McDonald's Chooses Wayport For Wi-Fi Service

Wayport Inc. is the winner in the contest to provide hot spots to McDonalds Corp. restaurants in the United States, the companies said Tuesday.

The decision came after the fast-food chain ran a pilot of Wayport hot spots in some of its restaurants in the San Francisco, Portland, Boise, Idaho, and Raleigh, N.C., areas. Other hot-spot vendors, most notably Cometa Networks Inc., were piloting hot spots in McDonalds restaurants in New York, Chicago, and Seattle.

McDonalds said in a statement that "hundreds" of hot spots put into service by other vendors would be transitioned to Wayport in coming months. In addition, McDonalds said that it would announce additional deployments in the near future. It didn't get specific about issues such as the total number of restaurants that eventually would have hot-spot access. But a McDonald's spokeswoman told The Associated Press that the company hopes to outfit 6,000 restaurants--nearly half its U.S. locations--by year's end.

McDonalds also said it will be announcing roaming agreements in the near future that would enable customers of other hot-spot vendors to use the McDonalds hot spots. The company previously announced that it will make free content from vendors such as USA Today and The New York Times available to its customers.

Participating restaurants will display a stylized logo that looks like a cross between the well-known McDonalds golden arches logo and the ampersand. Walk-up customers can pay $2.95 for a two-hour session with additional options available from Wayport that include $29.95 a month for unlimited access. It also may continue some of its pilot promotions, such as free connections for buying an Extra Value Meal.