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

Interesting

[Eosi]

So can I block all wireless signals in my home now, including those bleeding through from Comcast free wifi (via the Neighbors connection)?

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).

Re:Interesting

[Austerity Empowers]

More or less. If you build a faraday cage around your house, that's legal. If you build a jammer, that is illegal.

It seems like jammers are bad because you can't control the range of their effectiveness. On the other hand faraday cages tend to block more frequencies than you'd like, ex. you probably also would block cell reception.

Re:Interesting

[Eosi]

Oh well, there goes the neighborhood.

Re:Interesting

[wonkey_monkey]

It seems like jammers are bad because you can't control the range of their effectiveness.

Unless, of course, you put it in a Faraday cage.

Re:Interesting

[SuricouRaven]

You can make a jammer just by stabbing a knife into the safety door switch of a microwave oven. Illegal as hell, but it'll certainly knock out wireless for some radius.

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....

Re:Interesting

[Jason Levine]

It depends. Can you afford a team of lobbyists to wine and dine government officials? If so, you can do anything you want to do. If not, keep your head down and keep obeying the corporate-written laws.

Re:Interesting

[wisnoskij]

So I hotel could build a structure that make cellphones useless inside of it, that make calling 911 not work? That disconnected cops and ambulance workers from connecting to HQ through whatever radio frequency they use? I am sort of thinking that would be illegal as well.

Re:Interesting

[pla]

Killing your guest's cell phones is not liable to earn you many repeat customers

Why would the FCC grant the hotels permission to block WiFi, but not all RF?

The core "problem" here centers around lost revenue due to people inside the hotel using self-provided free or lower-cost alternatives to the insanely expensive crap internet access the hotels themselves provide. Why stop with internet? Just think how much more money the hotels could make by blocking phone service as well!

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.

Re:Interesting

[Half-pint HAL]

Next thing you know, you'll be restricted to 100ml bottles of liquids...

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:Interesting

[ah.clem]

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.

I think that's probably a bad assumption. Staying within the same chain (in the US, they all have a broad range of properties at various prices, low to high) is very much the same as renting your car from the same franchise, using the same airline for the miles and a CC like Amex or BofA that gives you double miles and other perks (but be aware of your fees). I suppose that if you only travel once or twice a year then grabbing the lowest price you can get seems like a good idea, but when you are on the road a lot, building air miles, hotel loyalty perks (Executive floor access, free food and drinks, reserved parking, free ramp parking, etc.), access to your chosen airlines lounge with free drinks and snacks rather than sitting in seats picking up everyone's colds, picking up free/reduced/upgraded rental cars when on your *own* vacation are all part of the strategy. On the road, you have to think the "long game"; if you start small, just a few trips a year, you are still building your accounts - just my experience.

Re:Interesting

[ZeroPly]

Absolutely. The actual FCC regulation (Title 47 Section 333) states:

No person shall willfully or maliciously interfere with or cause interference to any radio communications of any station licensed or authorized by or under this chapter or operated by the United States Government.
(June 19, 1934, ch. 652, title III, § 333, as added Pub. L. 101–396, § 9, Sept. 28, 1990, 104 Stat. 850.)

So you can block wireless signals all you want, as long as no one is attempting to communicate. Just keep other people out of your house and make sure the jammer doesn't affect anyone outside, and you're not breaking any rules. One of my friends had a Faraday cage built in his basement to test Bluetooth jammers.

Re:Interesting

[zippthorne]

They compete on price because that's all the information the aggregation networks have. I'm not in the industry, so I don't know if it's the aggregation networks' fault for not having more detail in the spec, or the airlines' fault for not releasing enough information, or what, but the problem is that when using one of the aggregators, you can typically only sort on price or time. Comfort details aren't part of the sorting metric, so the system doesn't optimize for them.

Re:Interesting

[Holi]

Actually your microwave is an ISM device and takes precedence over the unlicensed usage. Your devices have to accept interference from ISM devices the reverse is not true.

