McDonald’s beats KFC and Starbucks beats Seattle

MyBroadband recently tested the free WiFi networks at various takeaway restaurants, which showed that Starbucks and McDonald’s reigned supreme.

For this testing, MyBroadband visited each restaurant, ordered a light meal for takeaway, and tested the free WiFi while waiting for our order.

To assess the performance, we tested each network on a Samsung S22+ smartphone and a Microsoft Surface laptop.

The Free WiFi at most restaurants and coffee shops was easy to connect to, being an open network.

Most had landing pages requesting personal contact details, such as an email address and phone number, to register for the free WiFi.

All the landing pages had the choice to opt in or out of marketing, and we haven’t received any unexpected calls or emails yet.

The networks were all fast enough for basic browsing and getting work done, even when they were limiting speeds.

McDonalds performed the best of all the networks we tested, with an average download speed of 8.49Mbps and an upload speed of 11.26Mbps.

Wimpy performed the second best with download and upload speeds of 6.46Mbps and 9.05Mbps, respectively.

We also had no issues connecting to the WiFi at Nando’s, which was somewhat slow at 3.88Mbps and 1.04Mbps.

The first Burger King we visited had an issue with its network configuration. We could connect to the open network but could not get a valid IP address, which usually points to a misconfigured DHCP server.

We later visited another branch without any challenges and recorded speeds of 2.10Mbps down and 2.37Mbps up.

Our experience at KFC was interesting, as neither branch we visited had its own WiFi working correctly.

The first branch is relatively new and has a clearly labelled KFC free WiFi network available, which requires a password.

The staff informed us they didn’t know the password, as someone had changed it.

The second KFC we tried had the KFC WiFi network available outside the store and password protected.

When we inquired, they said that the WiFi was disconnected and that we should use the Castle Gate Mall WiFi.

This gave us decent speeds of 2.88Mbps and 3.45Mbps, but we were unable to use it on the laptop, as the landing page refused to advance on all of the browsers we tried.

Interestingly, the KFC Free WiFi network disappeared from the list of available networks as soon as we entered the restaurant.

Coffee shops

We also stopped at Seattle Coffee Co and Starbucks, two popular locations for coffee lovers to sit and work due to their free WiFi.

Starbucks had great WiFi, as usual. Download speeds averaged 21.61Mbps, and we could upload at 21.17Mbps.

Seattle was slower but still respectable at 4.95Mbps down and 4.88Mbps up.

The landing page also stated that we would have a 2 hour and 500MB limit, but we didn’t hit either, even after doing multiple speed tests and a decent bit of browsing.

If you are working on the go and need to stop for a quick lunch or coffee, you could make it work from any of these locations, but Starbucks would probably be your best bet if you need a faster connection.