McDonald’s Canada now serving Free WifFi

"Would you like some McBits with your McCoffee?"

Seriously, Wi-Fi will soon become a requirement in all public establishments. Any location without Wi-Fi might see their customers move to the competition that does have Wi-Fi. The distance between wireless equipped establishments can now be measured in single digit meters!

The McD across the street from my condo has WiFi. I guess I'll have to go give it a try some time. Good thing it's next to the beer store. ;-)

This is awesome! I hope it isn't abused by people who live near the restaurants.

A pretty good distribution channel for McTV.

Costa said:

This is awesome! I hope it isn't abused by people who live near the restaurants.

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all they need to do is lower down the power to the antenna so its serving radius isint too large to be picked up say more than a couple meters away from the building..

People will actually want to hang out at the local golden arches, munch on their burger and surf the net? Really?

I wouldn't hang out at Mickey D's just for wifi, but when my wife and I drove to San Francisco for our honeymoon we would stop near hotels to check email and do Facebook updates. This will make things very convenient for people traveling.

would you like an app with that ..?

Provided by Bell?

I had noticed the wifi logo at a McD's in the Winnipeg area a number of weeks ago, but said it was provided by Bell which made me think someone had made a mistake, as Bell does not provide service in Manitoba other than satellite.
Has Bell made in-roads to Manitoba, or are they just paying for the wifi service for McD's through another provider for the exposure provided by working with McD's ?

Another thing not mentioned here is that McD's in the U.S. has been providing WiFi in their restaurants for years( decades?).....what took them so long ?

Bell has the national contract for McD's. They often provide service for commercial accounts that have branches in Manitoba even though they don't have a retail presence here. Like all service providers they will make arrangements for off-net physical infrastructure with local providers (probably MTS in this case) to connect to the Bell backbone.

ohhh gawd, just thinking .. i hope this isn't replacing the free coffee promo they have.

with everyone sporting a tablet, iPad (particularly among our younger generations) ...

oh yeah, they'll sell waayyy more crap now cynical yes, and i don't eat the hamburgers (fries are ok)

i don't mind hanging out at some rotten ronnie est. ..the local one here is kinda neat, local decor, laid back @ time. (kinda the Mccafe theme i guess) ..

i prefer their coffee over tom, i mean tim hortons. (tom is his brother)

I've used it in the US as recently as a couple of weeks ago. It's handy to know that whenever you spot the golden arches, you're also finding free wi-fi for some quick email updates, etc.

The Beer Store should offer one too. And a lounge with free samples

Dropped by a McD's in Winnipeg, and checked the speed of the connection.
Ping of 143ms, Download of 3.16 Mbps, and Upload of .38 Mbps. The ip was out of Montreal so it appears the server for the Wifi is at Bell in Montreal.

I was the only one in there with a computer, so I suspect things may slowdown when people become aware of the wifi.

Had a hard time getting two tables together to setup my computer, and upset the staff when I unplugged the cash register to plug in my power bars!
I really have to get a netbook, tablet or such! Oh

Ironicly I ran into someone I knew, and had not seen in nearly a year, so I never got to do anything else but talk to him!

The wifi at freddy mcd's is horrible, not even worth trying to connect to it.

dirtroad said:

I had noticed the wifi logo at a McD's in the Winnipeg area a number of weeks ago, but said it was provided by Bell which made me think someone had made a mistake, as Bell does not provide service in Manitoba other than satellite.
Has Bell made in-roads to Manitoba, or are they just paying for the wifi service for McD's through another provider for the exposure provided by working with McD's ?

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Bell offers national service for corporate clients. I'm in BC and our company (a hotel) uses Bell for local & long distance phone, mobility, TV & previously Internet. It's all their own equipment - they're not reselling others. We only have one location, so it's not an extension of a corporate contract from back east. We switched to another Internet provider due to cost and speed (we now provide 45Meg speeds for our guests), but they are actually a Bell reseller. Bell does have their own fibre to our community.

McDs have been advertising free wifi for months on their placemats in the Oshawa area. I haven't been able to connect. The counter staff are either totally unaware of the program or say it isn't running yet.