Some Tips for travelers about internet services in the USA and in Europe
USA Services:
In the USA and Canada, it is
relatively easy to access the internet from any hotel. In
addition, there are many thousands of free-to-use wireless
internet access points in the USA. See: http://www.wififreespot.com/
1) Dialup Internet Access: Many
ISPs (such as Bellsouth.net, AOL, and Earthlink.net) provide 800 numbers
which connect to their services with a connect time charge of about
$6.00 per hour when local call charges at a particular hotel are
excessive or when a local access number is not available in a
particular area. Some individual hotels have a local dialup ISP number
that guests can use to access a "free" internet connection during their
stay.
2) More and more chain hotels
(such as Hampton Inn, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express and many
Marriott among others have started offering guest's free wireless (or
sometimes wired) high speed internet service as a "free" amenity.
I believe this trend is accelerating as many business people need an
internet connection and the cost of this service to the hotel is very
low. There are some hotels who are attempting to charge for
high speed internet services. I have seen one hotel asking US$10
a day and many are in the range of $4 to $10 a day. I am told
that many are discovering that making a charge for internet service is
counterproductive toward their goal of attracting business people as
guests. I believe that over time, all hotels will be seen to
convert high speed internet service into a free or very low cost
service.
In the USA, I have not seen: any
hotel: a) block access to local internet service
numbers, b) block access to any 800 number, c) block access
to ports required for VOIP services, b) block ports used for FTP,
VNC,
Telnet, and other internet services. Interestingly, the
more expensive the hotel the more the hotel seems to charge for any
internet service they provide. However, if you have a
backup 800 access number for internet access you can always get access
for a maximum of about $6 per hour and with no added hotel phone
charges (as far as I have seen).
European Services:
During a recent 4 week trip to Europe
(Ireland, UK, France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland), I found a
potpourri of services and policies. Less
than half of the hotels we stayed in over a 4 week period had any
local-to-the-hotel internet services available. Those that did
have high speed internet service (mostly) charged for the
service. The charges varied over an extremely wide range of from
"free" to about $4 a day to $10 a day to US$25 per day (at
Thistle Hotel) to the SwissCom MOBILE wireless system in
Switzerland that charged about 9 Swiss Franks (about US$6) for 30
minutes of 802.11b connect time. (Time starts when you log on
with your password and ends 30 minutes later regardless of
usage.) Caution: Read the fine print before you use ANY
European hotel's Internet Services. The costs can be VERY
high. One chap reports that he plugged his computer into a
hotel's ethernet portal and when he unplugged and checked out a week
later the bill for internet service came to $4300.00. His
overcharge was the most egregious I have heard about!
General Information:
Generally there is no problem
using the hotel telephone system to access a local dialup ISP access
number, but there is (about 95% of the time) a charge of from US
20 to 75 cents a minute for connect time. Most hotels charged for
connect time when you were dialing a local access phone
number.
Some made no charge for such local calls. In the UK, you
SHOULD
be able to dial any "freefone" number such as is used by AOL (a
call where the called party pays) without paying the hotel.
However, my experience is that your hotel's pbx may exact a
charge none-the-less. Note: The AOL "Europe Wide" access
itself comes with a variable surcharge of from $6 to $12 per hour so it is not
"free" to use it even when there are no hotel line charges!
AOL does seem to have about the best European coverage of any
multinational ISP.
We carried a T-Mobile GPRS Sierra Wireless 750 card with us on the trip expecting
to be able to use it in the UK, France, Belgium, and Germany.
However, we were never able to get it to work after we left the USA.
Two hours on the phone to the USA with T-Mobile tech support plus an
hour with the London T-mobile repair center gave no solution. TMobile
UK says that TMobile USA has not figured out how to set up their GPRS
customer's accounts so that European roaming is possible. This all
seemed like a GREAT service to be able to roam all over Europe and be
charged US$0.0015 per kilobyte for email upload/download but it just did not operate.
Details by Country:
1) Ireland: In Ireland, we
found one hotel (Old Ground/Ennis) that offers free wireless internet
to guests. We found another hotel (Tower/Waterford) that offered
wireless internet to guests via a third party for about US$15 a day or
$3 per hour. They also allowed guests to use the computer in the
business center (or your own computer) to access the internet for free from the
business center. Several others had no internet connectivity for
guests but had a "pay-as-you-go" computer terminal for from about $4 an
hour to about $10 per day. All hotels had no blocks on your use
of their lines to telephone your local (AOL in my case) ISP
number. In Ireland, AOL only has local numbers in
Dublin, Shannon and one other town so it was expensive just to telephone a distant access city.
2) In the UK on this trip, we
stayed at only one hotel, the Thistle Hotel/Euston in London.
This hotel (I think) is an anomaly. But if you plan to use the
internet in London UK, I think you will want to chose somewhere else to
stay. See this writeup
for more details. I have not stayed in a hotel in London with
wireless internet but in no other hotel in London where I have stayed
have any roadblocks been placed in the way of making ordinary dial up
connections if you have the standard RJ11 to British Telecom Plug cable
assembly.
3) While in France, we stayed in
a lot of smaller hotels in small towns mostly near the Atlantic
Coast. None of these had any
internet services themselves, but some of them allowed free local
telephone to the "nationwide France" AOL access
number. Generally, the cost varied from zero to about
(Euros) 50 cents per minute for telephone access. Our regular
"old" French modem adapter worked at all the hotels where needed.
A couple had standard phones with French plugs on the wall end
and RJ11 connectors on the other. On these, we just unplugged the
cord from the phone and plugged it into our modem or used an available modem jack in the side of the phone where it
had one. Basically, we had no problem in France logging into AOL
using the France nationwide AOL number from any hotel.
4) While in Belgium, we only stayed in one hotel and it was a
NovoTel. This hotel fell into the same bag as the hotels in
France. It did have modern RJ11 phone cables/jacks so we could
use our regular USA modem cable. It had no High Speed Internet
Access. We generally liked the several NovaTels we stayed
in. They are comfortable, reasonable prices and (like
Hampton Inn in the USA) you know what it is going to be like and the
prices were always pretty reasonable.
5) While in Germany, we stayed in a few Novatels and many small
hotels. We found none with high speed internet service but had no
problem with use of the dial up AOL internet service. Most had
the standard German telephone cable and we just used our German to RJ11
adapter and had no trouble anywhere. The usual (euro) 20 to 60
cent per minute access charges for local calls applied to our internet
connect time.
6) While in Switzerland, we stayed in several non-Chain
hotels. We had no problem using our laptop's modem in any of the
hotels except in a du Loc hotel. In this hotel, we found
that the cable on the telephone was a standard RJ11 on the telephone
set end and the standard Swiss Plug on the other but our standard Swiss
modem cable would not work. We found that in this (old)
installation, the active wires in the cable to the hotel
telephone were black and red (normal is black/yellow or
red/green. In my past PBX design work, I was always amused
at how the Europeans worked diligently to make their telephone gear NOT
operate in any other country. This pair splitting in the short
cable run to the phone set was one of the techniques used. With
the coming of the European Union (EU), I think most of this sort
of "non-standardization" is a thing of the past (with the possible
exception of Thistle Hotels!)
I am sure that the above only "touches the surface" and the author
solicits comments, additions, corrections including the
policies and availability of internet service in countries other than
the ones listed. In particular, if you know of individual hotels
or chains of hotels that offer their guests either free or low cost
high speed internet services, please let me know. I am interested
in maintaining a listing of such hotels. SPECIFIC HOTELS WITH FREE INTERNET ACCESS, click HERE
Send comments to Joe Mehaffey