AT&T Mobility expands Wi-Fi initiative

AT&T Mobility (T) announced plans to expand its Wi-Fi “hotzones” offering in New York City as well as plans to move the program out west to San Francisco. Networks in both markets have been singled out by company executives as having the most trouble handling customer traffic.
AT&T Mobility launched the Wi-Fi program earlier this year in a couple of markets – Times Square; downtown Charlotte, N.C.; and Chicago’s Wrigleyville – as a way to offload cellular traffic onto Wi-Fi networks in select, high-density locations. While the service is dependent on consumer knowledge of the offering as well as them then choosing to activate the Wi-Fi capabilities of their device, AT&T Mobility claims that more than 350,000 connections have been made at the three initial launch spots. The service is free to AT&T Mobility customers with qualifying wireless data, LaptopConnect and High Speed Internet plans.
The carrier said the New York City program will expand from its existing Times Square location to new areas near Rockefeller Center and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The planned expansion into San Francisco is set to include the city’s Embarcadero Center.
“Our initial AT&T Wi-Fi hotzones have received great customer response and supported high data traffic,” said John Donovan, AT&T’s CTO, in a statement. “The pilot demonstrated the clear benefits of having fast and readily-available Wi-Fi options for our customers and our network, and so we have decided to deploy hotzones in more locations.”
AT&T Mobility claims more than 106.9 million Wi-Fi connections across its more than 23,000 hotspot locations nationwide during the third quarter.