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Chris Wysocki
Caldwell, NJ

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Wednesday, 28 January 2015

In a victory for consumers, the FCC says blocking Wi-Fi in hotels is prohibited

Sorry Marriott, you can't block personal Wi-Fi hotspots. Because, freedom!

On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission issued an "Enforcement Advisory" stating that blocking W-Fi in hotels is unequivocally "prohibited."

"Persons or businesses causing intentional interference to Wi-Fi hotspots are subject to enforcement action," the FCC bluntly stated, referencing a dispute between Marriott and its customers who said the hotel chain had blocked their personal hotspots to to force them to pay for Marriott's Wi-Fi services.

"The Enforcement Bureau has seen a disturbing trend in which hotels and other commercial establishments block wireless consumers from using their own personal Wi-Fi hot spots on the commercial establishment's premises," the FCC wrote. "As a result, the Bureau is protecting consumers by aggressively investigating and acting against such unlawful intentional interference."

Good.

Marriott's greed already cost them $600,000 in fines. Now they're officially prohibited from ever pulling the blocking stunt again. Their lame excuse — they block non-Marriott Wi-Fi to protect us from "hackers" — is patently absurd. What's more secure than my personal hotspot, linked only to me, and encrypted via a VPN tunnel?

Nah, their only motivation is money. Logging in to a hotel's Wi-Fi typically adds $15 to $20 per day onto your bill. And some convention venues charge two or 3 times that per attendee. Who wouldn't want to find a less expensive alternative?

Plus, I've rarely encounted a hotel network that wasn't slower than molasses; oversubscribed and underprovisioned is the usual configuration. (One notable exception? Disney World. They do Wi-Fi right!) So forcing me to pay for inferior connectivity isn't exactly a way to win repeat business.

Now let's see if we can guess what new way the hotels will find to nickel and dime us. I can hardly wait.

Posted at 10:28 by Chris Wysocki [/tech] Comments | Perm Link |
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