T-Mobile's Wi-Fi strategy

Interview with the GM of T-Mobile USA's hotspot service. Points to an evolution of their strategy from achieving broad availability (all Starbucks, Borders locations) towards a more targeted approach aimed at achieving coverage where their customers want it. Specifically, this means don't look to T-Mobile to start building out ubiquitous Wi-Fi anytime soon.

The first couple of venues that we partnered with--specifically Starbucks and Borders--were about ubiquity and being every place that people go. It was very important to have a broad footprint. The announcements that you've seen since then target a specific behavior, not generalized coverage. Starbucks gives us broad coverage, whereas a Kinko's is very much about the small- to medium-size business workers.

Was that a change in strategy?

It was an evolution in strategy. It's very important to have a broad footprint to begin with but then to begin to narrow that by going after venues where the targeted customers go...We know about 88 percent of our current users use our service for business, so instead of trying to figure out what venues to go build, we ask them, "Where are the places you go all day?" And that's where we're looking for venue partners.

It's also important that with our venue partners that our service is in all of their stores or locations so you don't have to wonder which locations have our service.

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Where you can expect to see T-Mobile Wi-Fi service to start extending to:

Are you going to stick with the strategy of partnering with large chains?

Broadly distributed brands that mobile workers know and trust--that's a good bet. You're going to see some other announcements in the near future about major brands that are broadly distributed across the United States.

Is the music offering at Starbucks locations indicative of the sorts of services you will provide with your partners?

Yes. That's a joint project with content produced and provided by Starbucks and the network is provided by T-Mobile. We're helping them by hosting some of the content and helping them to manage the interaction with their back-end servers.

The cooperation makes sense because you wouldn't expect customers at a Kinko's to want to download music, they'd be more concerned with sending out faxes or working on work-related projects. Is that the sort of thing that T-Mobile will work on with their partners?

That's a perfect example. With Kinko's we're working on a customized print solution for them so that when customers walk into a Kinko's store they can access print resources without going out over the open Internet. We're providing a differentiated service for a partner in their venue. You'll see more of that with other venues.