Re:Interesting

[linuxrocks123]

Staying within the same chain (in the US, they all have a broad range of properties at various prices, low to high) is very much the same as renting your car from the same franchise, using the same airline for the miles and a CC like Amex or BofA that gives you double miles and other perks (but be aware of your fees). I suppose that if you only travel once or twice a year then grabbing the lowest price you can get seems like a good idea, but when you are on the road a lot, building air miles, hotel loyalty perks (Executive floor access, free food and drinks, reserved parking, free ramp parking, etc.), access to your chosen airlines lounge with free drinks and snacks rather than sitting in seats picking up everyone's colds, picking up free/reduced/upgraded rental cars when on your *own* vacation are all part of the strategy.

It's a bad strategy unless you're essentially cooperating with the airline to embezzle money from your employer for yourself in a very inefficient way. I personally would have ethical problems with that. The airlines and other companies have those programs to encourage brand loyalty, so that you'll go with them even when they're not the cheapest. They think the cost of offering these discounts will be made up by stupid or unethical people buying tickets with them even when they're not the best choice. It works; otherwise, they'd cancel the programs.

There's no "long game" with airline perks. Sure, get an account; there's no downside. But, once you have an account, try to get rid of your miles as quickly and efficiently as possible. Don't hold onto them; the airline can and will devalue them eventually if you do that. And don't take a trip on a particular airline to keep your miles from expiring or something unless you really calculate it out: the value of your miles is, if you're following this advice, almost certainly less than the value of the difference in the ticket. We're talking about maybe $150 worth of company credit here if you have 15,000 points on Southwest.

Of course, if you're a frequent business flyer paying $3,000 in extra airline fees on your company credit card so you get to go to Hawaii once a year and eat free peanuts before your flight takes off in a private lounge, well, again, that's called embezzling, and you're a thief. But I guess it might work out for you in that case if your company never does internal audits.

---linuxrocks123

Re:Interesting

[linuxrocks123]

You'd be wrong. The FCC has repeatedly stated that passive shielding is perfectly legal, and, yes, it would block emergency communication. It's your property; why shouldn't you be able to block radio signals from entering or leaving your own property? Unlike active jamming, you're not hurting anyone else's reception.

It might be a good idea to prominently place signs saying "cell phones don't work in here!" to avoid losing a lawsuit if someone dies in your theater because they couldn't dial 911, but that would be a civil not criminal matter anyway.

Re:Interesting

[GNious]

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.

Every large customer I've had, have had a list of preferred hotels/chains (rental companies etc), that they could ask us to use. If a given hotel or chain blocked cell-phone usage or got other notable complaints, they'd get removed from the list.
Part of the reason for the lists are usually negotiated rates (try calling a random hotel-chain, mention you're from e.g. IBM, TCS or similar consultancy corp.)

Beyond that, if you have a half-decent travel-agency, you can register preferred and black-listed hotels on your personal account - of cause unless you work somewhere that doesn't consider your time worth shite, and simply either have a crap travel-agency where you need to do all the work up-front before booking, or where you don't have anything resembling regular travels, and thus no outside agency.

For personal travels, I can confirm that being a repeat guest at proper hotels have advantages, when they start tracking your visits, preferences, etc. It is silly, but being greeted with just a Welcome Back is actually nice; when it extends to small personalized things in the room upon arrival, you know you're in a good place (unless you're really big on privacy)

Re:Interesting

[dgatwood]

That search for the lowest place without rats in the toilet is why they do bs like this... they have to compete on "price" and then once you're in make up their money on crap like charging you for internets. Works the same way with airlines, and that's why airlines suck now.

See, that's the opposite of my experience. I've never seen a $50-per-night hotel that didn't offer free Wi-Fi. It's the $300-and-up-per-night hotels that charge $15 a day for Wi-Fi. These same hotels also charge five bucks for a tiny little can of Pringles, four bucks for a soda, etc. Basically, they assume that anybody with enough money to stay in those hotels also can't be bothered to walk downstairs and across the street to the gas station to buy a soda.

