T-Mobile, Starbucks and AT&T announced they have reached an “understanding” over the lawsuit filed by T-Mobile late last week regarding the coffee company’s plan to offer free Wi-Fi in conjunction with AT&T.
T-Mobile’s suit alleged that AT&T and Starbucks breached a contract when they began offering free Wi-Fi as part of a customer loyalty program. Starbucks has begun switching all 7,000 of its shops over to AT&T’s Wi-Fi services, but under the terms of the switchover contract the two were not supposed to be jointly marketing services until the beginning of next year. T-Mobile also claimed that since it still provided Wi-Fi at all but two Starbucks locations, the burden of service for free access would fall on it.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Starbucks spokeswoman Stacey Krum said in the statement: “T-Mobile, AT&T and Starbucks have entered into a memorandum of understanding to resolve their disputes, and are committed to providing a high quality Wi-Fi experience for customers.”
Starbucks and AT&T expect to complete the transition of all store locations to AT&T services by the end of the year.
