Just checking,
But we won't have to buy anything, right? I'll happily take advantage of the wifi, but I really don't want to eat their burgers. Yuck.
McDonald's goes McWireless
Proletarian fryhouse McDonald's has announced it will offer free Wi-Fi in its 1,200 UK burger outlets by the end of the year. The move will make McDonald's the country's largest public hotspot provider, and pits it against Starbucks' pay-as-you-go T-Mobile service for high street internet supremacy. It's all part of a …
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Monday 8th October 2007 14:59 GMT EvilFairy
great
now I can go for a burger and surf the web
none of that having to get some pesky exercise to get from fast food outlet to nearest wifi point
but that said its McDonalds, not some up market eatery, it'll be full of fat ugly blokes looking at porn within a week of starting, oh and they'll probably share it all with a the annoying brats that eat there.
on the other hand whos going to take a laptop or have any expensive electronics in a McDonalds for the chavs to through milkshake or mayonnaise over? and with wifi access will it really be what it looks like?
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Monday 8th October 2007 15:18 GMT Gulfie
Hope they've got SatNav...
"It's all part of a company-wide drive upmarket"
As an ex-McDonalds employee (to keep my student overdraft inside acceptable limits) I enjoyed this phrase. I can't ever see McDonalds getting anwhere upmarket simply because their concept of food is miles away from the healthy stuff available from the competition in the space they are allegedly heading for.
Would I run a casual business meeting in a quiet StarBucks (if there is such a thing)? Yes. In McDonalds? No, not even if they closed the place for me...
The ethos is miles and miles away from what it needs to be... ROFL
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Monday 8th October 2007 16:07 GMT John McGee
nice time..
Looks like this is a great time for FREE wifi. BT and their BT Fon and now McDonalds and their FREE wifi access. 1 chain will start then the next and so on until you'll soon be able to access web most places.
BT have the right idea and it will be a bonus when the other ISPs are aloud in on the action..Well done McDonalds!
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Monday 8th October 2007 16:27 GMT Rob
Hopefully this will be the "about time" moment
Paying for wifi is pretty pathetic, for me it can be the tipping point between venues (not that I hang about in mcdonalds at all, although the milkshakes are bearable)
I've seen a lot more free wifi in european cafes and I refuse to pay the extortionate pricing that I see over here in the UK.
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Monday 8th October 2007 20:05 GMT Neil Woolford
@You can buy a bottle of water
In France, you can have a beer to pay for your Wifi, as I did in Rodez. Choice of one, mind; Kronenbourg draft.
Just ask for "Frites et un Pression s'il vous plait"
The whole experience compared very well to using the horrid, expensive, slow Orange service at a Mercure ('business class') hotel a couple of days before.
The burgers are still shit though.
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Monday 8th October 2007 20:09 GMT Alan
Alyson Willis, I sincerely hope...
...that your pupils don't learn spelling from you. "reccommending" ???
Try it with a single "c" next time, as in "recommending" :P
Anyway, are we about to see a sudden rise in the value of houses next door to McDonald franchises? Free internet connection included, but only during opening times!
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Monday 8th October 2007 21:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
Free WiFi? No such thing in the UK.
Face it, this won't be free. As has been said, you have to buy chav-chow first. Free WiFi doesn't really exist per se in the UK, unless you're on your uni campus, or at your place of work or so. I'm sorry, but some techno-anarcho collective in Dalston doing a free WiFi project on one street, doesn't count. As our Parisian correspondent suggests, things are better on mainland Europe.
Truly free WiFi, in more than a couple of squatted arts venues, would be hilarious, in the way VOIP would then smash our cellphone providers. But until it exists, please don't bother using the phrase.
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Tuesday 9th October 2007 03:30 GMT Steve Roper
More fodder for the cops
Considering the cops are now arresting anyone sitting around in public with a laptop for "stealing" WiFi access, I can imagine they'll easily fill their arrest quotas hanging around McD's, nicking all the "terrorists" and "kiddy porn merchants" using the WiFi for their nefarious dealings... even if you did buy a milkshake two hours ago!
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Tuesday 9th October 2007 06:39 GMT Sean Nevin
It's here in Canada
The McDonalds across the street from the coffee shop I frequent has had free Wi-Fi for about four months now. I never bought any "chav-chow" (hilarious!) there but the SSID reads "McNet" so I assume it's theirs. I haven't actually been inside to see as this *is* one of those McDonalds that is filled with screaming six-packs of children...
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Tuesday 9th October 2007 09:16 GMT Anonymous Coward
Free WiFi
It's a bit strange that McDonalds say they are continuing to work with BT Openzone when they terminated Openzone access in July. I only found out when the manager of my local McD told me. I used the BT service there as there is a crap WiFi service in the town I live in. I contacted BT after the BT FON announcement thinking that this might just replace this service. No such luck! Although I am a BT Openzone subsciber, I can't use the BT FON service as I don't have their Total Broadband service at home. Their service sucks.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
