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Hotel Group Asks FCC For Permission To Block Some Outside Wi-Fi
alphadogg writes The FCC will soon decide whether to lay down rules regarding hotels' ability to block personal Wi-Fi hotspots inside their buildings, a practice that recently earned Marriott International a $600,000 fine. Back in August, Marriott, business partner Ryman Hospitality Properties and trade group the American Hotel and Lodging Association asked the FCC to clarify when hotels can block outside Wi-Fi hotspots in order to protect their internal Wi-Fi services.
From elsewhere in the article: During the comment period, several groups called for the agency to deny the hotel group’s petition.
The FCC made clear in October that blocking outside Wi-Fi hotspots is illegal, Google’s lawyers wrote in a comment. “While Google recognizes the importance of leaving operators flexibility to manage their own networks, this does not include intentionally blocking access to other commission-authorized networks, particularly where the purpose or effect of that interference is to drive traffic to the interfering operator’s own network,” they wrote.
So can I block all wireless signals in my home now, including those bleeding through from Comcast free wifi (via the Neighbors connection)?
Cable providers jamming satellite tv?
I think they should be allowed to do it on their premises.
However they should be required to post signs in conspicuous places that alert the user to the blocking "ACHTUNG! We block personal wifi here, fetch your wallet bitch!" as well as on sales literature.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
How are we supposed to make money without creating artificial scarcity to make people use our product?
Signed,
The Free Market
2.4 GHz is an unlicensed band, anyone can transmit anything on that frequency (provided they stay within the power limits).
This is a douchebag move on the part of the hotel, but I don't see why it should be illegal.
Of course, this also means that others can do this to the hotel's network...
Spoiler: poorly built and by-design ("powerline networking") modern networking equipment - of the sort that provides access to Google & co. services - does more to render a wide spectrum unusable than any by-design jamming solution of a specific frequency range.
So, while Marriott are cunts, other players ought to begin by clearing up their own yards.
"We need rent seeking and the ability to limit outside competition so we can maximize profits."
Sorry, but this is just corporate assholes asking to be treated as special.
And, of course, government will hand it right over to them, because all politicians worship at the altar of corporate profits being entrenched into law. Even the ones who claim to be in favor of free markets.
The only free market is how much the fucking lobbyists pay to buy laws. Because that avoids public scrutiny.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
from their customers' own unrelated outside services? What's next, forcing hotel patrons to rent your cell phones for exorbitant sums? Fuck Marriott.
...no.
Next question?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
ISM bands are not appropriate frequencies for exclusive services. If you need frequencies for exclusive use, you can rent them like other businesses do too.
"in order to protect their internal Wi-Fi services."
I'm soooo sure that's the real reason and it has nothing to do with money.
Why yes, the balance shifts in places like hotel conference centers, where many people use their own, personal hotspots precisely so they can better lock down confidential information. Please. This is a naked money grab. No more charging $thousands just for an Internet connection at a trade show.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
If they are blocking wifi inside their hotel, they are almost certainly blocking wifi outside their hotel as well. An eye for an eye...
SURELY NOT!!!!!
And then will neighbors legally be allowed to broadcast signal blocking interference, to protect their wifi from the hotels?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Operation on 2.5Ghz is authorized by part 15 of the FCC rules. Within part 15, there are a number of subparts, including subpart 5:
If a Part 15 transmitter does cause interference to authorized radio communications,
even if the transmitter complies with all of the technical standards and equipment
authorization requirements in the FCC rules, then its operator will will be required to cease
operation, at least until the interference problem is corrected.
http://transition.fcc.gov/Bure...
I want jail time for the managers responsible for this.
So far I'm guessing hundreds of counts of breach of computer network--the people whose networks they successfully shut down, thousands of counts of attempted breach of computer network--1 count for every device that entered the area, and conspiracy since there was more than 1 person involved. Any overzealous federal prosecutor should be able to go for at least 10,000 years of prison time.
from their customers' own unrelated outside services? What's next, forcing hotel patrons to rent your cell phones for exorbitant sums? Fuck Marriott.
Goodness no! Go to the trouble of maintaining a stock of handsets for you to get your grubby fingers on, and a staff to hand them out and get them back? We'll just knock the handset you have onto our private tower, where you'll pay roaming fees that would make you think you were staying on a Kupier Belt object with a state telcom monopoly. Your telco will get their cut of the charges, so they'll pass the bill along, don't worry.
