Tag: public Wi-Fi network

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If you do value online connectivity, it is worth asking your hotel, motel, holiday rental or similar accommodation about that Wi-Fi Internet service they offer

Ask About A Hotel Or Airbnb’s WiFi Before You Book | Lifehacker

My Comments

When you book that hotel, motel or holiday-rental house like an AirBnB, it may be worth inquiring about the kind of Wi-Fi service the venue has. This is more so where they advertise the availability of Wi-Fi as a headline feature.

In some of these venues, you may come across situations that may impact your online life during your stay.

For example, you may come across a short-term holiday rental that is set up with an el-cheapo Internet-service plan where there isn’t much in the way of included data allowance and the use of multimedia content like Netflix, Internet radio or YouTube; or IP-based voice and video telephony by guests may chew through this allowance. Similarly, the facility may only be provided with a connection that doesn’t have much in the way of bandwidth, a reality with properties located out of major towns.

Hotels and similar locations can have their fair share of Wi-Fi Internet limitations. For example, they could include baseline Wi-Fi Internet for one device as part of the accommodation deal but charge extra for higher bandwidth or concurrent use of more devices. Or you may find that it is an optional extra that is charged for separately.

Similarly you may find that the hotel’s Internet service underperforms during peak occupancy especially when many guests are streaming online multimedia content like Netflix concurrently.

Some of us may see this as a deal-maker or deal-breaker when it comes to booking that accommodation facility depending on what level of priority we give to Internet access while on the road. It may be more important when we engage in videocalling as a way to “touch base”, upload photos to an online album or social media, or enjoy online video content during the evening. As well, it can be of concern where multiple people like a family are using the connection concurrently.

The venue may also see your interest in its guest-access Internet as a way to improve their offering especially when they are in a position to “re-contract” their Internet service to a better tariff. If they are in a truly-competitive market, they could easily end up placing the service on a tariff that offers a “better bang for the buck”. This is by offering more bandwidth and data usage (where applicable) for the same amount that they previously paid or for less.

As well, it may appeal to rental-premises owners who want to see value in renting out their short-let venue for longer periods at a time. It can also help them to court the business community who may use these places as a base to stay while doing business in the local area.

Similarly, an accommodation venue can see their guests’ interest in the quality of their on-site Internet service amenity as an excuse to invest in the associated Wi-Fi and other local-network infrastructure. This can be about filling in Wi-Fi “dead spots” with extra access points or reworking the network for higher throughput such as using equipment with newer Wi-Fi and Ethernet specificcations.

It is still worth it to raise questions about the Internet service you may end up with while on the road. This is because it can benefit both you and the venue owner in various ways.

Article written in January 2020, updated in January 2023 to factor in the local network aspect for guest-amenity Wi-Fi networks.

Article

Wi-Fi officially free at Hyatt-branded hotels | Hotel Management

From the horse’s mouth

Hyatt

Press Release

Product Page

My Comments

Increasingly hotel users are demanding access to Wi-Fi Internet service but a lot of big-name American hotel chains favoured by business travellers weren’t providing this for free. This was typically provided by independent operators or some European, Australian or other hotel chains. If you did want Wi-Fi without paying extra, you had to “look further” such as booking directly with whoever you were staying with.

Home away from home – Internet acces free at Hyatt

This same amenity may be provided by some hotels as part of a frequent-lodger program usually if you were at one of the “elite” tiers in that program. Or it may be integrated in to one or more business-focused “bed-and-breakfast” or “half-board” package deals or available to people who rent a club or concierge-level room. Increasingly hotels are offering free Wi-Fi “across the board” to guests who stay there but this has been limited to one device per room which doesn’t cater for the reality that most of us will maintain two or three devices such as a laptop, tablet or smartphone.

Hyatt have become the first of the big-name American hotel chains to offer free Wi-Fi service to an unlimited number of devices per room on an “across-the-board” basis. This is available in the Hyatt and Andaz brands along with the various Hyatt-derivative brands like Park Hyatt and Grand Hyatt; and is to be available around the world from February 14 2015.

They are offering it independently of the booking path you use to book your room there or whether you participate in their Gold Passport frequent-lodger program. For those of you who are on this plan and are at either the Diamond or Platinum elite levels, Hyatt are replacing the free Internet access that was the “elite advantage” with access to the premium-grade Internet service. Regular users will still be able to purchase that same premium-grade Internet service which will most likely offer a higher bandwidth.

Guests can use this Wi-Fi internet service “upstairs” and “downstairs” i.e. their rooms or the social spaces like the lounges, bars and lobbies. This has been driven by guest demand for Internet service not to be treated as a luxury but to be like what the are used to at home or work.

