I stay in a lot of hotels and in many of them the WiFi access they provide quite frankly sucks. Case in point, during my trip to the UK, I ended up using my iPhone to get online as the WiFi was unusable at times. Well, if a group of hotels have their way, they can force you to use their WiFi:
Back in August, Marriott, business partner Ryman Hospitality Properties and trade group the American Hotel and Lodging Association asked the FCC to clarify when hotels can block outside Wi-Fi hotspots in order to protect their internal Wi-Fi services.
In that petition, the hotel group asked the agency to “declare that the operator of a Wi-Fi network does not violate [U.S. law] by using FCC-authorized equipment to monitor and mitigate threats to the security and reliability of its network,” even when taking action causes interference to mobile devices.
This came about because of Marriott International blocking WiFi that didn’t belong to them. That earned the hotel chain a US $600,000 fine when the FCC found out about it. Thus they and other hotels want the rules changed in their favor.
My take? This is driven by one thing. Money. Not security, reliability, or anything else. The problem is that it takes away choice. Consider this. Hotels provide phones. Should they have the right to block cell phone services and force you to use their in room phones so that they can make a buck?
Of course not.
Providing one service on a premise does not grant one a monopoly on all ancillary services provided on that premise. The FCC needs to shoot this out of the sky and ensure that proposals like this never see the light of day again.
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This entry was posted on December 23, 2014 at 1:29 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags WiFi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Hotel Group Pushes FCC To Block Outside WiFi
I stay in a lot of hotels and in many of them the WiFi access they provide quite frankly sucks. Case in point, during my trip to the UK, I ended up using my iPhone to get online as the WiFi was unusable at times. Well, if a group of hotels have their way, they can force you to use their WiFi:
Back in August, Marriott, business partner Ryman Hospitality Properties and trade group the American Hotel and Lodging Association asked the FCC to clarify when hotels can block outside Wi-Fi hotspots in order to protect their internal Wi-Fi services.
In that petition, the hotel group asked the agency to “declare that the operator of a Wi-Fi network does not violate [U.S. law] by using FCC-authorized equipment to monitor and mitigate threats to the security and reliability of its network,” even when taking action causes interference to mobile devices.
This came about because of Marriott International blocking WiFi that didn’t belong to them. That earned the hotel chain a US $600,000 fine when the FCC found out about it. Thus they and other hotels want the rules changed in their favor.
My take? This is driven by one thing. Money. Not security, reliability, or anything else. The problem is that it takes away choice. Consider this. Hotels provide phones. Should they have the right to block cell phone services and force you to use their in room phones so that they can make a buck?
Of course not.
Providing one service on a premise does not grant one a monopoly on all ancillary services provided on that premise. The FCC needs to shoot this out of the sky and ensure that proposals like this never see the light of day again.
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This entry was posted on December 23, 2014 at 1:29 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags WiFi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.