Joseph Weisenthal
mocoNews.net
Wednesday, June 4, 2008 9:00 AM

Good news for anyone in need of a quick internet fix: Starbucks is turning on free Wi-Fi today, courtesy of its partner AT&T ( NYSE: T). The deal, according to USA Today: Users will get two hours of free internet usage when they purchase a $5 reloadable Starbucks Card and register for the Starbucks Rewards Card program. Starbucks' relationship with AT&T was first announced in February, and the two sides of slowly rolled out the program since then, with AT&T users getting first crack at it in April.

Two hours isn't enough time to make Starbucks your office for the afternoon, but it'll be helpful for those times when you just have to get a blog post up right then. And if you need more time online, then you can spend some of that two hours searching for free Wi-Fi hotspots in your area.

Tricia adds: Of course, T-Mobile's Wi-Fi service (which is not free) will continue to co-exist in Starbucks with AT&T for some time. In the case of offering two hours of free Wi-Fi, it will be interesting to see if there are more laptop couch surfers at Starbucks than even before. If so, that might even create the opposite affect from what they were looking for?it may drive people away...there's nothing more annoying when your battery is dead and all the outlets are taken, or you keep getting bumped off due to network congestion. That might be fine for the casual surfer, but for the business user, paying a premium for a quality service was a small price.

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