Stop charging for internet access. NEWSFLASH - offer your guests better services, and they will be willing to pay more for their rooms.
USB tethering can't be blocked. Pissing off customers when there's an easy workaround for your coercion doesn't seem like a good idea. Regardless, the ISM bands are not for exclusive use and anyone trying to prevent someone else from using these bands should be taught a lesson.
A few things are worth noting about the original case. Marriott agreed in a plea deal to have improperly used "containment features" of FCC-licensed equipment to block Wi-Fi hotspots, and this was performed in conference facilities, not the hotel. https://www.fcc.gov/document/m...: "Marriott Hotel Services, Inc., will pay $600,000 to resolve a Federal Communications Commission investigation into whether Marriott intentionally interfered with and disabled Wi-Fi networks established by consumers in the conference facilities of the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, in violation of Section 333 of the Communications Act. The FCC Enforcement Bureau’s investigation revealed that 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."
. . . they might start jamming you!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Aside from the hotels, fuck Cisco on this one:
"The hotel group found support from Cisco Systems. “Unlicensed spectrum generally should be open and available to all who wish to make use of it, but access to unlicensed spectrum resources can and should be balanced against the need to protect networks, data and devices from security threats and potentially other limited network management concerns,” Mary Brown, Cisco’s director of government affairs, wrote.
While personal hotspots should be allowed in public places, the “balance shifts in enterprise locations, where many entities use their Wi-Fi networks to convey company confidential information [and] trade secrets,” she added."
So, because some people might not be competent enough to set up a network where you can't spoof an AP just by using a similar name (because 802.11x is totally exotic and stuff) we should just trash the ISM band in order to protect trade secrets and the children. I wonder if Cisco happens to sell a nifty WLAN management console that would let me identify those 'rogue' APs and knock them out, by any chance?
(Weird Al Yankovic)
Oh, that's not legal? Well, how is this any different?
Sorry, but this is just corporate assholes asking to be treated as special.
We don't live in a Socialist State.
Perhaps this is "Corporate Assholes" trying to monetize their investment in their hotel property and make money as most businesses are created to do?
But on a practical engineering standpoint, the technology seems problematic.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
"when hotels can block outside Wi-Fi hotspots in order to protect their internal Wi-Fi services."
Wouldn't that be a little like Verizon jamming competing cell phone carriers phones in a sports stadium they own? I can't imagine how this is even remotely legal.
.
(did I say something funny?)
If my trade group picks a venue where they stop me from using my hotspots and charge inordinate amounts for an internet connection, I would strongly protest. I would demand my trade association to pick only those venues that do not block local wifi. Already I am being charged arm and a leg because almost all the convention venues use some kind of unionized labor where I can't move my own computer without calling a carpenter, or plug the computer into the wall without calling in the electrician... Now this?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So they can bill you $0.25 min for local calls (up to 5 miles) and $1+ for other calls.
Great, so now if I want to run a personal hotspot in my hotel room, I have to spoof both the SSID *and* the MAC Address of the Hotel's AP so their security software doesn't realize that it's not theirs, and run it at a high enough power level to drown out the "real" hotel AP so I can connect to it.
Is that really better for security?
Never stay at a Marriott hotel. End.
47 C.F.R. 15.5 contains a general provision that devices may not cause interference and must accept interference from other sources. It also prohibits the operation of devices once the operator is notified by the FCC that the device is causing interference.
Let hotels block and jam everything but emergency phone calls, but prohibit them from offering or allowing anyone else to offer any service that competes with the blocked services. In other words, if you are running a "get away from it all/no non-emergeny communications with the outside world" retreat center you would be allowed to jam al lng as you let 911/999/emergency calls through. You would also be allowed to jam areas only open to employees/contractors/etc. but not available to the paying or non-paying public. But as for hotel rooms, trade show floors, "members only" business centers/bars/etc. where membership is pretty open to anyone with a fat wallet and where non-emergency phone or data service is available at all, jamming is anti-competitive and should be banned by the Federal Trade Commission or a similar body.
Looks like the hotels are claiming this is security and performance related.
