Starbucks Spain rolls out free BT OpenZone WiFi

It had to happen, after Starbucks and Swisscom ended their contract a few months ago, WiFi has been missing from Starbucks in Spain. Some stores still have the old routers switched on with the ‘eurospot’ SSID, I guess it will take some time to get them all replaced.

Grabbing a coffee I noticed something new on the receipt:

At last, WiFi at my local Starbucks! It’s a shame that it comes a few months late, but welcome nevertheless. It seems that if you own a VIPS card you get double time, up to 90 minutes. The launch was confirmed by BT via Twitter (nice to see they are on top of things!). All they need now is some nice PR material at the stores to show people that WiFi is available, and how to get online.

[Update] I tested the connection on my iPhone today, and there are a few things that need fixing:

- The WISPr code is not fully recognized by the iPhone, and thus you are shown the hotspot’s default landing page.

- Once you have the landing page, you need to tap through to ‘other operators’ so that you can login with the provided BT credentials.

- The BT login page is not mobile-formatted, which makes it a pain to navigate in order to login, even on the iPhone.

- There should be only a password for the free session, having such complex username/password combination is going to put some people off (“where’s the damn forward slash on this phone?!”).

Ideally, BT OpenZone should recognize mobile Safari, and present either a formatted landing page, or suitable WISPr code for the iPhone’s built-in authentication software to kick in. Otherwise, the WiFi connectivity is superb!