Starbucks - free wifi with every latte

The revolution is coffee flavoured. Those Latte day saints, Starbucks, may soon be making wifi free in their java joints. This is fascinating, in that a coffee shop could spark off the Mobile revolution, and here's why:

- A large number of "mobile" calls are made by people who are stationary, just not in their normal place - so a wifi hotspot does the job as well - and this gets away from the restrictions of 3G walled gardens. This is a biggie, lots of dis-aggregation flows from it.

- In addition, a whole lot of other devices - Nintendo DS, laptops, iPaq's - can be brought into the big tent

- It gives fairly "good enough" location data for a whole bunch of services too

Couldn't come to London soon enough, about all we have right now is Foyle's Jazz Cafe. I trust that this will force Cafe Nero, Costa Coffee, Pret a Manger and all the other chains to go free WiFi too.

Even more entertaining is McDonalds may follow suit:

The other reason Starbucks wants its Wi-Fi to be free is that competitors are starting to do it. Starbucks is, in fact, locked in a pitched battle with McDonald's for the lucrative morning commute breakfast crowd.

Who would have thought that the fast food business would have caused the demise of the mobile operators....
(I only wrote this post so I could us the line Latte Day saints )