The most maddening thing about Internet charges is the inconsistency with which various properties charge.

There are, of course, chain-wide and regional trends.

In North America, most mid-priced hotels provide free Internet, but high-end hotels (4 Seasons, Ritz) and those a notch below (ICs) charge, often a significant charge.

In Europe and Asia, charges are not uncommon in most hotels, with the exception of a few chains that use it as a marketing ploy. And when they do charge, the charges can be significantly higher.

The worst is in India, where charges can be over $30 a day ... for service that is often unusable, where for "security" reasons it is very convoluted and often blocks access to VPNs and the like (in one case to any site using SSL, so I couldn't actually do any ecommerce).

While I've traditionally had a backup system which was dialup, there you had to deal with similar inconsistency on telephone charges (including places that would charge you up to $1 a minute to call a "free" 800 number!)

And if one is unconcerned about the ethical (and in certain countries and U.S. states, legal) implications of piggybacking or "wardriving" on neighboring unsecure hotspots, one could surf for free in some hotels (or in certain sections of some hotels).

But all that is too inconsistent; too unreliable; too expensive in the end. So I rely primarily on my broadband wireless card. It works virtually everywhere that you can get a cellphone signal. It even works in Japan and Korea. I pay a premium to AT&T for the global roaming, but at the end of the day, it's a known and fixed amount, and far cheaper than paying the hotel bills and worrying about getting overcharged. I would heartily recommend it to all. It also means you can be in your limo/taxi/car/train/bus from the airport on your way to your hotel, on-line at ever-increasing speeds, as 3G proliferates, taking care of business.