AT&T: free iPhone wifi is coming at some point

Confirmed working at three of the five Starbucks in Little Rock, AR, USA, as well as our Barnes & Noble.

Formerly, these were all T-Mobile hotspots. Now, when connecting with an iPhone, you get Internet with no[1] splash page: regular computers and other WiFi devices still have to authenticate or provide a credit card.

[1] Well, actually, you can see the URL for the splash page for a second, and then it immediately redirects you to the URL you requested. So, open up MobileSafari before opening MobileMail.

Was anyone else really wanting a comma to be between iPhone and wifi in the title?

The only reason why this is coming and going is that they had planned to release this the first time, then "Lord of Apple" Steve Jobs decided it would make a good selling point to mention at the WWDC '08 keynote.

I was at my gym the other day and it is next to a Starbucks, when I got in the car and looked at my iPhone to check if I had any voicemail I noticed it had logged onto a WiFi network. Turns out it was the Starbucks AT&T network, so maybe the free hotspots are back on again already?

It makes perfect sense. By offering free wi-fi it is a value added benefit that is not being paid for anyway. I would imagine ATT knows how many iPhones get signed on to it's network and the number has got to be miniscule. By offering wi-fi it reduces the amount of users that are using the cellphone network. ATT will be servicing these customers one way or another and the may as well be doing over their wi-fi. With 3G coming and a potential explosion in iPhones sales this is an easy way for ATT to service their customers with spending untold billions on expanding the cell network.

It also gives the unlockers and incentive to get ATT as well.

"way of differentiating the AT&T network and giving customers another reason to choose us over a competitor."

So they will have competitors now? Does this mean that the iPhone is going to be opened up sooner rather than later?