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>IN YEARS to come we will look back at hotels that charged for Wi-Fi with a kind of incredulous nostalgia. But how far in the future will that be? I think more
by rm999 12y ago
>IN YEARS to come we will look back at hotels that charged for Wi-Fi with a kind of incredulous nostalgia. But how far in the future will that be?
I think more importantly, most people will stop caring if hotels provide wifi. I already rarely connect to free wifi because I have a cellphone - when I use my laptop I can just tether.
The two main blockers for most people (at least Americans) are cell providers who charge insane rates for tethering and international roaming. Tmobile has revealed that it's possible to provide both at a reasonable rate ("T-Mobile CEO John Legere has estimated that profit margins on international roaming fees can be about 90 percent"), so the current situation is just an inefficiency that will eventually die off.
To me, we should still encourage hotels to do the right (modern) thing. But we really should be pushing our cell providers to remove the inefficiencies that prevent us from using our connections conveniently.
- Mahn 12y ago> I think more importantly, most people will stop caring if hotels provide wifi. I will stop caring once international roaming fees stops being a thing. I hope that like you mention it eventually dies off, but right now, I have to assume I'll be offline every time I travel abroad.
- scrollaway 12y agoIt's slowly getting better overall. In Europe, recent laws were passed that forced the mobile ISPs hands and it's now possible in several countries to get service anywhere in the EU as if it were your home country.
- chatmasta 12y agoIt makes far more sense to simply buy an international SIM card upon arrival. In Thailand for example you can get seven days unlimited 3G (faster than in the usa) for just $5 at 7/11. Now that carriers must unlock phones you can do this far more easily. The downside is you get a new phone number. If you travel frequently it might make sense to abandon calling altogether and simply setup an SIP forwarding solution.
- PaulHoule 12y agoAlso cell phones often don't work well in hotel buildings. I stayed at the Thompson in Beverly Hills and couldn't use the phone in my room thanks to the rebar in the building frame and the fact that it's about as easy to put a cell phone tower up in BH as it is to open a pot dispensary. Later on I stayed in a hotel in a less substantial building that was at the very foothills of the Hollywood Hills, about three blocks from the El Capitan Theatre. My phone didn't even work outside because of the insane topography.
- welterde 12y agoIf it happens to be a larger hotel, they could perhaps talk to the telcos about setting up femtocells inside the building. On that note I was quite surprised that DESY [1] in Hamburg has done exactly that - had perfect cell reception ~30m underground (was taking a tour of HERA accelerator [2]). [1] http://www.desy.de/index_eng.html http://www.desy.de/index_eng.html [2] http://www.desy.de/research/facilities__projects/hera/index_eng.html http://www.desy.de/research/facilities__projects/hera/index_...
- PaulHoule 12y agoOne big trouble with small cells is politics. At least historically the EU has standardized on GSM so you can install one set of small cells that everybody can roam to. In the US we have long had the CDMA vs GSM divide and we've even had other protocols in use. At the very least you need to support two different protocols in the US. I think also being a government agency a place like DESY would either let the phone companies put the small cells in for free or maybe even pay a small amount to put them in. (Our neighbors across the street paid about $200 for a Verizon network femtocell so my CDMA phone works if I stand at my mailbox) On the other hand I think the hotels would expect to get paid to add small cells just like the phone companies pay for tower space for macrocells.