Will Starbucks offer free Wi-Fi in Canada in 2008?

I doubt very much that Starbuck's will be able to provide free WiFi within Canada, as all the WiFi hotspots are provided by Bell, whom as you may know, never give anything away. They're the guys who just starting charging 15¢ per txt for pay-per-use mobile users, remember? Still jaded from having their monopoly taken away them, Bell will never partner with a concept as ludicrous as FREE WiFi, unless customers pressure Starbuck's enough and they threaten to go with Rogers. Funnily enough, Rogers seems to be picking up their socks, agreeing with Apple that users shouldn't be paying $500—$1,000 for 50 MB of download data on their iPhones. Hmm? Imagine that.

Caffe Artigiano is still better. But still I ended up spending a lot more money at Starbucks simply because they are everywhere!

If they really have free WiFi for Canadians, I will give up caffe artigiano, and start buying from Starbucks again.

Seems like we have quite a lot of post about Canada here in ZiiTrend. I hope free WiFi will be available in Canadian starbucks so I can use it when I am there. Free WiFi should be everywhere.

Last time I checked, Canadian starbucks look almost identical to the US starbucks. I expect it to be like that in the near future.

If you look at how long it takes iPhone gets to Canada, then you can estimate how long it takes for this free wi-fi deal to happen.

I know it is not impossible though because of the majority share of the Canadian carrier Rogers AT&T by AT&T. But then Starbucks has less motivation to do it in Canada. Here is the reason...

Starbucks current strategy is to make its stores into an online market place starting with selling MP3's, and currently Canada is way behind in terms of online MP3 sales. So, the return is small in offering free wi-fi in Canadian stores.