McDonald's will have its networks certified as Enterprise Ready by iPass: Now the ostensible purpose of this announcement is that McDonald's restaurants with Wi-Fi access will be available to customers on the iPass collective network, which comprises over 2,000 hotspots and 400,000 users across the companies they serve.
But read a little closer and you find that the three networks that McDonald's currently uses to run its Wi-Fi service -- Wayport, Cometa, and Toshiba -- are either already certified or soon to be. So what's the news here?
Two pieces of news, really. First, McDonald's is making a corporate-level commitment to iPass, which means that even if they use other networks, they'll ostensibly make sure that other operators are or will be certified. Second, McDonald's gave iPass permission to use its name in a press release, which can't hurt on the credibility side. A little extra news at the end notes that McDonald's in China will also become iPass Enterprise Ready.
Because all iPass customers have a directory of hotspots that they are really required to use if they are to use hotspots at all -- the software can be set to only allow access to hotspots on iPass's list -- this provides McDonald's with more of those business bodies they want.