Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Free AT&T Wi-Fi Access for iPhones

frankfurter said:
Why do people get so worked up over this? I actually have a life, and don't spend inordinate amounts of time at Starbucks or Barnes & Noble.

Guess what else? McDonalds has free Wi-Fi, as does Burger King. I've found it at various restaurants around town, including doctors offices, hospitals, and Best Buy, even little gift shops and grocery store.

So again - so what.....
Click to expand...

Well, that doesn't work for where I spend much of my time. Small town, no free Wi-Fi...AT&T Wi-Fi will be nice. And I'll die before I used Best Buy's Wi-Fi, changing the store, so things look cheap at home, then they mark it up...please!

Why do you want to make this out as a bad thing for people?
 
bretm said:
In fact Starbucks is the only place I've gone in years that tried to charge for wifi. Sorry, no thanks. I was gonna buy a second cup of coffee with that money, but now I'm just going to sit and surf edge and then leave. Either have free wifi or don't have any. I just can't see how having potential customers sit all day in your store is ever a bad thing. Attracting people to your store is a retailers main goal. And if they don't drink coffee or like your food, they aren't going to hang out there every day just for the free wifi. Hell, if they own a laptop, you'd think they have access at home or school or somewhere more convenient.
Click to expand...

"Complimentary access to the AT&T Wi-Fi network - coming this spring to a Starbucks near you."

http://www.starbucks.com/retail/wireless.asp

Soon it won't only be the iPhone owners with free wi-fi at Starbucks - if you don't have an iPhone, you'll just need to own and activate a Starbucks card to get two free hours per day.
 
ChrisA said:
If your iPod Touch happens to have an AT&T account and password then yes. But then not many iPod Touches have that do they?
Click to expand...

Actually, it is not specific to the iPod touch. It is specific to having an AT&T DSL account, such as home DSL. There are other types of AT&T service packages that this is bundled with but that's how I get it.

If you have DSL at home, simply take your AT&T email address and password, write it down, then when you are at Starbucks, click settings, Wi-Fi, choose the AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot option. Then open web browser and you should see an interface to input account data and password. Took two minutes and was up and running.

Cheers,

Mark
 
Wtf?

How did no one know about this? It's been common knowledge for a while? Anyway, as a AT&T wireless and naked DSL customer, I'm stoked! I think I will start going to Barnes and Noble more often than Borders. :apple:
 
I have an iPod touch and this is bitter to me. Tisk another example of Apple screwing over Touch owners. But, if I were Apple, to get more revenue, maybe have what they did with the January Software Update and charge like 10 bucks to use this. I don't know, or maybe just include it for free.:rolleyes:
 
Pippen Man said:
I have an iPod touch and this is bitter to me. Tisk another example of Apple screwing over Touch owners. But, if I were Apple, to get more revenue, maybe have what they did with the January Software Update and charge like 10 bucks to use this. I don't know, or maybe just include it for free.:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

OOORRRRR
Maybe you're wake up and realize that this has absolutely JACK SQUAT to do with Apple, and everything to do with AT&T, who is MAKING MONEY off the iPhone.
Just maybe.

Why do iPod touch people keep b*tching when Apple offers them the choice to upgrade their device for a small fee? You bought it for exactly what it was. Apple doesn't have to give you any software updates. Be thankful that they do. No other iPod has had such drastic updates to its software before.
 
JBaker122586 said:
OOORRRRR
Maybe you're wake up and realize that this has absolutely JACK SQUAT to do with Apple, and everything to do with AT&T, who is MAKING MONEY off the iPhone.
Just maybe.

Why do iPod touch people keep b*tching when Apple offers them the choice to upgrade their device for a small fee? You bought it for exactly what it was. Apple doesn't have to give you any software updates. Be thankful that they do. No other iPod has had such drastic updates to its software before.
Click to expand...

Okay, has any other iPod been like the iPod touch before with it's OS? Um, no. What I can say is that I can see a hack coming out of this for the Jailbreak community.

Why do iPod touch people keep b*tching when Apple offers them the choice to upgrade their device for a small fee?
Click to expand...

Um, how many times has the iPod touch been updated that had cost a fee? Once. Yes, we did roar because it's bogus that they charged us in the first place. We're paying money on an already over-priced product, especially $400.
 
Pippen Man said:
I have an iPod touch and this is bitter to me. Tisk another example of Apple screwing over Touch owners. But, if I were Apple, to get more revenue, maybe have what they did with the January Software Update and charge like 10 bucks to use this. I don't know, or maybe just include it for free.:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

This is AT&T offering an additional service to existing customers. Are you an AT&T customer? iPhone owners are.

You can get the same service from AT&T for $19.95/month for your iPod Touch, and you too can be an AT&T customer.

arn
 
iPod Touch users that are going to whine please stop it.

