Here in Israel free wifi access is the norm, but in DE? They charge an arm and a leg. Switzerland (if we're talking about Swisscom anyway)? They are _insane_. The hotels already rip you off with prices like there's no tomorrow and charge for internet on top.
I fire up iodine on my client. If it works: Great. The network was obviously created by morons (it could easily be prevented). Morons won't be able to track me down the short while I'm on their network, on a trip, with a mac address like 'deadbeef' or somesuch nonsense.
If it doesn't work? I don't go online and leave to have a couple beers..
And - enjoy, have fun. Don't spoil the fun for all of us by writing an article in a big newspaper about it. :)
Strongly depends on where you are, apparently. When I was in Berlin, there was free Internet all over the place. In our hostel, the hotel across the street, just about any coffee bar, pub, sandwich stand, pizzeria ... Sometimes you had to ask for a password, other times you could just connect, and other times you had to catch some air network from the place next door.
Or maybe that was just Berlin Mitte?
Though I went to some places near Cologne and I didn't have to donate a kidney to get online either.
Connectivity in the more rural areas can be pretty bad though.
My problem in DE was usually related to trips to customers, to the ~end of the world~. In CH it was more prevalent: I stayed in roughly 20 different hotels in Bern so far and most of them, ignoring the decoration from 50 years ago, were charging for internet access. On top of a very high room rate.
A friend of a friend runs an independent midsize hotel here in Germany.
They used to offer free internet access. Then one of their guests used the connection to download copyrighted stuff.
In due course a nasty letter from a lawyer arrived, demanding payment of around 1000€ and as fighting and losing would have been much more expensive, they payed. They were unable to recover the money, because there was no way to prove which of their guests at that time was responsible.
The very next thing they did was to shut down the free internet and bring in an outside company to provide it (with per day and per hour fees for the guests).
The reasons:
1) By having someone else legally responsible for the internet connection, they don't have any liability for future copyright violations.
2) All guests are now "helping" to pay back the money they lost.
I think the bit I'm referring to would be covered by § 15 paragraph (4), which Google translates to "To comply with existing legal, statutory or contractual retention periods, the service provider may block the data." I think "block" here means "store", in the sense that the user data which includes "Information on the beginning and end and the extent of each use" (paragraph 1) needs to be recorded (and retained) for a period of time required by a different statute.
I feel like I only understand about 30% of those documents, I might make more progress with a better translation!
>(4) Der Diensteanbieter darf Nutzungsdaten über das Ende des Nutzungsvorgangs hinaus verwenden, soweit sie für Zwecke der Abrechnung mit dem Nutzer erforderlich sind (Abrechnungsdaten). Zur Erfüllung bestehender gesetzlicher, satzungsmäßiger oder vertraglicher Aufbewahrungsfristen darf der Diensteanbieter die Daten sperren.
This informally translates to: "The provider may use data about the usage after the usage, if those data are necessary to calculate the billings. He may save those data to fulfill existing deadlines, coming from law or contract"
There don't seem to exist an english translation of that law.
That's exactly why in all likelihood, they would've won. It's the perfect setup and - in germany - an argument for securing the wlan not better than the default-setting suggests. I am always surprised by the "there is a chance we might loose and pay more, so we will pay"-attitude that seems to be common in such cases.
By choosing to pay €1000 this month they save a lot of money.That small amount of a settlement is pocket change for a hotel compared to the lengthy legal process that may be drawn out for months, and cost them much more and be without a guaranteed win in sight.
EDIT: Forgot that the hotel was independent, but my point still stands, especially for a hotel without the insurance of being in a hotel chain.
I still think that it would now be a better idea to fight. It's a sure 1000€-loss + the unhappy customers (cause of missing free wlan) vs a maybe-loss and a chance to continue the free wlan. But I understand the tought-process you described, and it was maybe a different legal situation.
If you stay at a hotel with paid wifi and it is full of people who are either tethering from their phones or not using the internet then it will be fast.
Stay at a posh hotel where everyone pays out of their expense account and it's likely to be just as slow as if it was free.
Not to mention that you only need one person streaming 1080p to put serious strain on the bandwidth.
You are being charged for the lights and the shower when you pay the bill. Or was that you're point and I missed it?
It will come, give it some time. Hotels (imho) charge one for the internet because it's a separate utility, the onsite staff are not capable of fixing it [1] when it breaks. Which happens a lot. So they outsource it.
When 'internet' is as common a utility as water and light, and as reliable, it will be in the bill, you'll never see it.