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From today’s New York Times: Starbucks is switching WiFi providers. After a 6-year deal with T-Mobile, the milk-and-coffee merchant will offer WiFi access through AT&T. The arrangement gives AT&T 17,000 WiFi access points throughout the US, vaulting the telco to the number one spot in the country. AT&T has 70,000 WiFi hot spots worldwide.

AT&T has added mobile subscribers through its iPhone deal and other initiatives, while T-Mobile has struggled to keep pace.  However, AT&T will allow T-Mobile customers to use the Starbucks hot spots free of charge, through a roaming agreement. This should appease some T-Mobile subscribers who used Starbucks hot spots.

Starbucks card users will receive a free 2 hour WiFi session each day. Additional time on the wireless network starts at US$4 for 2 hours. AT&T broadband subscribers already had free access to AT&T hot spots as of last month.

Starbucks benefits by gaining access to AT&T’s larger mobile subscriber base. Other users will have a new reason to get and use a Starbucks card. Enhanced wireless access means that Starbucks customers might stay longer, and buy more items during their visit.

Chains like Starbucks often use a single national vendor for telecom offerings such as WiFi, to reduce security issues, consolidate reporting, and provide consistent services and branding across locations.

They won’t be buying breakfast sandwiches, though.

USA: Cell phone customers are getting nickled-and-dimed by telecoms, as T-Mobile, AT&T Wireless and others charge customers directly for Federal fees. Congress intended the telecoms to pay the fees themselves. Clever accountants realized that by passing the fees through to customers, the fees would count as revenue. This practice makes a wireless phone bill long and difficult to read. “The explosion of line items has made it all but impossible for consumers to compare rates and shop around,” FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps said in March. “You need a lawyer and an accountant — preferably both — to root out what you’re being charged for and why.” FCC docket number 04-208 would require telecoms to build the fees directly into their rates, so that wireless consumers know exactly what they will be charged for their plans.

Tech: Taiwanese manufacturers are marketing relatively inexpensive Tablet PCs, just in time for the fall buying season. The Averatec C3500 has 802.11g wireless and a 12 inch screen. PC Magazine seemed to like it.

Tech: Yahoo! News - iPod Alternatives Shaking Up Market: “In August, the companies plan to start selling the $299 MP3Run PSA260 player, which measures the duration and pace of your workout. The disc-shaped MP3Run comes with a separate dongle device that tracks the speed and distance of your run and sends the information wirelessly to the player. Runners, who clip the dongle to their sneakers, can receive audio alerts. ‘You have your own coach with you in the product,’ said Levitan, who also pointed out other runner-centric features like a flashing strobe and the ability to operate it without having to look at it…

Samsung began selling the $230 YP-60 player, no larger than two packs of chewing gum, that also comes with a heart monitor and a calorie counter. Like the upcoming Nike player, Samsung’s lets users upload workout data onto a home computer as a way to keep closer tabs on fitness progress.”

Tech: BW Online | June 21, 2004 | Online Extra: Q&A With MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte: “Peer-to-peer is key. I mean that in every form conceivable: cell phones without towers, sharing leftover food, bartering, etc. Furthermore, you will see micro-wireless networks, where everyday devices become routers of messages that have nothing to do with themselves.

Nature is pretty good at networks, self-organizing systems. By contrast, social systems are top-down and hierarchical, from which we draw the basic assumption that organization and order can only come from centralism. ”