TMCnet News
AT&T Expands McDonald's WiFi Service in AustinTMCnet Contributing Editor AT&T Inc.'s WiFi service is now available for subscribers, including non-AT&T (News - Alert) customers who register for a WiFi membership package, at more than 40 McDonald's restaurant locations in Austin.
For every paid connection made at Austin metro area McDonald's hot spots between March 13 and June 16 of this year, a pledge of $1 (up to $10,000) could be donated to support the construction and development of a local Ronald McDonald House. The new Ronald McDonald House will be located near the Dell (News - Alert) Children's Medical Center of Central Texas; construction is scheduled to begin in 2007. "To support growth and local development efforts through our WiFi customer connections is a great way for us to be able to give back to the Austin community," said Brooks McCorcle, AT&T general manager. "For only $1.99 a month, our residential high speed Internet customers can stay connected at more than 10,000 AT&T WiFi locations nationwide, also accessible through membership plans for consumers who do not have AT&T services. We are pleased to be a partner in this community need by further extending our WiFi services throughout the Austin area."
The AT&T WiFi coverage area includes thousands of McDonald's restaurants nationwide, now totaling more than 40 in Austin and more than 360 across Texas. Additional AT&T deployment efforts have enabled WiFi service at Barnes & Noble bookstores, coffee shops, Avis rental car locations, The UPS Store and Mail Boxes Etc., airports, hotels, convention centers, state parks and entertainment arenas.
"We want our WiFi deployment efforts to mirror the connection needs of our customers," added McCorcle. "Customers look for reliability and convenience when logging on to the Internet, and we want to meet this expectation in locations beyond the home and the office."
AT&T made news yesterday when it introduced the AT&T Ultravailable Service Option 2, a new high speed access option for small to midsize businesses which allows them access to advanced optical access systems.
Available immediately, the Ultravailable Service Option 2 provides small to midsize businesses with support for multiple functions, such as access aggregation, network redundancy and data mirroring applications, as well as multiple services, such as Ethernet, voice and storage.
"As a recognized leader in the fiber-optics marketplace, AT&T is always striving to accommodate the networking needs of its business customers of all sizes," said Regina Egea, vice president of AT&T product management. "This new service will more directly address the needs of those businesses that require a cost-effective way to handle the diverse business applications they’re using," she said.
AT&T, Inc.
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Johanne Torres is contributing editor for TMCnet and Internet Telephony magazine. To see more articles by Johanne Torres, please visit Johanne Torres' columnist page
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