Free wireless Internet makes coffee shops popular hangouts

At coffee shops around the country, a daily ritual plays out. Customers stop in the morning, grab a latte and begin their daily routine of checking e-mails or a Facebook page on free wireless Internet.

Unlike many of its local counterparts, Starbucks charged customers for wireless Internet, but that's about to change.

The coffee giant announced last week that it will offer free, unlimited wireless Internet starting on July 1 - about six months after McDonald's decided to offer the service to its customers for free.

Free wifi isn't a new product to some local coffee shops, though.

Carson City's Comma Coffee has offered free wifi for five years.

"To charge your customers for it, I mean really? It costs $40 a month," said owner June Joplin. "It's a courtesy to customers, which in turn is great for business. People come in and this is a place where we want people to come hang out anyway."

Charlotte Overby, 44, often travels to Carson City from Reno and makes it a point to stop by Comma Coffee on Carson Street when she's in town.

While the atmosphere and coffee have kept her a loyal customer, it's the wireless Internet that keeps her there.

"It's key," Overby said while sipping on a latte and checking her work

e-mail. "Without it I probably wouldn't stay as long. I'd probably buy a cup of coffee and take it to go."

Noelle Hart, the manager at the Genoa Candy and Coffee at Carson Lanes, said the coffee shop has free wireless Internet, which is provided by Carson Lanes.

She said travelers usually stop by the coffee shop to check e-mail. Some people use it to search for jobs.

"People on the road that are driving through town, they need to get a cup of coffee, they can get online and do their business," she said.

Borders bookstore and cafe at the Topsy Lane shopping center south of Carson City started offering free wireless Internet a year ago, said manager Jean Wegner.

"The company decided it was one of the services we wanted to offer to our customers and it creates additional loyalty," she said, adding "We have study groups come in. (Customers) come in just to check their e-mail, tourists that come through that plop down and check their e-mail ... We have more customers in our cafe because of that."

At first, Comma Coffee's Joplin said she was hesitant to let customers glued to their laptops stay in her coffee shop, but once she introduced the technology that was all the convincing she needed.

On a Tuesday morning, Joplin does a quick head count: Five out of the six people inside her coffee shop are on laptops, presumably using the Internet on her free wireless network.

"I created Comma Coffee for people to connect in real life, to be connected or to have a place to connect," she said. "I'm not a dinosaur, as well, and I realized that's how people are staying connected ... that's they way they have to do it nowadays."

She said her business was the first in Carson City to offer free wireless Internet.

"It's a pretty easy decision and there's no reason to not do it," she said. "Starbucks is a day late and a dollar short on that one to be offering it free."

But not all customers mind paying a little for wireless Internet.

Susan Teague, 47, made a pit stop at a Carson City Starbucks on Tuesday while moving from Las Cruces, N.M., to Big Sur, Calif. She purchased a wireless Internet card for Starbucks because she can find the coffee shop in most cities.

She said she depends on wireless Internet to stay connected with family and friends while on the road.

"It's my No. 1 stop, I guess," she said. "I always have money on my card so it all works out. I'm going to buy a drink anyway."