Personally, I would like to see the premium Wi-Fi service more in the form of something that can play nicely with devices of the Chromecast  Apple TV, and Sonos ilk. where there is the feasibility to operate them in your room as if you are running the equivalent of a home network with a room-specific ESSID. This could play in with the basic-tier offering public-access Wi-Fi “around the place” using a facility-wide ESSID and, preferably, Wi-Fi Passpoint authentication. The premium Wi-Fi service could be offered as “standard faire” for long-term stays or to those of us who rent certain suites.

At least Hyatt is breaking the mould associated with American hotel chains where they nickel-and-dime their guests for essential public Internet access or place onerous limitations on this service for most of us who carry along two or three gadgets. It could be a chance for the rest of them to answer Hyatt by offering similar-standard baseline Internet access.

Article (French language / Langue Française)

La fibre optique et la domotique débarquent dans les campings | DegroupNews

My Comments

Travelling is now becoming more of a connected affair with Internet connectivity being considered a valuable amenity wherever you stay. Even the humble campground or caravan park now offers a level of Wi-Fi-based Internet connectivity as a value-added service.

But the French have taken this further with the use of fibre-optic broadband to assure the people who lodge at these facilities have proper high-speed Internet access everywhere. They are typically in a position to do this because that country is fast becoming the poster child for a highly-competitive highly-affordable Internet service. This is in contrast to the typical cost-effective setup with one or a few Wi-Fi access points to cover the campground with Wi-Fi wireless Internet.

Yelloh Village have worked with Covage to achieve this goal and also provide an IPTV service with access to international TV channels.They have also implemented the “smart-home” concept in the bungalows or cabins that are becoming part of what the typical campground or caravan park offers. For example, when a guest leaves their bungalow, the electrical installation and hot water heater shuts down like as expected in a lot of newer hotels.

Some people may think that the idea of using a campground or caravan park for their holidaying needs is a chance to seek a humble cheap holiday but as more of these places equip themselves in a manner similar to a resort, it may become that camping in the wilderness may be the way to have that humble holiday.

Similarly, the goal to see proper rural Internet service can play in to a campground owner’s hands as a way of seeking to provide high-calibre public-access Internet to holidaymakers who are wanting to camp the “connected way”.

Articles

WiFi and Satellite Equipped Tractors to Follow Yorkshire’s Tour de France | ISP Review

Wifi tractors en route for the tour | Farming UK

From the horse’s mouth

Avonline Satellite Broadband (now Bigblu Broadband)

Home Page (updated link to be online by 25 June 2018)

National Farmer’s Union

Press Release

My Comments

The Tour De France 2014 is starting off in Yorkshire UK and is an event that moves from location to location depending on where the péléton are cycling in this race. As I have seen for myself when I have watched this cycle race on SBS TV, it attracts huge crowds with various locations of flat land near the race route resembling caravan parks due to the many motorhomes showing up at each point because people hire these so they can follow the race by vehicle.

This time, the National Farmer’s Union in the UK have answered to the needs of the connected spectator by setting up mobile Wi-Fi hotspots. But how have they done this even though access to decent broadband in rural areas is non-existent? They have equipped two tractors with a public-access Wi-Fi hotspot consisting of a Wi-Fi hotspot router connected to a satellite-broadband modem provided by Avonline Satellite Broadband (now Bigblu Broadband). This means that each tractor has its own satellite bandwidth which is distributed by Wi-Fi over a range of 500 metres from where it is parked.

Locations

One question that has been raised is whether the mobile hotspots and their satellite backhauls would cope under the pressure of many spectators tendering the images and video they take to multiple social networks using these networks. This is similar to situations that hoteliers would encounter when their guest-access Internet services are at capacity as all of the guests download multimedia content at the same time.

As well, it is an example of using network equipment powered from motor vehicles i.e. the Massey-Ferguson tractors to provide Internet access and making sure that the equipment does survive the distance with uneven power-supply conditions that this entails. I see this also appealing to other rural districts like France’s rural districts who want to cater to the connected visitor who attends a special event like a fair, rally or a cycle road race like the Tour De France.

Click to play “Back British Farming” video (if you don’t see it below)

Update (15 June 2018)

Due to corporate restructuring affecting Avonline Broadband, the satellite ISP mentioned in this article, which has led to it being rebranded to Bigblu Broadband, I have readjusted the Web link for this ISP and references to the name to reflect these changes.

Article

How Fast Is Your Hotel Internet Connection? || HotelChatter

My Comments

The bandwidth available in the Wi-Fi service provided at these hotels may have to meet new realities

A reality that is starting to face travellers is a requirement for increased bandwidth while one is on the road. This is more so as we see the increased availability and cost-effectiveness of portable computing equipment that we don’t want to be without.