And the more expensive the hotel, the more likely they are to use a complex Wi-Fi system that requires you to sign in through a captive portal, breaks in fascinating ways, and is horribly unreliable. The cheaper the hotel, the more likely they are to just toss up a halfway decent trunk line connected to a handful of off-the-shelf Wi-Fi base stations, and be done with it. Guess which one actually works reliably? (Hint: It isn't the complex, expensive systems used at the high-priced hotels.)

As for when hotels should be allowed to block Wi-Fi, the correct answer is "never". It is never acceptable to deliberately cause interference with properly licensed hardware operating in a normal manner. It is illegal, unethical, and any hotel doing so should get buried in fines so high that nobody else ever even thinks of committing such an act in the future. Now if those Wi-Fi hotspots are operating incorrectly and causing interference, it is within their right to use passive mechanisms to track them down and ask the customers to stop using them. However, the burden of proof falls on the hotel chain to prove that those hotspots are, in fact, not operating correctly, and that the problem is not caused by the hotel's Wi-Fi network being set up incorrectly (which it almost certainly always is in any of the sorts of hotels that would attempt such jamming).

Re:Interesting

[AmiMoJo]

You can actively block wifi legally, sorta. The thing is, 2.4GHz is a free-for-all with some basic ground rules, but that's it. If you decide to set up an 802.11n AP with maximum channel bandwidth and then stream data over it constantly at maximum transmit power (i.e. what most heavy users do) that's fine, even though it might break your neighbour's connection. It happens all the time too - channels become useless, and in some areas the whole 2.4GHz band is pretty much saturated just by APs sending beacons, let along any traffic on top.

Throw in a crappy power supply (par for the course on consumer hardware) and your RX sensitivity goes right down, but you keep pumping out crap at full volume so the "hidden transmitter" problem (where transmitters talk over each other because they can't hear each other, but the client in between them can hear both) gets worse.

Re:Interesting

[dgatwood]

So the guest is paying to offer Wi-Fi to people, and the hotel might require that the guest instead pay for the hotel Wi-Fi service.

That simply isn't a reasonable thing for a hotel to do. You would never accept a hotel requiring you to wear only hotel-provided clothing in a conference room. How is requiring you to use their Internet connection instead of a connection that you have already paid for any less absurd?

Re:Interesting

[ottothecow]

I think you are missing many of the benefits of being a repeat customer.

In many cases, I'll take a United flight if there is up to a $50 or maybe even more difference. Between having a United credit card and flying them relatively often, I get a bunch of things that I don't get on any other airline (except southwest). Free checked bags have actual value. I may not use them every time, but even on shorter trips, I often like to buy local beers that aren't available in my town which can't be carried on (and if I am not going to check bags, I can go with the cheaper flight). I get priority boarding and extra privileges when it comes to changing seats/flights. Priority boarding is super handy because I seem to end up on a lot of planes like CRJ-700s where you will get stuck gate-checking your carryon if you are in a late boarding group. I get a couple lounge-passes a year...not helpful most of the time, but great if a flight gets delayed or cancelled (both for somewhere to hang out, and because the customer service agents in the lounge are more helpful than the ones at the gate). $200 difference on a $300 flight? No way, save me the money

And in terms of employer paid airfare? Who cares. When I have travelled for work, I generally fly whatever airline has the times I need...it isn't about the price, it is about the flight that gets me there in time for the meeting...never heard a client complain that I could have saved $200 if I took the 5AM flight instead of the 7AM. If there are multiple options, sure, maybe I would opt for a slightly more expensive United flight if I wanted the extra benefits....but that cost difference pales in comparison to the cost of me going there (since my time is billed hourly). Finally, if you have status, you could actually be saving the company/client money. For instance, say that my boss only flies business class. If he has enough status on one airline to book seats that get upgraded...he can book a coach fare and get upgraded for less money than the business class ticket.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

CSB

I flew to Detroit one Friday evening to do an update on our servers there. AIX major release update, Informix major update release and our Warehouse Manager System major update. I told my boss it was crazy to do all 3 of those in one weekend, but they insisted on it because they were cheap bastards and expected everything would run smoothly. Of course it didn't, but that's another story.

