McDonald's To Offer Wireless Internet In 3 Cities

from the everyone's-doing-it dept

Plenty of restaurants and coffee shops have jumped on the WiFi bandwagon, with Starbucks remaining as the biggest name. That is quickly changing, however, as McDonald's has now announced plans to offer WiFi in their restaurants. McDonalds, of course, has been struggling recently - and is resorting to all sorts of random tactics to bring in customers (such as renting DVDs). It appears this the first big deal for Cometa - and after all the hype about the company, it sounds like they're doing it in a relatively smart way. They're offering one hour of free WiFi to anyone who buys a combo meal. After that, it's $3/hour (or you can buy another Happy Meal). That seems like a reasonable deal to make sure that the customer isn't clogging up a table without buying any product. If Cometa can sign up more customers who won't focus on nickel-and-diming every one who wants to use their WiFi connection, maybe people will actually start using WiFi in these hotspots (though, you have to wonder how much cash Cometa gets out of the deal if there isn't much money changing hands).