McDonald's: No Free Lunch, but Free Wi-Fi

McDonald's restaurants with free wireless:

4600 West 119th Street, Leawood
802.11g
SSID: mcdleawood

9401 Foster, Overland Park
802.11g
SSID: 9401_Foster_McDonalds

If you've followed the blog up to this point, you've no doubt noticed that we haven't talked much about commercial locations offering free Wi-Fi. Well, I hope to start rectifying that by spotlighting a couple of rugged individualists bravely swimming against the tide in a manner I hope richly rewards them. You may not have known this up until now, but metro KC has a couple of McDonald's restaurants whose owners are bucking the corporate trend of going play-for-pay and offering their wireless Internet for free. I guess maybe being a little closer to the action than the suits in Oak Park-or wherever the McDonald's headquarters is located-has sort of opened their eyes to the fact that if you partner with a vendor whom you let pick the customer's pocket before you stick your hand into it, there (ahem, ahem) won't be as much money in it as there would have been otherwise. Also, having to jump through the hoop of paying before what may be only a fifteen to thirty minute session (when was the last time you spent more time than that in a McDonald's, huh?) doesn't exactly make for the most pleasant customer experience.

I certainly hope this catches on, and not just in Johnson County. In fact, if the fast-food industry as a whole wants to do something to polish its image as a good corporate citizen, it could start an initiative to help narrow the digital divide by unwiring every restaurant it operates in currently underserved areas. With prices for laptops and other wireless devices dropping, more and more of the population living near these locations will be looking for hotspots in perhaps the next couple of years. What forward-looking business wouldn't want to cater to such an upwardly mobile (pun not intended-really!) clientele?

As for laptop-friendliness...well, these are restaurants, remember? If they aren't crowded you may luck out and find a table by a wall next to a power outlet, but I wouldn't count on it. The Leawood location does have an "island" table in the middle, each side of which provides seating for five and a pair of outlets at each end. Frankly, though, I think staying any longer than it takes to finish your meal and catch up on your e-mail is something you probably shouldn't do at either of these hotspots, especially considering that their owners are kind of going out onto a limb by offering free access. If too many of us repay their hospitality by "camping" and taking up revenue-generating table space for inordinate amounts of time, don't be surprised if one day you boot up and get redirected to the dreaded please-enter-your-credit-card-number page, or find that the network is gone altogether. Let's endeavor to prevent that from happening, and answer these owners' kindness with kindness of our own.