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

FCC Fines

[Anonymous Coward]

The fine was fined - by the Department of Redundancy Department.

Nice headline writing!

[Anonymous Coward]

FCC Fines Ralph Fiennes, Larry Fine, and Richard Feynman a Mighty Fine Fine for Blocking WiFine

Re:"Fines another large fine"?

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks fine to me.

Re:Fine

[Irate Engineer]

Or as my wife would put it: "*sigh*....FINE! Just FINE!"

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..

Re:What about a Faraday cage

[Sique]

Would it have helped if you provided a desk phone in said room and a big warning label, that mobile phones don't work?

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.

Re:What about a Faraday cage

[thaylin]

So you vindictively fire people who report you are breaking the law? I think that is breaking the law even in right to work states.

Re:"Fines another large fine"?

[jmac_the_man]

I appreciate Slashdot has standards

Good one.

Re: What about a Faraday cage

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously ? Considering the purpose and nature of the chamber this is a bizzare decision. Was this done at your cost and are there any public records on this ? Interested to see the FCC's reasoning.

Re:"Fines another large fine"?

[FatdogHaiku]

I appreciate Slashdot has standards, and one is "If you didn't preview, nuh nuh, even though we make it easy to submit without previewing and don't do what every other website does", but, really, the editors should change the headline.

OK, when did we get standards?
And how come there has not been a single moo on this page yet?
Did I wake up in an alternate universe?

Re:What about a Faraday cage

[alex67500]

Whistleblowers shouldn't necessarily be fired, assuming they notified their employers first who didn't didn't act upon the information. In fact in some instances they should probably be rewarded for pointing out things that may put employees or the public in harm's way. My cousin once pointed out during a food-processing factory visit that non-nut products were crossing the way of nut products but that the allergen information didn't reflect that. She didn't get fired, she got a bonus for it.

Will "wifi" ever get expanded spectrum?

[swb]

It seems like much of the problem originates from the limited spectrum available to wifi, which makes it hard/expensive to cover large, dense spaces, especially if people are bringing in their own network devices.

This leads to "rogue ap suppression" which I'd wager is motivated as much by network operators tired of getting screamed at because "the conference room wifi sucks" and thinking that suppressing hotspots will improve it as much as it is by greedy operators who believe that crushing hotspots will improve profits.

Re:Will "wifi" ever get expanded spectrum?

[AmiMoJo]

It doesn't help that the WiFi consortium seems to be trying hard to make the problem worse. You have ancient devices still spewing out long slow 802.11b beacons, and newer 802.11n/ac devices using multiple double width channels. And then many of the members of the consortium allow the TX power to be cranked up to 11 by default, for maximum congestion and exacerbation of the hidden transmitter problem.

This can be mitigated somewhat at large venues by having all the venue's APs use only 802.11n/ac, narrow channels, low transmission power etc. But then someone with a phone or LTE dongle comes along and starts screaming at max power because the absolutely need to get gigabit speeds between their laptop and the AP, and it all goes to hell.

Wifi needed a "STFU" addition to the protocol long ago. It's way too late now. I wish they had implemented one on the 5GHz band, but it looks like that will go to pot in a few years too. At least walls block it fairly effectively.

Re:Will "wifi" ever get expanded spectrum?

[swb]

The people who design standards for 802.11 seem to be designing the standard for the apocryphal home user who wants 3l173 5p33d5 in line with Ethernet, doesn't get interference and is too far away from anyone else to be interfering.

And then enterprise vendors take this standard and want to sell it as if it was purpose-built to blanket 200,000 square feet of space and be usable by 50,000 people simultaneously.

And then commercial providers want to deploy it as if it was a cellular technology designed to blanket entire cities.

And then we wonder why it sucks.

Re:Will "wifi" ever get expanded spectrum?

[beltsbear]

Being a shared band, with NO ONE having legal priority, there is no such thing as a rouge AP. 'Rogue AP detection' is legal, even though Cisco offers it, 'rogue AP suppression' is not legal in most cases. Only if an AP was doing something illegal could you even consider doing something. Someone using the spectrum space you want (even on your own property) is not illegal so long as they are not trespassing.

Re:Will "wifi" ever get expanded spectrum?

[sjames]

I guess you've never dealt with these people. They are shooting down anything resembling free WiFi because otherwise, nobody would willingly pay $700 dollars for a couple days worth of WiFi access.

Re:"Fines another large fine"?

[rickb928]

Everything is click-bait. This is the Internet. You didn't know that?

Re:"Fines another large fine"?

[Locke2005]

Slashdot's journalism standards are kind of like my dating standards: "Well, it seems like she's biologically female., and still breathing... go for it!"

Re:What about a Faraday cage

[evilviper]

My cousin once pointed out during a food-processing factory visit that non-nut products were crossing the way of nut products but that the allergen information didn't reflect that. She didn't get fired, she got a bonus for it.

...because THAT'S NOT WHISTLEBLOWING! A whistleblower likely would have reported the violation to the FDA, they would have demanded a recall, costing the company millions, and nobody would be getting a raise. But by NOT reporting it & demanding a recall, she's taking the chance that people with allergies might be killed in the interim, in order to save money for the company. That kind of profits-before-safety mentality is exactly the kind of behavior companies typically reward... and so they did.

Admittedly that's an edge-case, where the risk was very low, as was the cost to fix the problem. Decisions are almost never so nice and easy in the real world.

Re:Fine

[IMightB]

How are you still married? That is woman speak for "I'll kill you in your sleep!"