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Wi-Fi Hotspot Blocking Persists Despite FCC Crackdown (networkworld.com)
An anonymous reader writes: An examination of consumer complaints to the FCC over the past year and a half shows that the practice of Wi-Fi hotspot device blocking continues even though the agency has slapped organizations such as Marriott and Hilton more than $2 million in total for doing this. Venues argue they need to block hotspots for security reasons, but the FCC and consumers say the organizations are doing this to force people to pay for pricey Internet access.
"Consumers who purchase cellular data plans should be able to use them without fear that their personal Internet connection will be blocked by their hotel or conference center," FCC Enforcement Bureau chief Travis LeBlanc said in a statement. "It is unacceptable for any hotel to intentionally disable personal hotspots while also charging consumers and small businesses high fees to use the hotel's own Wi-Fi network. This practice puts consumers in the untenable position of either paying twice for the same service or forgoing Internet access altogether." Consumers have filed many complaints about Wi-Fi hotspot blocking to the FCC.
"Consumers who purchase cellular data plans should be able to use them without fear that their personal Internet connection will be blocked by their hotel or conference center," FCC Enforcement Bureau chief Travis LeBlanc said in a statement. "It is unacceptable for any hotel to intentionally disable personal hotspots while also charging consumers and small businesses high fees to use the hotel's own Wi-Fi network. This practice puts consumers in the untenable position of either paying twice for the same service or forgoing Internet access altogether." Consumers have filed many complaints about Wi-Fi hotspot blocking to the FCC.
In recent years, I have rarely stayed at a first class hotel that did not have free guest w-fi. People expect it and will bail for the local coffee shop if it's not free in the hotel.
My guess is a lot of the offenders are in tourist traps where everything costs a lot.
I think you intended to say that all of the first class hotels you stayed at had free guest wifi, but your double negative said just the opposite. However, my experience, at least in the US is just the opposite. Big name, first class hotels charge for wifi. It is the middle tier hotels that give it away as part of the room cost. Same thing with parking and other amenities.
Cisco calls it containment. Centrally managed access points will send deauth or deassociation frames to clients connected to "rogue" APs.
We use it at my job, but only for our SSIDs ie., if you set up an AP or hotspot with the same SSID as ours, the containment feature will attempt to stop clients from associating. Our company name is part of the SSID, so it's not like you can innocently or accidentally have your connections to your hotspot blocked.
That said, there have been times when I wished we simply banned the use of hotspots (we provide free, fast wi-fi) due to the RF interferences. At one point, 90 hotspots were operating in a ballroom competing for a limited number of 5ghz channels and everyone's experience suffered. When we asked people to disable their hotspots and connect to our unfiltered, unthrottled, free connection, about 70 did and the performance for everyone was (reported by them to be) better.