Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

$13 a night??! Ouch. I love my broadband as much as the next guy, but that's a little steep . . One more reason, Dave, to do more travelling in Canada. At any of the hotels I've stayed in in the last eight or nine months in Canada -- Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa -- it's never been more than $10 CDN (that's $7.60 in those funny Yankee bucks says my Yahoo currency converter) although you still have to pay for your long-distance calls. Was that $13 at the Marriot for wireless high-speed access or are you tethered to the Ethernet cable in your room?

It was for a wire. It was also US$3.00 (CDN$147.00) higher than the norm for broadband in a hotel room, which I assume they justified by including the VOIP. And given how much hotels charge for long distance calls, it is actually a bargain.

And, considering I'm paying $6.00/hr for wireless access here in the SF airport to write this note, it's looking like a real bargain.

Don't even get me started. I don't travel often but when I do it's usually related to my techie job. Conferences and such. There's nothing more frustrating than arriving in a strange city for a tech conference and discovering that the hotel it's in doesn't have broadband. Last time I was in Baltimore my hotel only offered a less-than-useless webtv-type deal. For $9.99/day. If that didn't suit you, your option was dialup. For which they'd charge you $1/call. And that's if you had a local number to call. One word: barbaric.

Incidentally, I do recommend the Allegro if you're in Chicago. There's broadband in the rooms and wireless in the lobby. Inexplicably, however, paying for your broadband for the day doesn't get you wireless for free.

hey, if anyone knows where there's a list of hotels sorted by broadband access and general Net amenities (sp?) I'd love to have it. In other words, hotels where good fast access and net friendly rates are given a higher priority as those scratchy bedspreads.

I would definitiely always choose to stay Net friendly. a good competitive advantage for the lodging biz, you'd think...

shit, we could start a "blog friendly" list of our own. Between David and Doc, they go EVERYWHERE.

me

It's wiki time! Good idea, Jeneane!

I second the motion, and it seems like an ideal use for a wiki. Who's hosting?

(Of course, this will become useless once we reach the Promised Land of ubiquitous wireless computing. . . )

Have you suffered through the third party broadband service yet? I was at a Hilton in Atlanta. They had wireless internet provided by some other company, and I had to pay on my Visa separately (i.e. not on my hotel bill) and get them to email me a receipt. When it didn't work, I had to call them (not Hilton) and they didn't seem the least bit concerned. I finally called the hotel manager and he offered to give me $9.95 back, but there wasn't much else he could do.

I get a little frustrated paying for the privilege of spending my time helping the ISP debug their network problems.

When I was scoping out hotels for my trip to Toronto, I made high-speed access my top priority. I couldn't find any hotels with wireless in the room, though the Metropolitan had wireless in public areas. However, the Metropolitan didn't have broadband in the rooms, so I ended up at Cambridge Suites, where I'm typing this now from the couch in my roomy suite, using the (wired) *free* broadband that comes with all the "Cityscape" suites.

And yes, we definitely need a traveler's guide to net-friendly hotels. Maybe Ross Mayfield will host a socialtext space for it?

Got to this page after doing a google search on "voip hotel".

Guest-Tek is a company that provides hotels with infrastructure to offer high-speed internet access. Check out their hotels at:

http://www.guest-tek.com/new_site/index.php?page=6

If you are EVER in Toronto my blog has the most complete and accurate set of hotspots in TO and the GTA

http://wirelessbandit.nerdsunderglass.com

Its good to see most hotels are starting to pick this up. I just stayed at a Hampton using Ethostream (http://www.ethostream.com) and was actually pretty suprised. I have a VPN that needs a public IP and a quick call got me up and running.

Just found this site looking up hotels with high-speed. I think you guys might be interested in http://www.hotelwireless.com. Its a site that allows users to add and rate hotels with Internet access so that other users may benefit.

I run an Audio/Visual Company within The Sheraton Fallsview hotel and conference center not a computer tech but they let me build their guest network, up until the 1st of june its free its been a year now up and running. We offer both wireless and wired solutions in each guest room although because i decided to use outdoor antennaes for a significant savings the wireless signal is low but still adequate and we have wireless yokes if you do not want to be tethered to the jack in the desk and do not have a wirless enabled cpu.
Every major hotel in the falls has Broadband wired and wireless but all using the outside companies as their providers

any suggestions for how to overcome this problem being experienced by road warriors worldwide:

you pay for your broadband connection in your hotel room (or get it free if you're in the right hotel) and you can surf fine.

however, the hotel has a Nomadics or similar verification system which (as I understand it from IT manager at my hotel in Paris) only allows a single MAC address to utilize that authenticated connection.

result: your pc works, but your IP phone or ATA trying to use the same Internet connection is blocked, even if it is assigned a separate IP address by hotel's DNS server.

unplugging the computer in favor of the IP phone doesn't help because the computer's MAC address , being the first to be authenticated, is the only one which unlocks the Nomadic's key.

even if you wanted only to make VoIP calls and not register your PC, no way your IP phone or ATA could be authenticated in the hotel's Nomadic system because it has no display to take you through the steps.

the hotel IP guy explained that (in addition to guarding hotel phone revenue) Nomadics was made for WiFi hotspots where MAC limitations are necessary lest every pc be allowed to connect wirelessly using the same authentication.

result: in these hotel rooms, you can only do PC to Phone (a pain) and not phone to phone.

I have now tried to use a Linksys router connected to the hotel ip connection on the wan side and my pc and ip phone behind the router on the lan side. the signup went fine and the pc receives internet fine, but the IP phone does NOT pick up the VoIP provider network. How do I cause the IP phone to be recognized behind the router? This is now the key question.

any suggested workarounds for this will be appreciated. I haven't seen anything on this. it really crimps the style of those who want to use VoIP in hotels. tx.

Your IP phone woes are likely caused by the firewall not allowing the port to be opened for the IP Phone's protocol. Different protocols use different ports for their UDP and TCP connections. If the firewall is just configured for web browsing activity you may be out of luck.

would love to know if anyone has a solution to this - am trying to do exactly the same thing right now!