For the past two years in the US, the words Wi-Fi and T-Mobile were fairly synonymous. Until a few months ago, when SBC began announcing Wi-Fi deployments of its own: UPS Stores and McDonald's.

SBC announced two more deployments today:

-> Barnes & Noble (600 locations are live)
-> Avis (88 locations; 3 will be live by year end)

UPDATE: I just spoke with SBC about the deployments. Wayport is not involved at all with Barnes & Noble or Avis. Interestingly, Wayport is managing the Hertz Wi-Fi deployments. As for the SBC/Wayport/McDonald's rollout, I'm told that 1,741 McDonald's locations are now live. Not too shabby.

To the consumer, all that matters is that SBC is aggressively expanding its Wi-Fi network and, for now at least, giving it away for free to DSL customers. Even for non-DSL customers, the service is cheaper than what T-Mobile is charging: $20/month. To get that same rate from T-Mobile you also have to be a cellular customer.

So how will T-Mobile respond? My guess is that they're going to drop their pricing soon, at least for cellular customers. But perhaps I'm just being hopeful.

The good news is that SBC is establishing itself a major Wi-Fi player and, more important, understands that Wi-Fi is a low-cost value-add service rather than the expensive standalone business that T-Mobile continues to cling to.