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.

Comments

Not free?

[Frosty Piss]

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.

Some guy just got arrested for jamming cell phones

[Anonymous Coward]

But wi-fi "blocking" gets a free pass? Have the FCC throw the book at them.

Security

[thegarbz]

Venues argue they need to block hotspots for security reasons

Due to security reasons we are preventing people from running their own closed network between their devices and their telecom companies and instead forcing them all into our own network joined up with hundreds of other strangers ....

Re:Security

[DRJlaw]

Putting a fireall [sic] between the local clients and the rest of the Internet, or even port blocking certain classes of internal traffic, protects the clients and the rest of the Internet from quite a few vulnerabilities, such as unsecured sharing of the "C$" share with no admin password that is prevalent on poorly managed Windows laptops. And it reduces the cost of the service for the hotel by allowing bandwidth limiting on the controlled "free" access.

The concept went right over your head, didn't it?

If you set up your own WiFi hotspot, say using your cellular phone, you are not putting traffic on the facility network, you are not causing the facility to incur costs for bandwidth, and you are not in any sense the facility's local client. You are a client of your cellular provider's network, using a your own WiFi connection between your own cell phone and your other devices (over public airwaves; without connecting to the facility's WiFi network). That connection is presumably entirely private to your own devices (assuming that you're password protected your hotspot; my own device will not provide a WiFi hotspot without one).

Putting a firewall between a customer and the customer's cellular provider is not the facility's job. Policing the internet (as opposed to the facility LAN) is not the facility's job. And appropriating public airwaves (in this case WiFi frequencies) for the exclusive use of the facility is quite simply illegal.

Security reasons have very little to do actively interfering with WiFi hotspots. There is only one potentially valid concern - SSID spoofing. If you want to take on the FCC concerning that issue - go for it. But if the SSID is not the same as your facility's SSID, then you should not and legally cannot interfere with that other wireless network. Full stop.

Got it?