WiFi Wars Hit The Coffee Shop

Starbucks (SBUX) offers T-Mobile service in most of its stores. The price is $6 an hour, which hardly qualifies as cheap. McDonald’s (MCD) also offers WiFi at $2.95 for two hours. So for a two hour stay, the McDonald’s price is 25% of Starbucks.

Now, McDonalds is already trying to take latte and high-end breakfast share from Starbucks. It has more stores and charges less for its coffee. It may not be as chic, but cheap often beats chic, or so they say.

The chairman and founder of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, recently whined in a memo that his stores had lost their distinctive environment. They have become "cookie cutter" as the chain has grown. With 12,000 stores, he seems not to understand that sameness is inevitable. Free WiFi would give his stores something distinctive. Access to broadband that would likely keep customers in the stores longer and give Starbucks more opportunity to sell them something.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.