hfly

Hogging it? In some properties they are paying $30 a day for it, a cost which is generally greater than a month of 20 MBPS almost anywhere else. With the huge profits built in and the fact that many people are using "hogging" applications, these properties should in fact upgrade their service.

hfly

Seriously, I rcently stayed at a certain london hotel which charged 25 GBP per night for internet access, and when I complained about the constant bad service, I got the "hogging" thing from their tech guy, but then he also volunteered PROUDLY that the property had a 10 MBPS connection (for perhaps 120+ room). I asked him if he did not think that slightly pathetic as my mother has a 30 MBPS connection which she pays less for per month. Sorry but for that money people should expect a good connection speed and to do what they want with it.

SNA_Flyer

It's actually much more complex than that, and you really can't calculate it that way. Anyhow, it's beyond the scope of discussion in this forum.

FlyingDoctorwu

Yes FiOS has provided great fast broadband at cheap prices for residential use. I have a 25 mbps down plan at home. It's awesome, it's fast. Availability is quite limited; especially for commercial applications.

Ever try to price broadband for commercial application? It's a whole lot more expensive than residential prices. Take a look. DSL/Cable usually isn't an option. We're talking fiber to the building; T1 or T3 lines. (Try having 200 rooms sharing the upload speed of a DSL/Cable line). A T1 isn't a ton of bandwith (1.54 mbps) but it is pricey....

I bet that there's a lot of streaming of movies going on during peak times, especially people on the road. Netflix grabs about 20% of internet capacity during peak times (and that's not porn). Imagine your 200 room hotel... That's a lot of bandwidth.

Plus shared wifi between a lot of connections can be slow, likely it's 802.11b because hotels (and/or providers) are slow to upgrade their routers. As internet becomes more of an unbillable commodity (and it's heading that way) then the incentive to upgrade drops...

For me, I use a tethered connection whereever I go. I get about 3Mbps down for the most part (though my latency isnt great). IT's consistent, and dependable for the most part

FDW

SirWomble

So far I've found the free internet speeds to be adequate but not fantastic...
(about the same as I get in the office sharing with 6000 others...)


As for wifi outside of my room, I find the alot of proprties have blind spots and moving even just to another table can signifnciantly increase my speed...

Haven't got any speed stats (but will collect them this week) but i'm doing email, web browsing etc...
And watching BBC iplayer

more4less

Stayed a few weeks ago at the Hilton Milan and speed was OK.
On a recent stay at the Hilton Bucarest the speed was terribly low. I mentioned it at the reception and they told me that for free they give an "economy wi-fi".

uncflyer16

I must have 0.5 mb/s or faster internet one night a week for an online conference. Not video, but Powerpoint slides. This is not high bandwidth stuff. I now spend this night at a nearby Courtyard as the two Hamptons MAX out at 0.33 mb/s (speedtest.net).

It is not a difficult thing to minimize the effect of porn hour (aka throttle speeds after a given amount of data has been delivered to a given computer).

Oh well, the Courtyard welcomes me with open arms...and an upgrade to a suite most weeks.

bkafrick

Unless hotel chains start mandating real hi-speed, or pledging real hi-speed as a service differentiator. If I knew that all Courtyards pledged real hi-speed, i'd change my allegiance in a heartbeat.

I just think to win business travel (and thats what its all about really, right? No one is getting rich on pleasure travel to Boise, ID, or Baton Rouge, LA) that providing an adequate product should be a priority. I think if you differentiate as a service, you'll win business. And in this case, its not a "nice-to-have" service, its a "need-to-have".

phedre

I've found that as a general rule of thumb, wired internet is much faster with lower latency than wireless internet. Maybe because it actually requires you to sit at the desk and plug in the cord so fewer people use it? No idea. If I have the option though, I always plug in.

At any rate, I've had exceptional high speed internet at the Doubletree I'm currently staying in. I can and have changed hotels because of crappy internet before - a >1000ms ping reply is NOT acceptable!

sharklover

Usually internet speed is decent. The only hotel which was dial up speed was Hilton Rye. It was not worth free.

bkafrick

Another ridiculous Hampton Inn tonight.

10pm 10/26/2010
300ms latency
.44 Mbps down
.12 Mbps up

I should start a log somewhere and publish this.

openflync

Typing this from the London Metropole

Download 6600 kbps
Upload 6200 kbps



At home I would consider 200 kbps as a great night.

williespop

It should get better as AT&T takes over all the properties, but not sure how long that will take.[/QUOTE]

A Hampton Inn Manager in Houston told me that Hilton's "upgrade" to standardize all properties to AT&T meant that they were all getting DSL at max 500kbps service. So your bberries and iphones on 3G will pretty much always be at least 1.5 to 4 times faster. You sure can't watch last week's Big Bang Theory on Hulu at no stinkin' 500k... which, during primetime, is usually closer to 300k.
Courtyard Marriotts are all over the place with their speeds, but the one on the North Beltway in Houston has reliable 6Mbps, and one C-yard in Ft. Worth has really solid 10+M speeds. AND actual digital HD TV programming.
It irritates me almost as much as slow internet when they have wide screen TVs, but no HD channels. If they don't have the menu function disabled, I'll run the TV's auto-program... I've found that some actually do have HD, but the channels are hidden.

troyintn

I tend to agree, but am not sure how you could do that. Sure some should upgrade since what they have is just old, but others are in the middle of no where.

InkUnderNails

I sometimes have to go to the front desk to get the "Master" remote just to turn on closed caption. (I am hearing impaired). I certainly do not have access to do a channel scan most of the time. I agree with you about the HD. Brand new, 42 inch HD TV's and everything is analog cable except maybe some PPV. I stayed at the Comfort Suites ONT airport a while back and they had about 200 channels, at least 50 were in HD. The channel guide was a book. I know a lot of folks do not use the TV's but this was nice.