Maybe. If the mobile hotspot is called "Marriot Free Wi-Fi" but is operated by someone collecting information on anyone who connects. Then again, this could happen anywhere. This is why you don't connect to strange wi-fi networks. If you must connect to your hotel's wi-fi network, make sure you're connecting to the right one, not just one with the same name. The solution here is guest education (post signs about which Wi-Fi network to connect to, etc), not running a jammer to block everyone else's Wi-Fi signals.
My off-the-shelf router handles multiple wi-fi networks just fine. I connect to my Wi-Fi and my performance isn't degraded because my neighbors run Wi-Fi networks of their own. A hotel should be able to invest in the infrastructure to provide their own Wi-Fi that will work regardless of whether or not I turn my phone's Wi-Fi hotspot on.
The "security" and "performance" claims are garbage. The real reason is that they want to be able to sell you their Wi-Fi service for a ton of cash and it's hard to do this when you can bring your own Wi-Fi network in with you. As gurps_npc pointed out, if we let them do this, how long until they block all cell phone signals because it interferes with the "security and performance" of their phone system?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Actively attacking other signals you believe are breaking criminal or civil law in some way should be referred to appropriate authorities to take action. Vigilantism can be fun yet ultimately unproductive... Expecting FCC to bless such behavior does not strike me as a serious proposition.
Open networks with no layer 2 security cannot be "protected" not by lawyers, not by FCC, not by Hotel operators, not by anyone... All who go there are only wasting their time.
If Hotels really wanted to "protect" their guests from evil operators who by the way can exist at any hop they can start by not placing guests at unnecessary risk in the first place.
Hotel lobbying dollars would be much more constructively directed at tech industry for an operationally viable solution.
Only option I can think of that stands any chance of working today is lighting up a virtual SID for each room and handing out WPA2 passwords with room keys valid for duration of your stay.
So basically, sure, if they want to shield their entire building from outside RF, with the exception of the entranceway, and as long as its clearly labeled for anyone entering to expect their devices to not work...then fine.
I think if this is allowed then the restriction should also be clearly disclosed at the time when a potential guest is choosing whether to make a booking. I err on the side of not limiting what someone can do within their own premises without a very good reason, but the flip side of that is customers must be able to vote with their wallet for a competing hotel that does not impose the same limitation if that's what they want to do.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Yes, and no. It's not entirely a naked money grab because there's presumably more guests than (certainly usable) channels available, so if everyone just grabbed a channel then nobody gets reasonable service. In that sense, I would ask people not use their own APs. For securing confidential information you shouldn't rely on radio waves anything, anyway: Use full disk encryption and VPNs back to home base. If you think you're better off with your own AP you're deluding yourself, and being an annoyance for the local infrastructure users to boot. In return for asking that, though, I'd not charge for local networking services, only for bandwidth, and that probably only above some typical average or median use (checking mail, reading news, etc.) figuring the rest is part of basic service. Charging hundreds just because you can abuse your position as a hotel is indeed a naked money grab, and is IMO enough to shut the entire idea down. But there is a tiny sliver of "don't be a spectrum hog" on the side of the hotel guests bringing their own APs too.
Absolutely not! Corporations should not have the control to tell you what you will and won't pay for. If the FCC allows this, its basically a big middle finger to consumer rights. They should abide by the same rules. If your establishment relies on selling WiFi, you should reconsider your business model,
I was at a trade show a week ago at a "high end" hotel in downtown Chicago. They had signs up saying to NOT put up your own access points because the hotel wanted to guarantee that the guests had the best possible internet experience.
Yerp.
Had nothing at ALL to do with their $10 per day up to $35 per 8 hour period wifi access plans.
The captive portal was BROKEN, it gave the user the chance to bill the charge to the room and create a login for their "stay." The logins never worked and every few minutes it would forget the mac address and I'd have to recommit to charge my room. It's one thing to charge people for access, but to have a broken mechanism for charging is just insult to injury. Access for ME was supposedly free because I was an "exhibitor" but still, it was ridiculous.
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
Wish I would have heard about this during the comment period, the article says it ended Friday. Anyway, the case is RM-11737 in FCC's ECFS.
That's rolled in with the active blocking of the 802.11x spectrum. You get a two-for-one deal.
...oh, that is Mariott, not Hilton, please disregard this message
For anyone based in the UK who wants to make a submission against this, I suggest you base your argument on the versatility of wifi and its use in closed networks.
