I appreciate the banter on here but I am not likely to comment further because basically people are scapegoating the hotel industry for their own ignorance of wifi and radio frequencies. The FCC is just a rule governing body and are only involved because of a singular complaint and will have to adjust something.
People will complain about wifi being slow, not understanding that their kid’s remote control car is the source of the interference as it operates on the same frequency or some other device on the same frequency is the real sources of their woes but they will never know because you never bothered to read up on on wi-fi works or what can interfere with it.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m certainly not doing that. My issue is that the hotel industry is trying to completely stop people from using their own devices purely to make money, even if that means having the law changed to something that is purely in their own interests.
Bullshit. I am vilifying Marriott because neither you nor they have proven that a rule change is necessary. Maybe writing this a third time will sink it into your thick empty scull: The problem is easily solved now. The problem is easily solved with no rule change.
No one wants to stop people from using their own hotspots but they do want people to move them out of the way. There is no feasible way for any hotel to realistically ban hot spots all together without substantial surveillance and costs. When you’re paying for Wi-Fi, you are paying for bandwidth and most people just don’t care about that. The problem for hotels, however, is people eat up the bandwidth because people do things on the internet they would not do at the local cafe (if you don’t know what I mean, you have a clean squeaky mind).
However, many mobile Wi-Fi hotspot users have displayed an incredible amount of ignorance about the technology they are using. First, you need a good cell reception which comes from outside the building. You may need to move your mobile hotspot closer to a window to get the better reception as the structure of the building can interfere. Better yet, a room with balcony. However, this means your Wi-Fi broadcast may receive more conflicts from outside the window. Anything on the same frequency within 150 feet of eyesight can have an impact. Secondly, you can still receive various conflicts and interference from things within the building. A microwave in a break room, a person’s baby monitor, someone else’s hotspot, or some metal structure in the building. There are several ways to improve signal reception and cut interference but I will not list those here.
So why does the hotel WI-fi work well? They already have their WI-fi routers set in the most optimum places in the building to avoid the numerous potential interferences while you are using something which requires an outside signal which cannot penetrate the building. Trying to set up a mobile hotspot and you are left guessing as to where is the best place to set up.
How do I know this stuff? I have lots of experience with wireless devices. I have friend who uses Wi-Fi in their home. It works great, but you can never set up a hotspot in their home. In fact, you would have a serious problem getting phone calls on your mobile phone, but it is not because the home owner is mean. They so happen to have a thick steel roof and the way it is shaped cuts harshly in to cell phone reception and makes it impossible to set up a hot spot.
There are plenty of other things which can do this. Stucco buildings can have problems simply because the stucco is affixed to masses of metal mesh and that can kill off some wireless signals. So unless you are familiar with the device you are using and what can interfere with it, you can really be stuck in a mystery.
None of which explains why they are trying to change the rules to allow them to block people’s wifi hotspots, nor does it explain how they will successfully stop their signal blocking effecting hotspots which are off their property but near enough to be caught in the death field.
I’m going to file this one under “What color is the sky in your world?”, at least until that’s a question we find ourselves asking on any kind of regular basis.
A video with laser-exercising a cat eats the same bandwidth as a video of a pussy play. Your argument is not convincing.
This is an occasional problem in older structures with thicker walls and/or nonstandard rebar spacing. Usually nothing serious. Worst case, putting the phone on the windowsill solves the issue. Usually the window-side bed table is by far sufficient.
Then there are the “woktenna” tricks.
The MIMO antenna tech of the 802.11n already addresses that. And then there’s the 802.11ac.
Which is a generic issue that is not specific to hotels. And few people carry their own microwave ovens.
Bedside table usually does wonders. If not, use a windowsill. If even that doesn’t work, run that signal strength app you have on your smartphone for just such occasions, and find the place.
Same, this time with a wifi signal monitoring app, works for finding where the “good working” hotel wifi has passable signal strength, and what if anything interferes there. (A true frequency analyzer would be better as it’d catch even non-wifi sources, but the current phones/laptops do not offer that and the RTL-SDR dongles need downconverters to reach 2.45 GHz.)
Long story short, if a hotel thinks they have the right to provide technical blocks to use of my tech, I have all the right in the world and then some to apply technical workarounds. And, my friend, there are plenty.
Thanks for the very informative article. I appreciate the thorough understanding you have offered us.
I also wonder about property rights for a spectrum. How would that play out in densely populated areas where numerous hotels exist?
