Austin's free hotspot locations grow: This article implies that Austin is unique, and while it does have an interesting confluence of several trends -- and Schlotzsky's and Wayport are both headquartered there -- there are dozens of free locations in other large cities as well. It seems to be more of a coalescing community attitude, however, that free hotspots make more sense than for-fee ones that's provoked this and similar articles.
The Schlotzsky's survey, by the way, is months old, but the company keeps bringing it out. They have both free computer access (via Apple iMacs) and free wireless at their test stores, and their survey showed that six percent of visitors to the stores during the survey came because of wireless access. At $7 for an average customer purchase, that equates to $100,000 in gross additional revenue per store, not overall, as the article implied. But Schlotzsky's should really revamp those numbers given the massive publicity they've received and the length of the experiment. [via Smart Mobs]