So, I get to this hotel which apparently my employer had a relationship with - it's where they put up everybody that comes to visit Detroit. There's a party on my floor. It's overrun with high school kids drinking and carrying on and I've got to get up at 5 AM to go to work and I just flew in from mountain time so that's like 3 AM to me and I'm an insomniac anyway so I'm lucky to get to sleep by 2 AM most nights.

I called the front desk a bunch of times to ask them to please do something about the noise. The last call to them I told them I was going to call the police next if they didn't shut the party down. Of course, the party kept on going. I picked up the phone and tried to call the cops. I didn't call 911 because it wasn't exactly an emergency, but I found out that I had no local phone service in my hotel room. WTF? I've heard of outrageous phone charges for using local services in hotels, but never have I not had local phone service available. I'm pretty sure the guy at the front desk was friends with the teens partying in the hotel.

I guess he didn't count on me having a cell phone.

5 minutes later, the cops showed up and busted up the party. I don't think they made any arrests. And when I related this incident to my employer they simply didn't give a shit and continued to use that hotel as the place to put up their guests. 5 minutes is good response time, but the police station was literally a stone's throw from the hotel property - and it was Warren, not Detroit.

So the point of my story is I think hotels can treat everyone like shit and people will keep using them.

Re:Interesting

[TheTurtlesMoves]

Personally i can put up with rats in the toilet if i have WiFi.

On a more serious note. It is only the top end expensive places that charge for internet. The backpackers and cheap motels i have stayed not only have free internet, but it was fast as well. Hell even some campsites i have been too have free internet.

Re:Interesting

[Geodesy99]

'... not supposed ...'. In a perfect world, maybe. The reality is that in a major event, all sorts of equipment, communications and networks are pressed into service. Off-duty responders in area may not have the ability to return to base to get the official equipment, qualified civilians and volunteer groups also participate not only in actual emergencies, but also preparatory drills and exercises. Probably the best example of this is when the DOD 'defuzzed' the GPS signal during the Gulf War ( .... The number of GPS receivers that they had available that could translate the encoded military signal was not nearly as many as needed. The military bought several thousand commercial receivers, and distributed them army and other ground units. To enhance the role of these systems, the Air Force stopped degrading the GPS signal, so that these commercial receivers could provide 16 meter accuracy. ... from http://www.fas.org/spp/militar... ). Also, military personnel were actually having their families send them civilian units to make up the shortage. Active Interference with any network is usually a bad idea, the exception might perhaps be correction other secure facilities.

Fine

[binarylarry]

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.

Re:Fine

[WillAdams]

Let us know when you've worked up a design for a transmitter which will respect property lines.

Re:Fine

[Austerity Empowers]

No one can stop them from building a faraday cage around their hotel, but they absolutely should not be allowed to jam anything (via intentionally emitting interfering signals)...that can only ever do bad things.

Re:Fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, no they shouldn't be allowed to do this on their premises. If they want to sell wifi to their customers, fine, but a customer brings a mobile wifi hotspot they are paying for themselves, they should not be blocked in using it. They won't be utilizing the hotel's wifi at all anyway, so why should the hotel with their shitty wifi setup be concerned? Oh I know, it's because they lost out on that customers $100-$1000 fee for accessing the hotel's wifi for the conference.

Hotels only want this for monetary gains it's for absolutely nothing else, period, end of story. Anything else the hotels claim is pure, 100% bullshit.

Re:Fine

[Shadow IT Ninja]

I think there is a big difference depending on how they do the blocking. If they can determine that some device on thier network is resharing the connection and block that device from using the hotel network that's not so bad. If they use active jamming of the radio signal, that's against FCC rules in all cases.

Re:Fine

[gurps_npc]

Why?

Their desire to make money? So what. I desire to make money to - can I block their services and force them to use mine?

By that desire, the Hotel has the right to block all Cellphone services, after all they put phones in your room (and charge you ridiculous amounts of money to make calls on them).