For me, I would rather Marriott say that they are trying to secure a revenue stream. They normally don’t have a problem with stating that outright. Their room pricing models indicate this and they are up front about it.
As other pointed out here, their move to “free internet for Marriott Rewards members” is not about offering free internet, but incentivizing a loyalty program and trying to get more people to stay in their hotels. It is the same as offering points for a stay.
Larger chains are moving in this direction to generate more revenue. They will offer a slower, basic service that will be included in the room price (not free of course). High speed will of course come at a premium and I don’t doubt that they will make use of the data on usage for revenue generation, much like a grocery store loyalty program.
I think (and hope) that the move the restrict personal hot spots will fail, but I do see other ways that larger hotel chains that serve business travelers will find more new ways to generate revenue off of internet service.
Marriott is a hotel chain that goes after people who put things on expense accounts after all.
They want to change the rule was used to fine a hotel. Cisco agrees with everything the hotels say but the rule change. In other words, Cisco thinks the hotel did nothing wrong in the first place.
Good for Cisco. I am not Cisco though. Congestion of the airways is a thing. I get it. The OP is not about congestion of airwaves though, its about getting the regulations changed to allow a private interest to disrupt already regulated infrastructure and interfere with other private interests.
I see no reason why the rules should be changed. Convince me.
The fundamental issue is that Marriott and others have built a line of business around “property” they don’t own or control, and now, deciding that (not for viable technical reasons) that they need more ownership of this property, they are looking for a rule change.
Unlicensed spectrum is everyone’s property, no matter in what physical space it’s employed. Marriott’s ability to build revenue on it is because of that matter: they would likely have never paid for licensed spectrum and then handed out adapters to customers. The very fact that a billion Wi-Fi client can access any Wi-Fi base station is what underlies the ability to charge for use.
So the trouble in this situation is that they are proposing because they need this, the public good is irrelevant next to their real-state property rights. That the fact that they own some geographic area (or lease it) should give them proprietary ownership of a pubic good: unlicensed spectrum.
That represents a taking of public goods without compensation. Marriott proposes no advantage to Americans for this taking, but merely says because they’re there, they should be able to do this.
Perhaps the FCC should consider limited, expensive licenses for permission to perform “network management” and “security monitoring” of this kind in limited areas? Otherwise, this becomes a private company taking public resources.
That’s a complete misreading of Cisco’s comment. Cisco in fact rejects the right to block personal hotspots, rejects Marriott’s definition of interference, etc., etc.
Shaddack, I basically agree with you. I provide the example because people think hotels want to block the guest room which is as silly as blaming a spa for causing a thunderstorm and forcing you to use a tanning booth.
I disagree with you on building structure and the items within. Many hotels have microwaves in their guest rooms and you can even request it. Buildings can vary widely in construction and materials used. An elevator between your room and the Wi-FI could cause issues. You are right that an antenna can help.
As for modulation, I don’t think that would play a large factor compared to what channel it is… Although, there may be issues with how the the building’s WiFi has been set up. If you have any doubts of the vastness of the problem, make a point of using your mobile device to determine the strength of Wi-Fi through the building and see how many other Wi-Fi networks are in the general area. If you find variations in the Wi-Fi offered by the building owners, let them know and make a point of being in a room that receives a stronger signal.
I am aware of this. But such tamed radar, and its interference with the hotel’s wifi if poorly maintained, is the responsibility of the hotel. I wanted an over-the-top example of a customer-brought device.
Antennas, especially improvised, can be quite fun. Microwaves behave in a ghost-like way, you can do some magic with cooking aluminium foil (or chocolate wrapper) and occasionally you can even get usable results.
It quite would, for the purpose of interference. A wifi scanner won’t “see” a leaking microwave oven, a spectrum analyzer will. There are USB dongles specialized for this but they are awfully expensive. I hope for software-defined radio being more common, so a humble phone can be reprogrammed by running an app to a full-featured spectrum analyzer/sentry. Would be uber-handy.
A different modulation would at best exchange one set of problems for another, which is about the same as changing the signal channel.
But that is really not at what is at issue. Mobile wi-fi users basically want a hot spot in the immediate area for their own individual use and would never need more than ten feet of signal. The problem with the wi-fi signal is it goes as far as 200 feet so impacts far more than just the mobile wifi hot spot. Whether you are using mobile wifi or the establishments wifi, you still may receive interference from a wi-fi hot spot over 100 feet away from you. That is what the problem is.
