Wi-fi and a Big Mac?
December 12, 2007 at 10:30 am
Fancy checking your emails while you wolf down a Big Mac and fries? Fancy doing it for no more than the price of your food? Pretty soon you’ll be able to. Fast food giant McDonalds is introducing free wireless broadband services in up to 1200 of their restaurants here in the UK. You heard right – free.
Demand and usage of Wi-fi hotspots in major towns and cities have gone through the roof in the last year or two. Trains, planes, bars and many others now grant their visitors access to the internet for use on their laptops, mobile phones and handheld games consoles. But now McDonalds are joining in on the fun and have the power and money to offer it for nothing.
McDonalds in the US have already shown the service works, and currently 8,000 of the 13,000 restaurants in the States have Wi-fi on-tap. It’s reported that it could save the regular Wi-fi user up to £260 a year if they decide to go for a Quarter Pounder with cheese, or something similar, when they want to quickly use the net.
Steve Easterbrook, the President and Chief Executive of McDonalds said, “We hope that this will be a breath of fresh air and give greater choice for Wi-fi hotspot users who have had little choice but to pay by the month or hour to access the internet on the move.”
The Cloud will be the service providers supporting the new scheme and they will provide the platform on which the service will run. The Director of Business and Development at The Cloud said in relation to the partnership,
“It’s great to see McDonald’s taking such a visionary stance and bringing Wi-fi to the mass market in this way. McDonald’s free Wi-fi service will deliver a high quality out of home broadband experience, which represents a significant step forward for UK consumers on the move. We’re looking forward to developing further Wi-fi propositions and activities with McDonald’s in the future.”
Looks like we’ll be combining our Big Macs with our Apple Macs in time for Christmas!
The iphone doesn’t even have 3G
December 7, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Apple’s next essential and life-changing piece of technology takes us into the world of our most favourite gadget of all. It’s called the iPhone and no prizes for guessing what it is. But then Apple will tell us time and time again that it’s more than just a mobile phone. In fact their advertising slogan tells us that “The iPhone reinvents the phone.”
In September this year, the giant mobile phone networks in the UK fought a war, the prize being the iPhone contract. O2 came out victorious and as of November have the exclusive rights to carry the iPhone over their UK network.
One of the principle flaws with the UK model is the lack of 3G internet technology. 3G is the third generation system that gives users high-speed wireless voice telephony and wireless broadband internet data on their handset wherever they are in the country. The UK iPhone comes equipped with the older version of the system called 2.5G, which means that, out of Wi-Fi hotspots, they receive much slower internet connection speeds. The networking system is also known as EDGE, but fears are that O2 only has roughly 30% coverage for this system in the UK, so the iPhone might not work, especially in more remote locations.
Many rival hand-sets from companies such as Nokia and Sony Ericsson support 3G technology already, so why doesn’t the iPhone? The CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs, came to the flagship Apple store in Regent Street to press-launch the product and, in relation to the lack of 3G on the iphone, he said,
“The (3G) chipsets are real power hogs. Most phones now have a battery life of 2-3 hours and that’s due to these very power-hungry 3G chipsets. Our phone has 8 hours of talk-time life. That’s really important when you start to see the Internet and want to use the phone to listen to music. We’ve got to see the battery lives for 3G get back up into the 5 plus hour range. Hopefully we’ll see that next year. Rather than cut the battery life, we’ve included Wi-Fi and sandwiched 3G between Edge and a more efficient Wi-Fi”.
Mr Jobs might have justified it for the time being and the waiting lists show that people are still wooed by the slick touch-screen design and the Apple badge. However, at around £270, and with a pricey 18-month contract from O2 as a requirement, is it worth snapping up immediately or is it worth waiting until the technology is as cutting edge as the design?
