One of the biggest wireless stories for the first part of this year was AT&T’s winning the Starbucks Wi-Fi Hot Spot business from T-Mobile. Starbucks is the one venue that people immediately associate with Wi-Fi Internet access, so grabbing it from T-Mobile (regardless of whether it’s profitable or not) was a big coup for AT&T. Of course, the big story was not that AT&T was taking over the Starbucks account, but rather that the service was now going to be free. Well free for 2 hours per day to anyone with a Starbucks card.

According to one Alan Weinkrantz who blogs at 3screens.net, the conversion has now begun. Alan visited his local Starbucks at 5321 Broadway Road in San Antonio, TX to find an AT&T install crew busily installing their access point. From talking up the installers, he determined that this was AT&T’s first Starbucks conversion in the country, and he was also able to get on line for free as an SBCGlobal Email customer. It was unclear if the “Free for Starbucks Card Holder” deal was in place.

Any Hot Spot that requires an authentication screen poses a challenge for voice-based mobile unified communications, but there may soon be a new, cheaper Internet access for the coffee drinking road warrior.