For example, there are apps for Android and iOS that let you use your phone as a NAS box (network addressed storage) and this would break it. Or apps that use wifi to use your phone as a remote control for the media player software on your PC.
If you build a list of the non-internet use cases for wifi, focusing particularly on activities business travellers are very likely to use, then it would be extremely hard for the FCC to find that Marriott's move isn't antagonistic to guests....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I don't see how they can win this one... My Verizon "MiFi" has a USB charging port. My Linux laptop happily connects directly to the MiFi and uses it as a USB attached network port, direct onto the cellular network. No 802.11 in play at that point, and blocking cellular signals would be a big time spectrum license violation.
Hello,
The proceeding number for this case is RM-1737, so if you're interested in leaving a comment on it, the URL is http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/uploa....
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Dexter is a good dog.
Most employers don't care which specific hotel you stay at, so long as it's within a particular budget. I doubt most employers are going to want employees staying at a hotel that - oh - blocks cellular signals for employees they're trying to contact, and I also doubt that IT employers are going to appreciate blocked wifi.
Never deal with Mormons. This is how they behave.
You want me to PAY for WiFi in your hotel?
Uh... sorry, I got the wrong number.
*flips through phone book for some other hotel in the area*
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I wonder if a building with a built in faraday cage could use specific repeaters inside such cage to, for example, provide cell phone signal. Such repeaters exist. For example I can use the cellphone inside my city's underground subway/tube/metro. I know some kind of repeater is used because such acces has been growing gradualy station by station in the last years.
Because the spectrum in question is a shared space.
- Simple Jamming will fubar up their own network access...
- Sophisticated attacks will entail doing things that...heh...fubar up their own access.
Even if they come up with a clever means to do it all- like several said, this would entail a raftload of things that pretty much everyone except the money grubbing assholes would say "NO!" to out of box. You'd have to jam my damn phone to be able to do that. The moment I found that one out (Since it is required in most jurisdictions to be disclosed that you're doing this if the FCC did allow them to do this- failure to do so is a Deceptive Business Practice. Doing it up-front before the payment is made would mean a no-sale for most.
I don't get what they think...oh, snap...not thinking at all.
and if they do I will never stay at any hotel that does this. A hotel should not be able to tell me what to do with my own property. My hot-spot is my property, I pay for the service, and I should be able to use it anywhere my carrier has signal! FU and your expensive Wifi service. You will only lose customers if you do this. It would easily be worked around by tethering to your phone, a minor inconvenience, but enough to cause me not to want to stay at your hotel. The only way to block customers from using their hot-spots would be to block RF altogether. Then they could charge for WiFi and phone calls. NO, is all I have to say, NO!
It's funny. Many small hotel/motel chains offer free wifi and internet. But the big chains charge for it. Then if you set up a hotspot with your phone, they want to block that, forcing you to use their overpriced internet. They claim they have to cover their cost, but somehow the small chains cover their cost and don't even charge for it.
In other news, Marriott has instructed staff to refer to hotel customers as "hostages" rather than "guests".
Caveat Emptor
There, fixed the headline for you, to more accuratly reflect the facts. ref
Most business hotels including 4 / 5 star in NYC have terrible wifi and a serious lack of bandwidth. Most hotels have outsourced their Internet to a third party. It's not Mariott but this third party and frankly they suck at Internet. Hosting a large company event with a few hundred attendees in the hotel ballrooms can be an issue. I once attended a Marriott event and we crashed the entire hotels Internet about 5 times. We had 200 iPads running WebEx with animation between the slides. We were told we were on a VLAN on private AP's in the ballroom yet we crashed the whole network repeatedly. We wanted to contract with Verizon to bring in our own network but the company providing Internet to the hotel forbid it. Companies pay a huge amount to hotels when having a conference. Our network people know we are getting ripped off but there's nothing we can do about it.
I'd like to see the FCC set aside a block of frequency spectrum for commercial data use, just as they already do for LMR. The frequencies should be in the GHZ range and would need a massive amount of separation from the consumer unlicensed spectrum to discourages hijacking by modifying consumer APs. Lower frequencies would be allocated to users who need to cover a larger geographic area. They would purchase an annual license from the FCC for a frequency, which would be programmed into the access point. The business would provide USB WNICs to each of its authorized users with the frequencies programmed in. Cell phone companies would protest this, as currently the only solution for wireless connectivity at the municipal level is to pay cell phone companies for service.
