The company now has more than 125,000 Wi-Fi hotspots across the globe at places like Starbucks, McDonalds, hotels, airports, bookstores, and other public venues. Thanks to acquisitions and an increased focus on this market, AT&T has increased its global Wi-Fi footprint about 30% since the beginning of the year.
"Our global enterprise customers want to ensure that their employees always have a highly secure, reliable connectivity to their corporate applications and the Internet wherever they are -- without the hassles of hunting down hotspots and credit card pay-as-you-go," said S. Dale McHenry, VP of AT&T enterprise networking, in a statement.
These Wi-Fi hotspots also have the additional benefit of easing congestion on AT&T's mobile data networks because BlackBerry and iPhone users get free access to them. The company is seeing increased interest in public Wi-Fi access for its smartphone subscribers, as AT&T said it had more than 25 million Wi-Fi connections for the first seven months of 2009, which outpaced the 20 million connections for all of 2008. Apple iPhone customers appear to use this service often, particularly after the 3.0 software simplified the log-in process.
At the 2009 InformationWeek 500 Conference, C-level executives from leading global companies will meet to discuss how they're delivering on the most critical business priorities of the day. Join us Sept. 13-15 at the St. Regis Monarch Beach, Calif. Find out more and register.
Stay connected and informed by visiting the CA Solutions Center Community!

Become a member today for instant access to free InformationWeek research, expert advice, peer perspectives, and more on the following topics:
- Application Performance Management (APM)
- Security Management
- Mainframe 2.0
- IT Automation
- Service Assurance
Also, visit our Government and Financial Services groups to see how these technologies apply specifically to those industries.
NOTE: Offer valid for U.S., U.S. possessions, & Canada only.