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McDonald's Testing 802.11, or Intel?

McDonald's is putting 802.11 access into some of its New York shops, and offering an hour worth of free access with purchase of an Extra Value Meal. (Hey, Ronald -- how about an hour's worth of filtered access with a Happy Meal?)

Analysts are misreading this as a McDonald's play to boost its traffic. It's not. It's an Intel play aimed at boosting 802.11, and (most important) the proposition that 802.11 should be paid for -- hourly or daily.

Toshiba is helping Intel pay for similar access at hundreds of other locations, installed through Cometa Networks (the Wi-Fi joint venture Intel announced a few months ago). All this is in conjunction with this week's launch of Centrino, Intel's new laptop chip, which has 802.11 support built-in.

Do you see the result? Thousands of "hot spots," festooned with brand names you know, testing a variety of business models, targeting millions of laptops to be bought in the next year (or retrofitted).

McDonald's isn't trying to boost its traffic. McDonald's is engaged in a branding exercise. (Watch Ronald type.) This is really a corporate effort to take back 802.11 from the hobbyists and put it on a paying basis.

Look what comes out. Location X costs Y per hour, location Z costs A per day, location B costs C per hour, and each one can calculate how much traffic they got, what the "up-take" rate was. It's market research, aimed at finding the right price point for nationwide 802.11 service.

When the tests are done you have a nationwide network, and you know what (as well as how) to charge for its use.

This piece first appeared on Dana's own blog.