So, if the hotel blocks my relatively secure cell phone hotspot, will they also assume all liability for malware that may be inserted by their easily compromised hotel systems? Imagine the downstream cost if the Sony hack was initiated through a hacked hotel wifi...
Heh. I'll show you. I haven't updated my preferred roaming list since 2003. My ancient flip phone will never even see your tower!
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The repeat customer is not the individual person, but the employer.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
My company doesn't have a strong policy - we all try to keep costs down, but we don't go crazy. There are two primary reasons I won't go to a hotel that blocks my use of my phone +/or ipad as a hotspot:
1) security - this is actually pretty much a company policy. We never use public wifi anywhere except in a few rare cases where there was no choice (typically because the cell signal was too weak). If we had a corporate VPN to run everything through it might be less dangerous.
2) bandwidth - in the few times I've actually tried to use the hotel's wifi, or a convention center's wifi, the bandwidth was so bad that it was unusable.
and also, 3) they actually charge for this? Every place I've been to in the last year has had free wifi, and in some cases free hardwired ethernet. Hmm. I am a member of Hilton's HHonors, so I get the wifi for free if I want it. I guess they do charge otherwise. HHonors doesn't cost anything so there's no reason I know of not to be a member. Same goes for Marriott, etc.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
> On the other hand faraday cages tend to block more frequencies
> than you'd like, ex. you probably also would block cell reception.
So? Put up a cell low power cell tower inside the building... and charge users roaming fees while you're at it. Get em coming and going.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
AC pedophile
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
It's the thought that counts. You probably have good plan anyway since she is probably banned from her own hotels.
Most hotel networks I sign onto have people trying to conduct brute force attacks, huge numbers of P2P threads, and generally are too unstable to use. I could not find a hotel network in Hawaii in six different hotels last year that was usable. Why do they care if I want to use a network that actually allows me to work?
I always call ahead and ask about in room WiFi. This sends a clear message that choice of amenities is a hotel selection item. After you get there is not the time to find out it doesn't exist or is very restricted. Check online reviews. For the most part the reviews are somewhat accurate. Many places have WiFi, but below dial up speeds. If your hotel has free local or 800 calls, look into dialup instead. At some hotels, it is faster.
We are obviously going back and forth on a joke here(though there have been a few cases over the years of some poor sucker in a coastal city accidentally roaming onto a cruise ship's $10/min cellular-to-satellite tower and getting a bit of sticker shock, though not often enough to suggest anything other than occasional incompetence); but at least on CDMA(in the broad sense of 'what Verizon and Sprint do', not necessarily the one particular generation that was actually called that) the carrier can initiate a PRL push, silently, at their discretion. Sometimes it's just an update, since towers and signal landscape changes over time, sometimes it's them assisting the feds in moving you over to a stingray...
But they can only do that if I've had my phone on since 2003. :-D
What? It will happen automatically when I turn it back on? *sigh*
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Even *IF* the FCC says "go ahead, jam that wifi", is there any reason we couldn't start moving to 5.8GHz hardware so as to avoid the nonsense they want to pull on the 2.4GHz channels?
There are several options, especially now that 802.11ac has started taking hold:
*Use a USB 3G/4G stick in a small router that supports WAN over USB and has 5.8GHz WiFi (probably the most clunky yet permanent solution because it would have Ethernet ports as well)
*Use a 3G/4G hotspot that offers 5.8GHz wifi.
*Go old-school and connect your phone to your laptop with a good-old USB cable?
*Skip the tethering altogether and use a USB 3G/4G stick plugged directly in to your laptop.
This might not be an option for some clients (older phones/ipads/many cheaper tablets) but they've been putting 5.8GHz radios in the last couple of generations of iphone/ipad/google nexus devices and some laptops, so it's not out of the question.
And while changing to another frequency range might only be a stop-gap solution, but how long until these hotel chains upgrade their hardware? Probably quite a while... and by then, we'll just have to figure out another way of circumventing their BS.
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)
Can't blame the hotels for wanting for make a little money. But what's the alternative? How about everything be free? Let's have food for free. How about gas for our cars for free? Electricity and heat for free. Let's do everything for free and let's have everything for free and nobody has to make any money on anything. It's just what Karl Marx wanted.