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AT&T Wi-Fi Footprint Shrinks While Carrier Pushes Wi-Fi Access On iPhone

Glenn Fleishman at Wi-Fi Net News reports that UPS has dropped AT&T Wi-Fi service from both The UPS Store and Mailboxes Etc. locations. What's going on with AT&T's Wi-Fi network?

It seems AT&T's loss of The UPS Store isn't an isolated fact. Fleishman claims AT&T's Wi-Fi network is shrinking:

AT&T WiFi now has an extremely small footprint of under 2,000 hotspots, perhaps even fewer. They claim 10,000 locations in their home network, but over 8,000 of those are McDonald’s restaurants for which Wayport operates the Wi-Fi and resells to AT&T. Wayport is also AT&T’s managed services contractor for its Barnes & Noble, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, and Avis, as well as scattered oddities like the Mosser Victorian Hotel in San Francisco. AT&T inherited a number of airport locations and train stations built out by AT&T Wireless before its merger with Cingular.

This seems especially odd given that the iPhone is all about dual-mode Wi-Fi access. Does AT&T plan to just abandon its Wi-Fi network outright? Or does the carrier have something else up its sleeve? What do you think?

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