BT serves-up Wi-Fi at Starbucks coffee houses in Germany

BT has signed a contract with Starbucks Coffee Company to provide wireless Internet access (Wi-Fi) across some 140 Starbucks coffee houses in Germany. The service has been installed in most of the locations over the last months and can be used free of charge for up to two hours.

With this agreement, BT has further extended its relationship with Starbucks since it started rolling out Wi-Fi services across more than 650 coffee houses in the UK and Ireland last year. BT is also providing the service to the Starbucks coffee houses in Spain and Portugal.

Starbucks will use the network to support both its public customer hotspots and store operations systems.

Karsten Lereuth, CEO, BT Germany, said: “Starbucks is the perfect place to work or catch up with e-mail over a coffee. As many business people are today enabled to work with mobile devices, coffee shops are increasingly popular as a third place to work or log on to the internet. Our corporate customers will also benefit from this agreement as they can now easily connect to their corporate network using BT MobileXpress.”

“At Starbucks, we are continually looking for new ways to develop our in-store offerings for our customers, and this new relationship with BT, provides an enhanced customer experience,” said Robert Teagle, EMEA IT director Starbucks. “As we continue to develop our technology strategies this relationship will strengthen the Starbucks Experience and amplify our stores as a must-go location for our customers.”

Starbucks customers just need to bring a mobile, Wi-Fi enabled device and connect to the BT Openzone hotspot in the store. They can use the internet connection for free for up to two hours. BT customers can use the BT MobileXpress client to connect securely to their corporate network and access their e-mails, files and applications as if they were in their office. BT MobileXpress does also provide them with hassle-free access to more than 100,000 public hotspots throughout Germany, e.g. in hotels, restaurants or shops.