No.

Providing one service on a premise does not grant you a monopoly on all ancillary services provided on that premise.

Re:Fine

[ravenscar]

First, I'll say that, regardless of whether their activities are or aren't legal, I will not patronize a hotel that takes part in such an activity. I equate it to not allowing me to bring my own toothpaste so that I'm forced to purchase theirs at a dramatically inflated price. I'll vote with my dollars and go to a hotel that offers an environment more suited to my needs.

Second, the legal issues are interesting here. Yes, they do own their property and should have domain there, but (for numerous reasons) broadcast rights are limited - even on one's premises. Additionally, what they are doing is interfering with the operation of your own network. I think of it a little bit like a denial of service attack. You're running your network just fine and the hotel is actively launching an attack to prevent it from functioning. It seems like they could detect your network, locate you, and ask you to turn it off or leave. Actively interfering with its proper operation...I'm not so sure.

I don't really know how the courts would rule on these legal issues. I'll just say that It appears that there is more to consider than "It's their property so they can do what they want."

Re:Fine

[HornWumpus]

I only go to theaters in the winter when I can bring my own snakes and beer inside in my coat.

Re: Fine

[HornWumpus]

Damn guys, typo.

Obviously I meant bring in snakes and bears.

To FCC

[Herkum01]

How are we supposed to make money without creating artificial scarcity to make people use our product?

Signed,

The Free Market

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:To FCC

[meta-monkey]

Pretty much.

I've vacationed at a few all-inclusive resorts in the Caribbean and Mexico. Some "nice" ones that are ~$250/night and a few VERY nice ones that are ~$600/night. But the accommodations are amazing, and it's all you can drink, all you can eat. I would eat three dinners. Once at the steak house, once at the sushi place, and then a 2AM BLT from room service, without touching my wallet. Not bad!

Well once I went to a place in the Dominican Republic called Casa de Campo for a wedding. This is not a place for rich people. This is a place for wealthy people. There's $100 million yachts at the marina. It's a walled fortress of wealth surrounded by abject poverty. It's the only place on the island with a water treatment plant where you could actually drink the water, but they won't let you. It's only evian or perrier at the restaurants. Tap water? Like out the toilet?

Anyway, food at this place was ridiculously expensive. Like, a fruit plate was $20. It's a bunch of fucking bananas. What, do they export them and then re-import them so they'll be more expensive? You couldn't have a light lunch without spending $80. And I thought "this is ridiculous! When I go to the all-inclusive resorts, it's all just take what you want! And this is a way nicer, more expensive place! Why bother with the accounting?" And then I realized, oh. The people here could not give two shits about an $80 lunch with a $50 bar bill. It's just charged to their room and when they leave there's another $1000 for food and beverage on there and who gives a fuck.

At higher-end places they charge you for everything because nobody's watching the bill because they don't care. It's only us poor people who care about money.

Re:To FCC

[Half-pint HAL]

Here in the UK, the problem big hotel chains have is that they sold off the wifi as a franchise, thinking it would be a marketing boon to have wifi, but without having to pay the installation costs themselves. But then wifi became heavily commoditised and al the smaller hotels set up their wifi themselves and ran it as a basic cost. By not stumping up for their own internal wifi, the big players backed themselves into a corner -- they weren't able to offer free wifi without buying out the contract and infrastructure (cabling, routers etc) from their partner, and why would a professional public wifi outfit give up one of their few sources of income? Particularly given the number of business travels who don't give two hoots about the price as they're just going to put it on expenses anyway...?

I suspect the situation is the same in the US, and the problem is that those pesky business travellers are now using tethered phones or portable hotspots. They're trying to re-establish an environment where the business travellers will just shrug their shoulders, pay the fee and expense it. Independent travellers and the sell-employed... well, they're just low-value collateral damage.

Hmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I don't quite get this...

[spire3661]

Unlicensed doesnt mean without rules. Part of using that unlicensed spectrum is not interfering and accepting all interference.

In other words ...

