FCC Fines Another Large Firm For Blocking WiFi

AmiMoJo writes: Another company is learning about the fine points of Section 333 of the Communications Act, which prohibits willful interference with any licensed or authorized radio communications. This time, M.C. Dean, who provided the Baltimore Convention Center's in-house WiFi service, were caught by the FCC sending deauthentication frames to prevent hotspot users maintaining a connection. The complainant alleged that M.C. Dean's actions were identical to those that had earned Marriott a $600,000 fine only weeks earlier.

Comments

Re:What about a Faraday cage

[Anonymous Coward]

This is actually quite true. One of our testing tech employees complained that his cell phone did not work inside our anechoic RF testing chamber (big faraday cage full of RF-absorbing material), and wrote a letter of complaint to the FCC.

We were found to be in violation of the same act, and were required to install a cellular repeater inside our chamber that must be active any time someone is inside the chamber.

I'm glad but only $718,000 is peanuts

[DanDs22]

They blocked wifi from 2012 to 2014, and the estimated sales of this company were over $700 million in 2013. M.C. Dean charged $795 to $1,095 for access to the Wi-Fi it provided depending on whether the services were ordered in advance or on-site..

Why Not?

[Thunderf00t]

From the timing implied, it sounds like the Baltimore Convention Center heard of Marriott's case, looked at the relatively minimal fine involved for how widespread the practice was, and thought, "huh, not a bad idea, really. We could do that." Hopefully, the FCC's fine has enough of a sting to it to make it seem less worthwhile to anyone else considering the practice.