The past software updates that required a fee are normal because Apple has to so of the law. Somewhere in the meaning of
"You can't sell product X, sell it for $400 and then software upgrade it to worth $500, therefore a fee."
Also they have administration costs. iPhone users already pay a monthly fee and therefore deserve more then ever the right to get these upgrades.

On-Topic, good news! To bad there is only about 1 StarBucks coffee shop in The Netherlands. And that's on Schiphol Airport. Not a place where I come nearby everyday....
 
arn said:
This is AT&T offering an additional service to existing customers. Are you an AT&T customer? iPhone owners are.

You can get the same service from AT&T for $19.95/month for your iPod Touch, and you too can be an AT&T customer.

arn
Click to expand...

And I too can be locked into AT&T for two years. My Starbucks near me doesn't even have the Wi-Fi Music Store up and running yet, and it's brand new. But I wonder if I could use my friends iPhone number, would that work? Or do I need a password or something?
 
nineteentwelve said:
It seems that iPhone users get the best deal when going to Starbucks then. What with access to the custom iTunes Store, and now this. Nice deal if you ask me.
Click to expand...

Actually, speaking of the WiFi Music Store, what happened to [Starbucks being available on] that. It seems Apple has dropped the ball or something. End of 2007 it was available in New York, San Francisco and Seattle and by the end of February 2008 it was supposed to be available here in Los Angeles (and Chicago by March) and yet, here it is almost May and none of the music playing in a Starbucks anywhere in Los Angeles shows up as "Playing Now" in the WiFi Music Store on an iPhone. Anyone know what happened to this feature?
 
Pippen Man said:
Okay, has any other iPod been like the iPod touch before with it's OS? Um, no. What I can say is that I can see a hack coming out of this for the Jailbreak community.

Um, how many times has the iPod touch been updated that had cost a fee? Once. Yes, we did roar because it's bogus that they charged us in the first place. We're paying money on an already over-priced product, especially $400.
Click to expand...

Early adopters pay the price, either in terms of reliability or hard dollars, often both. Generally speaking, one should not hang out on the leading edge if they don't like getting cut. Personally, the iPod touch is a breakthrough device (I love it!), but it's not a phone, and like the earlier poster stated, this offering is all about AT&T.

If you are an AT&T DSL customer, as I am, you just got free Wi-Fi all over the place. If you aren't, not sure why you would blame Apple for not subsidizing your internet device with free internet. And AT&T certainly doesn't owe you anything since you are not paying them anything for the privilege.

Mark
 
hypermark said:
Early adopters pay the price, either in terms of reliability or hard dollars, often both. Generally speaking, one should not hang out on the leading edge if they don't like getting cut. Personally, the iPod touch is a breakthrough device (I love it!), but it's not a phone, and like the earlier poster stated, this offering is all about AT&T.

If you are an AT&T DSL customer, as I am, you just got free Wi-Fi all over the place. If you aren't, not sure why you would blame Apple for not subsidizing your internet device with free internet. And AT&T certainly doesn't owe you anything since you are not paying them anything for the privilege.

Mark
--
Read: Googling Innovation: Seed, Select & Amplify
http://thenetworkgarden.com/weblog/2006/08/googling_innova.html
Click to expand...

I still wonder if I used my friend's iPhone number, if that would let me through in Starbucks and beyond. Has anyone tried this?
 
Pippen Man said:
I still wonder if I used my friend's iPhone number, if that would let me through in Starbucks and beyond. Has anyone tried this?
Click to expand...

You are only offered the option to log in via phone number if you access the Wifi from an iPhone (or presumably, something that gives off an iPhone user agent). The iPod Touch gives out an iPod user agent. So the answer is no.

arn
 
arn said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)



If you hit it with your laptop it goes to the normal login page which asks for a username and password
Click to expand...

Could you go to the iPhone page from your laptop?
 
arn said:
You are only offered the option to log in via phone number if you access the Wifi from an iPhone (or presumably, something that gives off an iPhone user agent). The iPod Touch gives out an iPod user agent. So the answer is no.

arn
Click to expand...

Okay, I'll test my theory out over the weekend. I think that with some tweaking, you can make the AT&T signal think your an iPhone, but (obviously) I have no idea. Thanks for the reply arn.
 
iPhone/MacBook tether?

While I already have AT&T DSL at home, it would be interesting to try to tether
the MacBook to the iPhone, as I have done using TinyProxy, Srelay, ect on my
jailbroken iPhone's EDGE connection (purely for scientific purposes, of course).
 
not just for iPhone

I have AT&T DSL at home in Florida and when I was in the Seattle/Tacoma airport I was able to login to the wifi that AT&T was providing in the airport on my laptop.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back