[gstoddart]

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.

"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.

Re:I don't quite get this...

[beelsebob]

2.4GHz is a band in which all radio communications are authorised by the FCC as long as they stay within certain limits. One of those limits is that they don't interfere with other radio communications.

what a load of crap

[slashmydots]

"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.

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:Because TEH ENTERPRISE

[DarkOx]

That and Cisco sells blocking of APs that are not your own as a feature of their WLC and Aironet equipment. If the FCC changes the rules I imagine they would not be able to release new firmwares and ISO images with the feature intact. A situation certain to irritate some customers who bought a lot of extra AP devices so they could support that functionality, and to create a situation where people won't apply updates and fixes as a result.

Section 15.5 "required to cease interference"

[raymorris]

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...

Re:Hotel group asks permission for illegal protect

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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.

Additional background

[twitnutttt]

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."

Re:Additional background

[Peter Simpson]

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."

"containment features"??? You mean "illegal jammers", don't you, Marriott? Because, unless the FCC has drastically changed the rules, intentional jamming of legal signals is absolutely illegal, no matter what the reason, unless of course, they have prior FCC authorization. Which I highly doubt. Sauce for the goose, etc...

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.

Fuck Cisco.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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?

Re:Fuck Cisco.

[Trepidity]

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?

Yes, precisely; Cisco is lobbying in favor of one of their features here. Some of their enterprise-level routers have features with names like "containment" that involve "managing" which wifi signals are available in which locations.

Re:Fuck Cisco.

[fafaforza]

But since when is my double queen room at the Marriott an enterprise environment.

They can scare enterprises all they want into selling more hardware, that's fine, but I am not an employee of a hotel. I am not connecting to their corporate network to transmit work related information. I don't see how they're trying to protect the hotel when I connect to a separate entity's network, and use their wired router as the exit to the internet. Ridiculous.

Maybe the best solution is..

[QuietLagoon]

... for the hotel to charge more reasonable prices for the services they offer.

.
(did I say something funny?)

Re:No, not "in other words" ...

[gstoddart]

We don't live in a Socialist State.

No, entrenching the right for corporations to act like assholes to maximize their profits means you live in an oligarchy.

Which is far worse than living in a socialist state.

You sure as hell don't live in the free market state most Americans seem to believe in either.

Perhaps this is "Corporate Assholes" trying to monetize their investment in their hotel property and make money as most businesses are created to do?

Basically they want an exemption from FCC regulations in order to get customer lock in. They want to be able to block competing services so customers have no choice but to pay them money.

There's a huge difference between wanting to have their own service, and wanting the ability to block someone else's.

But, hey, enjoy your corporate douchebag overlords.

Spoofing

[hawguy]

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?

FCC Law

[barbariccow]

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.

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:Security and Performance?

[dinfinity]

This is why you don't connect to strange wi-fi networks

No, this is why you set up a VPN server in your home and use it to securely tunnel to the internet.

I will say that setting up the server and connecting to it on different devices should be easier, though. My current setup is OpenVPN (tun)-clients on Android and Win8.1 connecting to an OpenWRT OpenVPN server. I'm pretty sure that the average Joe wouldn't be able to get this setup up and running.

But customers should be told *at booking time*

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

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.

Re:But customers should be told *at booking time*

[TheCarp]

That sounds fine to me.

Also I would like to mention.... the reality is they can already require their guests to agree as a condition of their stay that they will not use external networks. They can already buy equipment to detect and find devices using wifi..... seems they can already handle this by hunting down their own guests and charging them fines and or kicking them out.

Thing is, they know that if they start doing that, they are going to piss off customers. What they really want is stuff to just "not work" so it doesn't look like it is their fault. They don't want you to really know that it is them doing it; they want their customer to get frustrated with other options and grudgingly use their service instead..,..because then they are not the bad guy, or at least....not openly.

What this really is, is them wanting the government to sanction their underhanded activity because doing what they want out in the open is going to look bad.

they are presently trying to fight this with signs

[flappinbooger]

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.