McDonalds Turns McWireless

In addition to offering hamburgers, french fries and milkshakes at its 1,200 fast food restaurants throughout Great Britain McDonald's now plans to offer high-speed wireless Internet services to customers for free.

The play is aimed at snatching vback customers from rival restaurants and coffee houses, such as Starbucks, that have been providing the free Wi-Fi for several years.

McDonald's, which says it controls 10 percent of the U.K.'s Wi-Fi hotspots, is working with wireless firm Cloud Networks to roll out the free service across its retail estate by the end of the year.

A spokeswoman for McDonald's told Dow Jones Newswires that, people forced to pay by the an hour to use Wi-Fi networks in Starbucks and Coffee Republic, can now come to McDonald's and hop online for free.

"Everyone from big and small business people through to students and online gaming enthusiasts stand to benefit, and it's possible that it could signal the beginning of the end of high-cost wireless Internet access in the U.K.," the spokeswoman told the Dow Jones Newswire.

"We hope that this will be a breath of fresh air and give greater choice for Wi-Fi hotspot users who have had little choice but to pay by the month or hour to access the internet on the move," Steve Easterbrook, McDonald’s president and chief executive officer, Steve Easterbrook, said.

Easterbrook said the service would benefit a wide range of customers, from business people making a "pit stop" to check e-mail between meetings to those looking for a leisurely break at the weekend to download music. He said It a hotspot user who pays to log on for just an hour a week in a coffee shop could now save several hundred dollars in Wi-Fi charges by using McDonald's free service

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12041-mcdonalds-now-serving-wi-fi.htm