Travel Technology - Wifi in Hotel - How am I being charged

I'm currently staying at a hotel in Nürnburg, Germany and the hotel claims to offer wireless Internet access to its customers for the very reasonable (IMO) five euros per day. However, when I log onto the hotel's WLAN from my room, there is no security whatsoever. Given my experience at Munich airport today I would have expected at least a page asking me for some credit card details. I therefore suspect I'm not being charged. Could this be the case (in which case the hotel needs to know)? Or is there something about the underlying technology that I'm missing?

Perhaps you're being charged for it whether or not you actually use it? Kind of like those "free" in-room safes.

FewMiles..

I'm currently staying at a hotel in Nürnburg, Germany and the hotel claims to offer wireless Internet access to its customers for the very reasonable (IMO) five euros per day. However, when I log onto the hotel's WLAN from my room, there is no security whatsoever. Given my experience at Munich airport today I would have expected at least a page asking me for some credit card details. I therefore suspect I'm not being charged. Could this be the case (in which case the hotel needs to know)? Or is there something about the underlying technology that I'm missing?

I had that at a Marriot in Munich, the first day I got a "voucher" for 24 hours, and I used it for the following 3 days, without needing a voucher, but they managed to charge me for all of them :D Seemingly they recorded my Mac address...

I can only assume this one is not meant to be free... WiFi billing is pretty complicated...

Yeah, but unless they have a separate access point per room, how would they know who was using it? You or the person next door?

Possible but I suspect at this particular hotel (very nice small family run establishment) they're not that complicated. This being Germany, I wouldn't be suprised if the question followed by "anything from the minibar?" at checkout is followed by "any wifi access". It's one of the things I like about the country. I'm more than happy to let them know I've used it every day on checkout as its cheap and (more importantly) quite reliable.