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McDonald's Introduces Free Wi-Fi

by Amar Toor on January 17, 2010 at 02:30 PM

Obesity rates in the US start to plateau. McDonald's dangles a trans-fatty carrot of free Wi-Fi in front of its suddenly slimmer former patrons. Coincidence? We think not.

On January 15th, the fast food chain that claims to have served "billions and billions" of people, will be adding a new item to their menu: free Wi-Fi. As Engadget reports, McDonald's used to charge customers $2.95 for two hours of surfing, before announcing last month that they would offer it for free in mid-January. According to a spokeswoman for the Golden Arches, the service will be freely available in about 11,500 of the roughly 14,000 restaurants throughout the US, and will make McDonald's one of the largest providers of free or paid Wi-Fi in the entire country, with about 16-percent market share.

It's a bit hard to imagine McDonald's suddenly becoming some sort of coffee house-like hangout, where people in black plastic-rimmed glasses hang out for hours on their MacBooks, working on their graphic design business or something. But that's probably not what the company's going for. It seems to us like it's just a case of supply finally catching up to demand. People have become so hyper-connected nowadays that everybody's come to expect instantaneous high-speed Internet access wherever they go. And given the ubiquity with which McDonald's locations blanket the nation, it's a pretty major step forward in expanding public Wi-Fi to non-urban areas that may not have the same kind of broadband coverage. Slowly but surely, Americans' culinary diets are changing, and our appetites for constant Wi-Fi access continue to grow. It's nice to see that Ronald and the gang are starting to understand that. [From: Engadget]

Tags: mcdonalds, top, wi-fi, wifi

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