So, I’m sitting here at a Starbucks in beautiful Santa Monica, CA., spending another gorgeous day indoors. Rather than dwelling on all the fresh air I’m passing up, I decided to fire up my iPhone’s Safari browser and stream some music from the web through SeeqPod. Lo and behold, the usual T-Mobile HotSpot offering is now complemented by an AT&T HotSpot service – and the AT&T WiFi HotSpot login page has been changed!
Now, I find myself entering my AT&T credentials (this particular location doesn’t offer free AT&T WiFi HotSpot service) into an iPhone-optimized interface, rather than dealing with T-Mobile’s login portal. The process is easy and even fun to do on my iPhone. It’s the small things that make life interesting.
I dug around a bit and found that AT&T should start offering 2 free hours of WiFi service and should finish changing over approximately 7,000 Starbucks locations to AT&T WiFi HotSpots by Summer. And, the iPhone-specific login portal will be available at all AT&T HotSpot locations nationwide. This particular Starbucks doesn’t offer the free service, so it’s safe to say that the new service will be rolled out in stages.
The new iPhone-specific AT&T HotSpot portal should also offer a bevy of WiFi access options, including the use of pre-paid cards, membership, one-day passes, and coupons. Unfortunately this particular Starbucks doesn’t offer those login options. Here’s a picture of what the new portal should look like.
Feel free to chime in and leave a comment if your local Starbucks offers AT&T HotSpot access. It’d be nice to get an idea for how many Starbucks locations are already switched over to AT&T’s HotSpot service.