This is good news. Whenever I’m traveling and I need to check my email, I’ll generally head to Starbucks for a cup of joe and to tap into the T-Mobile wireless hotspot. However, at $9.99/day, the access fee always ticked me off (though never enough to prevent me from paying for it). I have never needed 24-hour Internet access at a Starbucks. Why the heck couldn’t they offer a smaller time period for less money?

Well, now they do. Except “they” is no longer comprised of Starbucks + T-Mobile; “they” is now Starbucks + AT&T:

At Starbucks, T-Mobile is out and AT&T is in, at least when it comes to WiFi. AT&T and Starbucks announced their new partnership this morning, saying that the carrier plans to offer a variety of service offerings at 7,000 Starbucks locations in the US. Best of all, many customers will be able to access the service for free (as in beer), with paid offerings as low as $3.99 for two hours of use.

Ah, sanity momentarily returns to the land of overpriced breakfast sandwiches and macchiatos.

I’m not an AT&T broadband subscriber (monopolies are a bitch (SureWest does provide excellent service, though)), so I don’t get to surf for free, but $3.99/two hours is still a welcome change.

Good move, Starbucks!