T-Mobile U.S. is continuing its push to be the alpha operator in the emerging U.S. wireless LAN public access market.

The carrier has announced plans to put hotspots in about 400 Borders book stores by the end of the first quarter of 2003 (see T-Mobile Takes WiFi to Borders). No doubt it believes this to be a novel idea.

The firm says it now has about 1,600 hotspots up and running in airports, hotels, and Starbucks coffee shops in North America (see Starbucks Hotspots (Slight Return)). The carrier has told Unstrung that it plans to have 2,000 802.11b access points running by the end of this year.

As far as we can tell, there's only one problem with T-Mobile's plans to put hotspots in Borders. They want to charge you money to wirelessly access the internet.

Now, spending money is not something that Unstrung personally associates with Borders. Whenever we go there we settle back in the comfy areas they've provided, check out the magazines, skim a novel: all for free!

Hey, we know that's not how it's supposed to work. But that's how it does work. So, if the books and magazines are free, why on Earth are we going to pay for wireless Internet?

— Dan Jones, Senior Editor, Unstrung
http://www.unstrung.com