WiFi speeds inside Starbucks will be getting faster soon! Mashable reports that WiFi speeds will be up to ten times faster than what’s currently offered in stores. Here’s the news article:
This definitely sounds like good news! There is no doubt, there have been times I’ve been frustrated with Starbucks WiFi speeds. When I’m in a store, while on my phone, I almost never use the Starbucks WiFi because my own phone carrier’s network feels much faster. When on my Kindle, I have to use the WiFi, and I’ve definitely experienced slow loading of pages now and then.
I was just on the WiFi last night at Seattle’s Fourth and Union Starbucks location. I love that store. You usually can find a seat, and it was designed with a lot of electrical outlets. And, the team of baristas is fantastic. Last night, as I was on the store’s WiFi using my Kindle, it already seemed a little faster to me, but I think that’s just my imagination!
I think it’s interesting that Starbucks will start with the stores that already have the highest WiFi usage.
What do you think? I know that I have heard many comments about people who linger too long on their laptops. I find that to be a spurious discussion. There has always been, for as long as Starbucks has been around, people who hang out for long hours. Long before free WiFi, I camped out at a few Starbucks locations in San Francisco during law school. Study groups are part of the Starbucks culture. And, I have definitely seen people hang out for hours and hours in social groups. At least here in downtown Seattle, I rarely see much of any problem with those who linger for a few hours on a laptop – and there’s always another Starbucks a block away!
What do you think?
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I typically attempt to work from a Starbucks about four hours a week. My work involves some old school text-based terminal typing to manage servers. For this to work the keys that I type must travel across the network and words that get displayed come back across the network. If there is any delay or congestion in the network, the typing delays can be maddening. This isn’t so noticeable when just loading web pages. I have a good experience about 50% of the time and it depends on the number of other users in the store.
The trouble isn’t the lingering laptop users, or the laptop users writing papers, checking facebook, or other low network demand applications. When I look around at what people are doing I think the problem is all the people watching netflix, HD youtube, streaming Pandora while they work, and other high bandwidth uses. I think most stores don’t have a connection fast enough to support more than a few of the heavy streaming users, much less a whole sea of them.
I would be thrilled if a partnership with Google resulted in higher bandwidth and a better experience. (And diving into tech hoping they hear: I’d be really happy if they would QoS reserve a tiny tiny bit of bandwidth for ssh terminal sessions!)
Wow Melody you must have been listening in on our conversations last night at my local SB with some of us regulars. We were just discussing the slow speed of the Wifi service and have it goes in and out! Great news if the speed improves for sure. But then again, SB needs to add more outlets.
Starbucks wifi has always been a sore spot for me, as a partner. I feel like we’re constantly having issues with it, and resolving those issues can be quite time-consuming, taking us away from directly interacting with our customers, so I’m hoping that this transition will happen in Canada too and hopefully we’ll have more reliable service for our customers! =)
I read the linked article and did a little further research.
The faster WiFi for the customers is just a beneficial side effect for the customers. The real meat is improving the data speed and bandwidth for the POS and ordering/inventory control systems in the stores. Starbucks must be planning better POS and ordering/inventory control systems, that is really the only way they could justify the investment.
Sure WiFi is a nice perk for the customer, but I doubt that a proper analysis would show a positive cost benefit ratio. The real value is in the enhanced data capabilities between the stores and the “mothership”.
I do hope that they do consider making it far easier for the stores to fix WiFi problems, as in there should be none (most problems actually fixed by a simple power cycle and system reboot, clear the “cobwebs”). What I have come across though is that the majority of folks who have problems with the WiFi, it is usually with their machine. As the morning retired resident freelance IT guru (MRRFITG 😉 ), I have helped many a WiFi user clean up their machine and software configuration so that they can reliably and safely (relatively) access WiFi.
Well, am in a Sbux right now and really appreciate @DadC…. analysis! I have to say , (probably before you were sitting in Sbux during law school @ Melody) there were many yrs pre-wifi @ Sbux, that I remember clearly & there was definitely not the same ‘camping out’ in Sbux as I have seen since wifi. Did customers linger over coffee w/ friends or a book? absolutely! but , not like what I see today. ‘Back then’ , 99% of the people had some purchase. I am in a busy Clover store now and almost everyone here is on a laptop, maybe 70% w/ some purchase. Clearly , most of them appear ‘hunkered’ down. For me, that’s an issue & all I say now would be redundant.
For me the speed of wifi ( with AT&T) has never been a problem, but I am not bringing in my laptop & only use it for my phone. Still, appreciate DadC… thoughts on the issue!
Prior to there being free wifi available in UK Starbucks I would rarely have come in and sat alone for any duration. Now that I can avail of free wifi I will come in on my lunchtime and sit for maybe 20 minutes.
When I’m in SoCal in September free Starbucks will be my connection with all my email etc and I have no shame in saying I will milk it as much as possible. In saying that I will also spend plenty of dollars and I won’t take up tables of 4 which really annoy me.
The problems began when SBUX switched from T-Mobile HotSpot (which had acquired the assets from MobileStar) to AT&T (which built its base from its origins as Wayport). It was a significant downgrade in speed, which is likely why they stitched (cheaper). Inexplicably, the company then switched Wi-Fi from being a Rewards benefit to being free for all. This naturally caused loyal customers to give up and switch to local coffee purveyors with normal Wi-Fi bandwidth that actually works. I’m sure SBUX has been saving lots of money (while supposedly creating good will offering free Wi-Fi, except not really), but this new setup sounds much better for all.
@Carl – your history and assessment are spot on.
This “connection” with Google may break Starbucks dependance on AT&T or maybe not depending on who Google partners with. Speed and bandwidth is highly variable by area and carrier and changes constantly. Because of a high “government” presence in my area we have 3 independent trunks (by the top 3 carriers) in and out. However, politics gives preference to one primary (currently AT&T).
Thanks for the news – I had no idea! 😉
It’ll be interesting to see how much faster the Google-based network ends up being versus the AT&T network. I don’t work from Starbucks very often, but when I’m there I expect decent WiFi speeds!
p.s. Hi, Carl 🙂
I’ve been frustrated by the wifi at Starbucks before (speed, download limits, etc) so this is a welcome change.
I will be interested in seeing the changes to the SDN. This is certainly a takeaway from Yahoo! and Marissa Mayer. Google is all about ads so I wonder how many more ads will begin to see…
Eric, ssh over a Starbucks wifi connection definitely sucks! Then add in another layer with VPN, ugh.
I, too, remember the T-Mobile days, and how the trouble seemed to start with AT&T. Really looking forward to this change. Most of the time nowadays I tether to my phone instead of using the Starbucks wifi. The wifi just isn’t reliable, and when it does work, it’s pretty slow. It also seems to be somewhat mac-unfriendly.
Speed must really vary widely across the US. I’ve worked many a day in a number of my local SBux cafes (due to meetings or travel or last summer when Comcast “upgraded” my area and took me offline for 3w) and I’ve never had any problems connecting to my company VPN and then using Citrix inside the VPN to connect to my customers over RDP or ssh. If you guys can’t even ssh, I can’t imagine how bad the latency is.
As a store manager, I’m very excited about this. I’ve commented internally many times about the issues we’ve had with the current WiFi, as it affects the business. We’re asking new partners to view training videos online, and the content constantly buffers or takes too long to load.
Personally, I’ll be happy to use the WiFi on my phone during my breaks instead of staying on my phone’s network connection because it’s faster and steadier than the current WiFi!