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Starting today, Starbucks
customers will benefit from free Wi-Fi connectivity, provided by AT&T, that
of course if they choose to adhere to the Starbucks Card Rewards program. The company
offers registered users up to two hours of continuous Wi-Fi service for free,
every day.
The offer will be available at
all Starbucks locations, under certain conditions of course: customers must
have a registered Starbucks card that has been used to load money or make a
purchase within 30 days prior to access. In addition to that, customers must
also agree to receive four AT&T emails a year.
There are however some drawbacks
to this offer: first of all, all those who want to get their daily dose of free
Wi-Fi service a day must stick with their chair and coffee for two-full hours,
as the agreement is for two consecutive hours, which means you can only connect
once a day.
Furthermore, the offer is as
limited as it is free: according to the AT&T
User Agreement, all connections are limited for the purposes of accessing
electronic mail, operating a web browser, such as Netscape Navigator (… RIP) or
Microsoft Internet Explorer, or downloading files via the ‘ftp’ protocol.
In other words, no chat, no
streaming videos, no nothing! At least you’ll be able to get some coffee to get
over the frustrations. Despite all that and following the announcement, Starbucks
has been struggling with overwhelming demand for cards.
For those who want more than two
hours of free Wi-Fi, AT&T offers a solution: customers can either buy
another additional two hours for $3.99, or a monthly membership which costs
$19.99 and includes access to any of AT&T's 70,000 hot spots in 89
countries around the world.
The Starbucks and AT&T Wi-Fi
plans were first unveiled in February this year, when the coffee giant ended a
partnership with T-Mobile and started a brand new one with AT&T, promising to
offer consumers Wi-Fi connectivity in all the 7,000 Starbucks locations across
the U.S.
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