This is great for the coffee-drinking public, to be sure, but it’s also pretty great for Bell Canada. Remember that Bell is already serving up the free Wi-Fi at Starbucks, McDonald’s, Indigo and Chapters locations. Adding Tim Hortons to the mix with its over 2,000 locations has got to be a pretty fantastic contract. Tim Hortons underwent a “rigorous six-month testing process with multiple service providers,” finding that Bell “delivered a fast and reliable service.”

The high-speed Wi-Fi rollout at Timmy’s has already started and they expect to cover more than 90 percent of Tim Hortons locations by September. That’s just in time for all the college kids going back to school, returning to the routine of constant caffeination and studying.

[Source]

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They have just unveiled a new vending machine that looks mostly like all of their other vending machines, except for that glowing blue sign at the top that reads “Wi-Fi.” Better still, you don’t have to take out your change and pump some cash into the machine to get onto this wireless superhighway, because Asahi is giving you the Wi-Fi for free.

Each machine will have an effective range of up to 50 meters (about 164 feet) and it will be able to support a connection with multiple devices. You don’t have to register, but you will be pushed to a splash page that displays “location-specific information,” like local stores, sightseeing information, and so on. Each Wi-Fi session is limited to 30 minutes, though clearing out your cookies should allow you to re-connect.

Unfortunately, not all of Asahi’s 250,000 vending machines in Japan will be equipped with the Internet. The plan is to roll out about 1,000 of them to Tokyo, Sendai, Chubu, Kinki, and Fukuoka next year with a total of 10,000 machines being set up within the next five years.

The post Japanese Vending Machines By Asahi Dish Out Free Wi-Fi appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

For this holiday season, starting on Deceber 21st and ending on December 27th, Skype is giving away one free hour of WiFi access at more than 50 major airports in US. Holiday travelers may bide their time with their WiFi-capable devices within these airports, be it just a casual checking of emails, or browsing latest news at MobileMag. This being a gift from Skype naturally suggests these customers are also invited to use it for Skype calls and messaging, and probably participate in some type of data mining exercise.

Airports are usually quite crowded on holiday seasons, and this year holidays are certainly not an exception. There might be delayed flights due to bad weather condition or over bookings. People get simply stuck at the airports for hours on end. Servicing these crowds with free Skype video calls might become quite problematic for third party WiFi access airport vendors because of sudden avalanche of requests for connections.

Still, it’s nice to have a free present from Santa Skype even if its just a measly hour of online time.

[Ubergizmo via Skype]

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So, to help spread the word about Windows Phone 7 (and WP7.5 Mango), Nokia is planning to launch 26 Wi-Fi hotspots spread out around London. These free hotspots will utilize existing telephone boxes, connecting them to 20Mbps DSL lines. That said, speed will be capped at 1Mbps downstream and 500kbps upstream. Naturally, connecting to these WiFi access points will lead you to a promotional splash page like the one shown above.

This is a similar strategy as that employed by Google in airports a couple years ago, building the brand awareness with free WiFi for the random populace. This gives Nokia a way into the heads of consumers to promote the Lumia 800 and Lumia 710, since they may not be able to get their attention otherwise. It also helps that they can collect some data about the people who use these hotspots, since that’ll surely be a part of the T&C agreement.

If these are still around when the 2012 London Olympics take place, I imagine they’ll get quite a bit of attention (and data).

The post Nokia Promotes Windows Phone With Free WiFi For Londoners appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The search engine giant has partnered up with three different airlines in the United States to provide passengers with free in-flight Wi-Fi access. This is on every domestic flight between November 20, 2010 and January 2, 2011 on AirTran Airways, Delta, and Virgin America.

These are the three airlines that have already outfitted their entire domestic fleet with Gogo Inflight Wi-Fi. No, the connection is going to be particularly fast. Yes, they may have some restrictions in place. But hey, at least you can check your Gmail and sort through your Google Reader.

Considering that so many airports still charge for Internet access, it does sound pretty good that you can still log on while thousands of feet in the sky.

[Free WiFi Holiday]

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