News Post 1: Free Wi-Fi Hotspots Make Information More Accessible

The source of my article is the Technology section of the New York Times website (posted on 1/23/08) and can be accessed through http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-ATT-Free-Wi-Fi.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin . This article is titled “AT&T Expanding Free Wi-Fi Offer” and the article states that AT&T is extending free Wi-Fi to their broadband internet customers at their 10,000 hotspots. Hotspots have popped up all over the world as the demand for internet access has increased over the past few years in relation to people’s constant need for up-to-date information. However, most Wi-Fi internet hotspots are only available after paying a daily or monthly access fee. AT&T is planning on changing this for their broadband customers. The article states the service will be very beneficial to their customer’s using the iPhone and other mobile phones with internet capability. Many more people today are using their mobile phones to access information via the internet. If these users want to use the internet on their mobile phone they must purchase the broadband service; in the past, they would have had to pay to additional fees to access the Wi-Fi hotspots. This change will allow those AT&T customers free access to the internet at most everyday, public places such as airports and restaurants that host AT&T as their Wi-Fi provider. This is significant in the information technology world because making those hotspots free of charge will encourage the use of computers and mobile phones to access the internet more frequently than they had before. This also a very competitive move by AT&T that is aimed at enticing new customers to sign-up with AT&T or to drop their mobile phone service providers. This new movement by AT&T would make information more readily available to more people at more times. This is an incentive to gain more customers, making the number of people accessing the internet at no extra charge much bigger. Information is out there and people want to access it; everything is changing on how that information is accessed. It has evolved over the years from books, to newspapers, radio, television, computer databases, internet on computers, newspapers on the internet, blogs, and now internet on mobile phones. It is hard to imagine how information will be accessed in future decades or even years. (Word Count: 373)