Hotel Wi-Fi blocking: Marriott is bad

Re:Hotel Wi-Fi blocking: Marriott is bad by lylebarrere on Thursday January 08, 2015 @04:13AM (#8855586)

I wish the FCC could subpoena financial records and to see the price consumers pay for Wi-Fi and the total revenue Wi-Fi sales made for Marriott. I would be willing to bet those numbers would make it harder for Marriott to argue this is anything other than an attempt to gouge captive consumers.

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Re:Hotel Wi-Fi blocking: Marriott is bad by ubernostrum on Thursday January 08, 2015 @06:26AM (#8855911)

Worth pointing out, again, that this is not about charges for in-room wifi, but rather for wifi in larger conference spaces in the hotel.

Which can easily run into thousands of dollars for a weekend, so if an event wants to do, say, live streaming, they do their best to make it impossible for the event to bring its own hotspot and connection.

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Re:Hotel Wi-Fi blocking: Marriott is bad by lylebarrere on Thursday January 08, 2015 @10:58PM (#8860672)

Do you have a source for that? I read the actual FCC announcement from FCC.gov and it says:

"Marriott employees had used containment features of a Wi-Fi monitoring system at the Gaylord Opryland to prevent individuals from connecting to the Internet via their own personal Wi-Fi networks, while at the same time charging consumers, small businesses and exhibitors as much as $1,000 per device to access Marriott's Wi-Fi network."

In your room or in the conference center you should be able to use your own Wi-Fi without interference.

Source: http://www.fcc.gov/document/marriott-pay-600k-resolve-wifi-b...

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Re:Hotel Wi-Fi blocking: Marriott is bad by dagw on Thursday January 08, 2015 @05:29AM (#8855800)

I know many hotel chains have outsourced their wifi handling to third parties, who often gouge the hotels at least as badly as the hotels gouge the customers. So while the Marriott no doubt makes a lot of revenue from wifi I wouldn't be surprised if they make basically no profit.

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Re:Hotel Wi-Fi blocking: Marriott is bad by TeMPOraL on Thursday January 08, 2015 @06:35AM (#8855939)

Then again, those numbers would help in going after those third parties as well.

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Re:Hotel Wi-Fi blocking: Marriott is bad by op00to on Thursday January 08, 2015 @07:27AM (#8856083)

Marriott's just kicked off a campaign to give free Wi-Fi access to all Marriott Rewards members. Not sayin' it's not a gouge, but there you go.

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Re:Hotel Wi-Fi blocking: Marriott is bad by ghaff on Thursday January 08, 2015 @07:35AM (#8856107)

Marriott Rewards Gold status has already been getting free WiFi for a while.

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