Hotel Internet sucks. You’ve probably tried it. Nobody downstairs knows WTF is going on. Well, they may give you a password, and that may connect with the presidentially infamous thing called “The Internets”. But really. Since the TV also almost always sucks in hotels, I listen to the Internet radio stations. Then I fire up tab links to about 30 of my normal review web sites, and start up SKYPE. Almost always something crashes. No music, “unable to load” websites, 120 second page downloads, and SKYPE video that sounds like crap. It’s almost like the antique dial-up world, except with wireless or an Ethernet wire. Doesn’t anybody measure bandwidth loads and project the growth of bandwidth demand?
Look, I’ll buy that this has been a crash course in technology over the last two or three years. Teaching the hotels that, ah, business travelers can tolerate crap TV, but making money requires Internet communications, so you’d better install something that doesn’t bog to oblivion when the kids wake up and log onto their IMs.
But nobody seems to understand “sizing” of the required bandwidth. Or if someone does understand bandwidth somewhat, they are not telling the hotel that six months from today they’re going to require a whole shit-load more. I’m imagining a hotel budget meeting where someone says arbitrarily, “This is how much we can spend, so this is all the bandwidth that we can buy.”
Well, if that is all the bandwidth you can provide, then I can’t afford to buy your hotel room. And really, don’t bother to talk to the people downstairs, because they don’t know WFT is going on.
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