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    Barnes and Noble, ATandT Partner on In-Store Wi-Fi

    By
    Nathan Eddy
    -
    July 29, 2009
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      Bookseller Barnes & Noble has announced a partnership with mobile carrier AT&T to provide complimentary Wi-Fi Internet access in B&N’s stores across the United States. Customers can also use the in-store Wi-Fi to access B&N’s collection of 700,000 titles, which it claims is the world’s largest e-bookstore.

      All customers shopping in B&N stores can now freely download and preview any of the more than 700,000 e-book titles, with hundreds of thousands of public domain titles available from Google. The company said its number of e-book titles is expanding every day and expects to hit the 1 million mark soon. The existing AT&T Wi-Fi network at B&N has been available to customers since 2005.

      “We are pleased to expand our relationship with Barnes & Noble as we work together to enhance and deepen customers’ overall experience within the retail stores,” said AT&T Business Solutions CEO Ron Spears. “We currently offer the majority of our AT&T customers Wi-Fi access throughout our more than 20,000 U.S. hot spot footprint, including Barnes & Noble, with their qualifying AT&T services. Now, we’re excited to be able to offer every Barnes & Noble customer the same great Wi-Fi experience at no extra charge whenever they enter a retail store.”

      As a part of the Wi-Fi offering announced, B&N said customers will also soon be able to opt-in to receive personalized messages from the company-such as a coupon to the in-store caf??«, notices on an author book signing or details on where to find a new book release in their favorite genre-on Wi-Fi-enabled devices when a customer enters the store.

      Customers can also download free Barnes & Noble applications, including an events calendar, directions to and locations of the nearest store, and an iPhone application that allows customers to use the iPhone’s camera to snap a photo of a front cover and within seconds promptly retrieve product details, editorial reviews and customer ratings, as well as find and reserve a copy of it in the nearest store.

      Steve Riggio, CEO of B&N, said this service is a natural progression of the company’s digital strategy to provide customers with more choices in how, when and where they want to read. “Barnes & Noble pioneered the concept of retail stores as community centers,” said Riggio. “By providing no-fee Wi-Fi access, we are not only meeting our customers’ needs, but extending the sense of community that has always been in our stores.”

      Just last week the bookseller announced the launch of the e-bookstore. In addition to 700,000 titles so far, the e-bookstore offers more than a half-million public domain books from Google, which can be downloaded for free. First-time users of the eReader will have the opportunity to download free e-books, including staples such as Merriam-Webster’s Pocket Dictionary and classics of literature.

      The company also recently announced a strategic partnership with Plastic Logic, a spin-off company from Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory. Their e-reader, seen as a competitor to Amazon’s widely publicized (and criticized) Kindle 2 e-reader, is scheduled to debut in early 2010 after a limited run for select partners later this year. It will reportedly have a thickness of less than 7 millimeters, a form factor of 8.5 by 11 inches and a weight of less than 16 ounces. It will be capable of displaying Microsoft Office documents and PDF files as well as e-books.

      Nathan Eddy
      A graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, Nathan was perviously the editor of gaming industry newsletter FierceGameBiz and has written for various consumer and tech publications including Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, CRN, and The Times of London. Currently based in Berlin, he released his first documentary film, The Absent Column, in 2013.

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