I’ve posted a couple of times about the “Nintendo Fan Network” wireless system that Nintendo tested out last year at Safeco Field in Seattle and also a similar system being tested at DisneyWorld in Florida.

Today, Engadget reports that Safeco Field will offer the service for free this season. Previously, there was a $5.00 fee to use the service; given how much everything else costs at a professional sporting event, it’s pretty amazing that they’ve eliminated the charge instead of jacking it up to $15-20, but, as Chris Anderson wrote in Wired a couple of months ago, in the end anyone providing these kind of services will find themselves giving away the service in order to make money on the extras (the old “give away the razor, make the money on the blades” theory that has served Gillette so well for decades).

To wit: a few weeks ago none other than the mighty Starbucks itself said that they would stop charging for WiFi (sort of), after soaking people for $6 a whack for several years. The service has been spotted in the wild in at least one city, and will take them the rest of 2008 to roll out to every store. In cities like New York, which seem to have a Starbucks every 100 fet, this is as good as having municipal WiFi. I hope they hit the Boston stores soon, because Boston’s own municipal WiFi has more or less gone tits-up.