Here the hotel industry is having to adapt to this as more guests check in with at least two or three Wi-Fi capable gadgets per room and have these gadgets work with the Wi-Fi public-access network.

This HotelChatter article has raised the issue not just of the cost of the Internet service but also the kind of bandwidth that is provided. Typically, these places have a huge demand placed on their Internet connection by both the guests and the staff. This reality will become more intense as the quality for digital images and online video increases, along with the increased popularity of online video services.

Larger city business hotels may typically use what is expected for a big business’s head office with the high-bandwidth connections whereas smaller outer-urban and rural properties may use broadband of a grade similar to small-business or “enthusiast” residential setups. As well, Wi-Fi wireless setups may have access points shared by multiple rooms, thus you might find that the quality-of-service may not be there at times such as whenever someone is downloading or uploading a large quantity of data such as some video content. In some cases a multiple-SSID access point ends up “divvying up” bandwidth between devices on the “public-guest” SSID associated with the Wi-Fi service, a similar “event” SSID for a Wi-Fi service associated with people renting out conference facilities along with the staff / business SSIDs relating to the hotel’s line-of-business Wi-Fi segment.

According to an infographic that was in the article I am referencing. they reckoned that 1 Mbps would work well for email, Web surfing or audio content (Internet radio, Spotify and the like) with reasonable quality of service. Then they reckoned that 2-5Mbps would work well for Skype, Facetime and similar videocalls; along with video content with reasonable quality of service. More than this could see quick VPN activity, quick Dropbox transfers and excellent multimedia quality-of-service for Skype or streaming audio and video.

Of course, there are situations where the bandwidth available across a hotel can be “maxed out” at peak occupancy and usage times such as 8pm to 9pm most nights as I learnt from someone who lived in a rural area but effectively “lived out of” one of the larger downtown hotels when he was in town. Here, this is when most of the younger guests would be concurrently streaming video content from various video-on-demand services which they subscribe to or uploading a quantity of photos to one or more online services like Facebook, Instagram, Google+ or Dropbox.

The article was asking guests and staff in these places to speed-test the public Internet connection available to the guests and assess the bandwidth that these services provided. They were reckoning that apps like the SpeedTest app for Android and iOS would work as a benchmark tool for this situation.

Here, I would look at a bandwidth goal of preferably 2-5Mbps per room plus a similar capacity or more for public areas like the bar and lounge areas. Similarly, I would pay attention to any login environments that simplify the setup and login experience that clients have to encounter. Here, improvements like use of Wi-Fi PassPoint would benefit the user experience.

I also have raised the issue of the availability of Wi-Fi-based gadgets like wireless speakers, Chromecast modules and digital cameras that don’t work well with browser-based login routines that these public-access networks implement. Here, guests are likely to end up wanting to use these gadgets to the full potential while they travel the “switched-on” way and the industry will have to look at ways to support these “gadget clusters” especially in the guest’s own “domain” which is their room while keeping the data on these “clusters” private to that “cluster”. This also includes support for technologies like Wi-Fi Passpoint and other so-called “Hotspot 2.0” technologies that allow automated or “browser-free” login to these guest-access networks.

For that matter, when I review hotels, I would provide some commentary on the guest-access Internet service. This would encompass not just the cost of the service as well as the bandwidth and quality-of-service that the network provides as well as the login experience.

Article

Los Angeles Contemplates A Plan For Free Citywide Wi-Fi | Co.Exist | ideas + impact

My Comments

There have been previous attempts at US local government establishing citywide Wi-Fi public Internet services but a lot of these efforts have been shut down or curtailed by, usually, state governments working at the behest of established local telephony and cable-TV companies.

The Los Angeles City Council are putting forward an idea to have a citywide public Wi-Fi network but are having to realise the practicalities like the tall buildings and were having to factor in the activity of the local telephony and cable-TV services. This is similar to Google establishing fibre Internet in Kansas City and a few other US cities in competition with the established telephony and cable-TV operators.

The issue that will have to be raised is that action at the federal level has to be taken by a strong government to allow right-of-way access for competitive Internet and telecommunications services. Here, I have seen the effect of the Carterfone hearing and the anti-trust investigation in to AT&T, which led to competitive telephony service, wearing off and the country falling back to uncompetitive Internet access with most areas having the choice between two operators working as a cartel.

What America needs to be educated about is infrastructure-level competition with concepts like local-loop or sub-loop unbundling, the operation of public Wi-Fi networks, implementing different media to provide competitive telecommunications access, virtual-network competition and other concepts. Here, they could observe what France has done to provide a lively telecommunications, cable-TV and Internet market that really is for the consumer.