. They have a splash screen that you have to click "log-in" before you can get on and agree to their terms of service. But that has never required a purchase. Granted their web is useless for anything other than email and surfing to CNN and a few web sites as anything of interest seems to be block and they also seem to block ports like FTP/SSH starting a little over a year ago.

Coffee shop I'm setting at now requires you purchase a drink for 3 hours of internet time. And has for years because it is a college town and it's a popular study hang out. If you didn't you'd get people come in, sit down for 6 - 8 hours, and never buy anything. Meanwhile paying customers are leaving and going somewhere else because there aren't any seats available. (They had free wifi when they first opened. And Free was costing them too much in lost revenue. At least $150 - $200 a day.)

It's been free already for iPhone users.....

[King_TJ]

AT&T worked out a deal where the hotspots at McDonalds are partnered up with them, so iPhone customers can automatically get signed in and use them for free. It's been that way for months now. I've used the one in my neighborhood a number of times, as well as a couple of them when I was on a road trip.

Only complaint I've had, in general, with Mc Wi-Fi is, I think someone needs to do site surveys on those things and improve the reception! I've always gotten pretty weak signals that are still generally usable, but worse than I get throughout most of my house with my own wireless router.

Re:Burger King is still better

[Anonymous Coward]

The scraps that were left over after they washed the machines.

Re:Burger King is still better

[PitaBred]

Yeah, but the fries are the best out there

Not just iPhone users

[NotQuiteReal]

All AT&T DSL customers get "free" wifi too. At many McD, Starbucks, Barnes & Nobel, and a few others. Usually the SSID is "attwifi"

Re:Starbucks free? -- Da Rules

[Anonymous Coward]

Free for up to 2 hours (per-day, may not be split across multiple login sessions) if you've registered one of their Starbucks stored-value cards and you've used it to make a purchase sometime within the last 30 days.

So more "free with purchase"-style.

Re:What will MAFIAA do when they trace p2p to McDs

[wadeal]

We've had this for years in Aus and there's no easy way to p2p, there's a nice filter stopping pretty much all mainstream porn sites etc.

Re:Burger King is still better

[bilbravo]

FYI they aren't using the microwave to reheat the burger, it is to melt the cheese. No cheese, no microwave. *This is based on my experience working at BK in high school

Re:Burger King is still better

[Zordak]

That's what we call "mechanically separated meat." Leftover meaty sludge pressure washed off the bones after the real meat has been stripped away. That's what they called a "Chicken McNugget" when I was growing up, though they claim that now their McNuggets are made with actual meat.

Re:We have this in the UK

[Anne Thwacks]

Its not much use in the UK, because while you are using it, you will likely get a GBP60 fine for parking. Most McD's have clampers that get you if you stay longer than a set time - often 30 minutes! They even tried it on a judge (Google is your friend).

Re:Burger King is still better

[Marriedman]

Sorry to disappoint you, but that is not *real* roast beef. I worked at an Arby's while in college. If you notice, there is never any marbling in the beef. It is a processed meat product.

From the Arby's website, under "printable ingredients list"
Roast Beef: Trimmed Boneless Beef Chunks (Minimum 70%) Combined With Chopped Beef For a Maximum of 12% Fat. Contains up to 9.0% of a Self-Basting Solution of Water, Salt, Sodium Phosphate.

It looks a lot like spam when we used to cut it out of the plastic wrap.

Re:Burger King is still better

[Hurricane78]

You call those sloppy pale mini-sticks “fries”?

Here’s how real fries look like: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.gentoo%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&um=1&sa=1&q=belgische+frieten&aq=f&oq=&aqi=&start=0 [google.com] :)

Belgian fries. In my opinion the best fries in the world. Especially if made with eastern-European potatoes (those that still taste like potatoes). If you ever get there, try them.

Re:We have this in the UK

[gnapster]

This is changing. Two of the McDonalds establishments in my (US) town recently remodelled, and now have not only padding on their seats, but a pair of cushy, lounge-ish chairs with a low table, near a window with a view.

Re:Burger King is still better

[mcgrew]

You're just acclimated. Their fries suck. You want good fries? Buy some potatos and some cooking oil, slice the potatos (leave the skins on, that's where most of the vitamins are) and fry 'em. Puts McDonald's AND Burger King to shame (even though Burger King has better fries AND burgers).

Re:It's the expensive places that still charge for

[zn0k]

By blocking ports and protocols related to VPN. Blocking all outbound tcp/1723 as well as GRE will block most PPTP traffic, blocking all outbound udp/4500, udp/500, ESP and AH will block most IPSec traffic, blocking all outbound udp/1701 will block most L2TP traffic just in case it isn't secured by IPSec in the first place. Decent firewalls can inspect HTTP traffic and make sure you're not using it to tunnel traffic. HTTPS traffic can be dropped once the connection has passed more traffic than you think could reasonably be a webpage, and so on.

Can you find some way around those rules if you know what you're doing? Sure. But it's not particularly hard to make sure 99% of all users you're going to come across are not going to be able to use VPN without significant outside help.

Re:Burger King is still better

[operagost]

Uhh... those pretty much look the same as McDonald's. But Burger King's do stink. Regardless, I'm intelligent enough to realize that others' tastes may vary from mine.

Re:Burger King is still better

[Anonymous Coward]

In their early years, Arby's was decent (not great though). Back "in the good old days", they used "real" roast beef rather than than the press formed crap they use today.

When I was a kid, our family would eat at Arby's fairly often (probably two or three times a month) and one day we noticed the sandwiches didn't taste very good. We went back one more time with the same result. We inquired and were told that they had switched to a "processed" roast beef - and the store manager actually seemed quite proud of this "new improvement". Our family never ate at an Arby's again.

I think they switched sometime in the very late 60's - so, since they were founded in 1964 (at least according to their web site), they didn't stick with real meat very long.

Out of misguided curiosity (or possibly a masochistic streak), I ate at an Arby's about ten years ago as I figured that if they were still in business they must have gone back to "real" meat (or something closer to it at least). It turns out my powers of deduction were incorrect and I think the "meat" product was even worse than it had been (but maybe my palette is just a bit more refined now).

Now, get off my lawn.