Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Yes, Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus.

And according to the Wall Street Journal, as reported by Glenn Fleishman at Wi-Fi Networking News, he's dropped an early gift from his pack-free Wi-Fi at all unwired McDonald's restaurant locations in the U. S. beginning the middle of next month.

Make no mistake-this is BIG.  Not only will this pretty much force all of McDonald's competitors to quickly reciprocate (dollars to doughnuts says the Burger King at 47th and Troost which apparently wasn't lit up when I visited a couple of days ago will be before spring), but these new free hotspots will in many cases be the only ones in their neighborhoods save for the few nearby public library branches.

One supposes it finally dawned on McDonald's management that having all those silly play-for-pay routers sitting unused in all those restaurants wasn't doing much to drive traffic into the doors.  And I don't think it will be much longer before Ma Bell reluctantly comes to the realization that what remains of their large scale fee-based network is now pretty much of an anachronism, and finally consigns it to the ash heap of history. 

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