McDonalds' adds McWiFi to burger and fries

IF YOU'RE A ROAD WARRIOR that eagerly sniffs out WiFi everywhere you travel, you are probably more used to expensive coffee and cardboard paninis than you are big macs and fries.

But that is all about to change, since McDonalds' announced at the weekend that it is throwing open all the WiFi hotspots at its stores to customers for free, in a move that single-handedly makes it the biggest provider of free wireless access in the UK.

1200 restaurants in Blighty already have paid-for McWiFi access, and this will simply be opened up to allow customers to pull out laptops and work away.

However, we suspect that the aim is to get Iphone buyers into the store rather than business hounds - we can quite see hoards of oiks trading ringtones on their Jesus phones over a quarter pounder. Ugh.

McDonalds already accounts for 10 per cent of all the WiFi hotspots in the UK, with T-Mobile (Starbucks) and BT (Costa) the other major players. With 3G broadband ramping up quickly here, however, how long will the demand last? µ