Free McDonalds Wireless in New York Area

July 30, 2003 1:20 AM

Free Wireless through the end of August in Cometa's wireless installations in McDonald's stores in and around New York. Supposedly there's a list of the installations here, but not for the Flash-less. Anyone care to post a review of the service?
posted by j.edwards (6 comments total)

"Do you want your notepad fried by that?" sorry ;)
posted by twine42 at 3:07 AM on July 30, 2003

Cometa was founded by AT&T, IBM and Intel with seed money of around less than $2 million. Cometa than buys all it's services from AT&T, IBM and Intel at high prices and raises the additional capital it needs from VC's. Cometa is a profit center vehicle for these companies sucking off the VC funds. It is a replay of the 1990s. And just like the 1990s it's all a bad idea. The number of users required to be surfing wireless at McDonalds for them to make any money is way beyond reality. This is a huge gamble for the VCs but IBM, Intel and AT&T make out either way.
posted by stbalbach at 7:13 AM on July 30, 2003

The summer issue of 2600 has an in-depth look at the technology behind their hotspots.
posted by dr_dank at 7:18 AM on July 30, 2003

Wow, stbalbach, that's an interesting perspective I just hadn't expected to encounter. Very nice point, however. Anyway, not surprising, I suppose. I have very little faith left in anything anymore, except that the rich and powerful and irredeemably crooked.
posted by PigAlien at 8:42 AM on July 30, 2003

'are' irredeemably crooked. [note to self, preview exists for a reason!]
posted by PigAlien at 8:42 AM on July 30, 2003

It does sound crooked but the VC's are putting up the bulk of the money and thus takeing the risk.. they spread the risk across 10 or 20 diffrent ventures and if one is a home run and the rest fail they still make money. The WiFi world is very risky no one knows if it will work out but IBM,AT&T,Intel created a shell which the VCs could invest in without takeing much risk themselves since all the money goes right back into their pocket. Interesting how it all works.
posted by stbalbach at 10:03 AM on July 30, 2003