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.

Comments

Re:Interesting

[MadCow42]

You can passively block it, yes. There's nothing preventing you from building a Faraday cage around your home. You cannot ACTIVELY block it though (i.e. broadcast signals to intentionally interfere with it).

Because TEH ENTERPRISE

[davide marney]

"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."

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.

Re:Interesting

[Shakrai]

There's nothing preventing you from building a Faraday cage around your home.

Not the best idea in the World for a hotel though. Killing your guest's cell phones is not liable to earn you many repeat customers and there's always the issue of First Responders needing working communications if there's ever a disaster or EMS call on your property....

Security and Performance?

[Jason Levine]

Looks like the hotels are claiming this is security and performance related.

Mobile hotspots can be used to “launch an attack against [a hotel] operator’s network or threaten its guests’ privacy” by gaining access to credit card numbers or other personal data, the hotel group said in its petition.

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.

Multiple outside Wi-Fi hotspots operating in a meeting room or convention center can hurt the performance of a hotel’s Wi-Fi network, the group said.

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?

Re:To FCC

[chipschap]

I always find that interesting. The high-end hotels, charging hundreds of dollars per night, also charge outrageous fees such as $20 for 24 hours of internet access, two dollars for a local phone call, etc. The $50 motels give you all of that for no extra charge. The only explanation I can come up with is that the high rollers just expense it all and don't care about the cost.

Re:Interesting

[hankwang]

Repeat guests? C'mon, really? You shop for hotels the same way the rest of us do - Either your employer tells you "you will stay here", or you use a price search and pick the lowest place that doesn't mention rats in the toilet.

Would you book a place that mentions complaints along the lines of "The bathroom is clean, but cell phones of any provider don't work here and the room phone is 2 dollars per minute?"

As for the employer: the travel offices of big companies who regularly have their people work on site at major customer or other offices will consider putting their employees somewhere else if they all complain about a particular hotel. The repeat customer is not the individual person, but the employer.

Re:Additional background

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC, it didn't jam the radio signal at all. The in-house wi-fi system simply issued packets under false pretenses, causing clients of nearby hotspots to lose connection to those hotspots. And every time they'd reconnect, the in-house wi-fi would do it again.

The real answer is get Marriott's in-house wi-fi to DDoS the ever-lovin' shit out of itself. There has to be a tipping point where the amount of disruptive attack packets they're sending basically floods their network. If you just rigged up a box full of AP's and clients that are set to maintain a high-capacity, high-availability connection to each other at all costs, wheeled it in like it was a cart of otherwise normal trade-show gear, then fired it up and let it catch the attention of that disrupt-all-competitors system, it would basically be a massive packet sink and would bring down the disruptive wi-fi system. And the important part is that it wouldn't be because of anything you did, but because of their shitty anti-competitive system. If the system didn't do that, it wouldn't have DDoS'ed itself and your cart of "wanking wi-fi" would do nothing beyond using some electricity.