It's interesting that this is (apparently) a big draw for people to come Starbucks. I kind of wonder what the big use case is.
I assume most people showing up at a Starbucks have smart phones with data plans. So it's probably not for phones, but tablets and laptops. But then I also assume the speed is not that great as the Wifi will be super heavily congested. So you are probably not getting high bandwidth and a lot of stuff will probably be blocked or throttled anyway. Which means most people could probably just tether to their phone and get the same performance.
So then it's for a) those people who can't tether or b) those who can't be bothered tethering?
These days I've virtually stopped using any kind of free public Wifi because I don't trust the security and my data plan is enough for most of the things I want to do anyway.
You've hit the nail on the head. Tethering is somewhat of a black art in the US, as carriers have started clamping down on tethering users in order to charge them $20 or more to access the same bits via another device.
Most Android users don't even have the standard tethering options here, as carriers mandate that be removed and replaced with their own tethering apps that enforce this restriction and protect their revenue stream.
And besides that, most users aren't technical enough to understand that you can access the Internet from your laptop through your smartphone.
And besides that, most carriers have limited data plans, so getting lots of work done over a tethered connection is not exactly feasible.
I assume most people showing up at a Starbucks have smart phones with data plans. So it's probably not for phones, but tablets and laptops. But then I also assume the speed is not that great as the Wifi will be super heavily congested. So you are probably not getting high bandwidth and a lot of stuff will probably be blocked or throttled anyway. Which means most people could probably just tether to their phone and get the same performance.
So then it's for a) those people who can't tether or b) those who can't be bothered tethering?
These days I've virtually stopped using any kind of free public Wifi because I don't trust the security and my data plan is enough for most of the things I want to do anyway.