After all, the rise of the mobile telephone must have completely demolished all the easy profits they have traditionally enjoyed from excessive/exorbitant/ludicrous (delete as appropriate) telephony charges.

So now the poor old hotels are having to fight back with the very latest of technology: three feet of cat five and fifteen quid a day to get a Mb/s (if you're lucky) piped directly into your laptop. Stunning... twice a day what most pay for a fortnight at four or more times the data rate. How lucky we are! (and if we should *dare* to want to connect more than one computer, we'd better know how to change the mac address if we don't want to pay a second time!)

Alternately, wireless networks almost always managed by external companies, no linkage to the bill hence even more complex negotiations with the expenses authority when it comes to getting the bill paid, and even lower data rates on a frequently unprotected link susceptible to the passing promiscuous sniffer.

It's time the hotels woke up. If you're cabled, then access control is as easy as flood wiring. Incremental costs to provide a local cache and DHCP server and a decent data rate are two tenths of damn all - 'Free fast internet access' is a good way to get me in there, as opposed to 15% of a night's cost... If you're wireless, then encrypt it, change it regularly, and give the encryption with the room key. It shouldn't be beyond the wit of man to manage access even via wifi...

Aye well, back to argue with the hotel; the booking form says 'free internet' and the log on said 'fifteen quid'... :)

Neil

It is all very well saying that wireless encryption is easy but you try supporting a public wireless system that is used by 'real' people - they can have serious problems making a connection to an open network, even when provided with the SSID.

Also, a hotel is technically a 24/7/365 business and guests expect service to be provided for the majority of this time - do you want to be the one to provide that support?

Does the hotel have to remind you to have a crap?

I'd initiate a credit card chargeback; you paid for what, 2 hours of service? and were provided only 5 minutes or so before before you were told you have to pay again. Whether you get your money back or not, at least you'll have the satisfaction of giving them some notice of your displeasure.