NEW YORK (Fortune Magazine) -
When was the last time you spent two hours at a McDonald's restaurant? My goal is to get through the line in five minutes or less and be on my way. Heck, I know one or two teenagers who were hired at McDonald's—hamburger manufacturing jobs, some might say —and even they didn't last two hours there.
Yet McDonald's said recently it plans to offer wireless Internet connectivity in as many as 6,000 of its domestic locations by the end of this year. For a rate of $2.95 for two hours, customers who take their own Wi-Fi-enabled computers to McDonald's can download bits as well as burgers. There's also talk of an "all you can eat" Wi-Fi plan for monthly subscribers. If McDonald's is smart, it will make the monthly plan really cheap, and make up the margins on burgers and fries.
Eventually, the wireless networks being installed at McDonald's will allow new services like cashless payments, electronic newspaper and magazine downloads, or music and video downloads. (Last month, Sony cut a deal with McDonald's to promote Sony's forthcoming Sony Connect music download service, a deal that now starts to make more sense.)
Buy a Happy Meal, get a free Michael Jackson song. Who knows, maybe they'll give a free two-hour Wi-Fi session with each Supersized Value Meal. Neither Sony nor McDonald's are divulging any details about possible cross-promotions.
McDonald's chose Wayport, a privately held company in Austin, Texas, to install and manage the wireless connections throughout the entire chain. There are more than 13,000 McDonald's restaurants in the United States; realistically not all of them are candidates to become wireless hot spots. But many already are.
Even at 6,000 stores, though, the McDonald's and Wayport deal would be the largest single-brand deployment of Wi-Fi hotspots in the known world, easily surpassing the couple of thousand Starbucks that now offer wireless connections. (Starbucks recently launched a music download service at its stores, five songs for $6.99 plus additional songs for 99 cents, or $12.95 per album.)
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Hmm. Apple also cut a big music download deal with Pepsi earlier this year to give away 100 million iTunes songs. I detect a trend. Is this how the music industry plans to increase sales, through sugar, caffeine, and fat? Can alcohol and tobacco be far behind?
Wayport was one of several wireless access companies that rolled out pilot programs for McDonald's last year, and obviously McDonald's enjoyed the experience. Wayport also provides wireless access at many hotels, airports and other Road Warrior habitats around the country.
Dave Vucina, Wayport's CEO, says the trend is now spreading from business travelers to consumers, or "Windshield Warriors," as he calls them—you know, folks who spend a substantial chunk of the working day in the car or truck. Check under the car seats, and you'll probably discover mummified French fries and wadded up McDonald's wrappers. It's a brilliant alliance. It's not hard to imagine a day when lots of McDonald's customers will carry Wi-Fi based PDAs; laptops; game devices; or, with the rise of Voice Over IP systems, even Wi-Fi-based phone or communications devices.
Still, I can't imagine parking myself at a McDonald's for two hours. Two minutes, maybe. We'll soon see if McDonald's customers like the combo meal of fast food and fast Internet.
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