The flip floppery AT&T iPhone Wi-Fi access has finally been made official, with AT&T adding a note on their own iPhone plan page that reflects the free Wi-Fi. That's 17,000 Wi-Fi hotspots, some of which are at Starbucks, some of which are at a Barnes and Noble. Finally, now with wireless access, you've got something to read at Barnes and Noble. [AT&T]
Free AT&T iPhone Wi-Fi Is Officially Back
11:55 AM on Thu May 8 2008
By Jason Chen
6,370 views
26 comments











Comments
not yet, at least on 23rd and 5th. admitedly, though, it's a smaller starbucks.
WTF is up with that 200 sms? They should get that broomstick from their hole.
Whatever Nikon is paying you, I will double it if it means not having to look at Ashton Kutcher three times every time I read a Gizmodo article.
@Hiphopopotamus:
OMG yes seriously. blah.
Are you 100% positive it is free? What I read is "access" and that to me means just that---but not necessarily free access.
That's because AT&T's 3G network is horrible. Free Wifi to cover all those areas where there is no 3G coverage at all.
[www.wireless.att.com]
So will the User Agent Switching tactic still work?
@wbouvier: It's 100% Free. Always has been.
Free wifi huh? That's pretty cool.
@TheManator: And this is the basic plan. You want 1500 sms? Pay $10 more. If you want unlimited sms? Pay $20 more.
So it goes $20 for 200, $30 for 1500, and $40 for unlimited.
It sure as hell wasn't free yesterday when I wanted to use it at the airport.
It may have been temporarily shut off because you could change your UA to bypass the captive portal. I suspect they had to make their security a little more robust -- probably they are matching the MAC address vendor prefix or possibly even looking up the individual phones specfically to grant access. At least that is what I would do -- still should be possible to spoof if your laptop's wifi lets you change the hw address (a lot of wireless chipsets don't)
@Hiphopopotamus: Adblock plus those pesky flash ads away. It speeds up the page load times.
It makes sense to me that AT&T would allow people to use existing hard lines, to relieve data on the cellular network. I also think it will continue to allow access based on browser header. (iPhone Safari) Authentication via MAC address, or user/pass takes more back-end/support than it's worth. (Even if people do slip on for free.)
I wish they would let me take that $59.99 plan (450 minutes, 200 sms, unl data)- for use with Blackberry - and add a second line for $9.99 and call it a family plan.
Currently, I have to pay the $59.99 for family plan, plus $5 for 200 sms, and would have another $30 for data (but I'm too cheap for that).
I really hate AT&T customer service, but am in love with Roll over minutes, Some months i go over 400 minutes & some i don't even use 1/2 of my minutes, tha't when roll over becomes a beauty
@innout3x3:
200 SMS is not bad. I have to pay 5$ a month for 250 from Verizon. At least it's included here in this package.
If the new 3G phone has the same pricing plans, I'm switching when my Verizon is up.
@Hiphopopotamus: I'd like to "Punk" him in the face just once.
So when someone figures out the hack to get free wifi again (for non at&t users), can we not post it on lifehacker so I can actually use it for once.
@Hiphopopotamus: firefox + adblock + plugin = love. gawker blogs with no ads. sorry gawker.
Looks like they removed that from "included features".
So if there's a Starbucks IN the Barnes and Noble, do we get double Wi-Fi? >.> <.<
@Atsumi: Only if Ashton says so.
Since when has the "unlimited everything" plan not included text messages too? How would one get more of them, then?
This is not on AT&T's website...
Yay! Free wifi for iPhone users who pay them money every month! Just pay them money each month, and instead of grabbing data off their expensive phone network, you can grab it from a wifi hotspot that costs them less to operate! How gracious of them to not charge anything extra for a service that costs them less. Pfft. If it costs money, it ain't free.
@man_in_gauze:
I have the unlimited plan and get the "stock" 200 text with it, I think you have to pay the extra 10,20,30 bucks for the amount of extra "texts" you want.
Faslane
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