Comment by paul7986 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by paul7986 | Hacker News Reader

Anyone else sick of having your 4G/5G ATT, T-Mobile or Verizon service blocked when inside a hotel, a concert venue to even a small town (National Harbor DC .. a lot of businesses block your service) all so the business and or businesses around you force you to use a their Wi-fi network; collect and make money off your data. How is that even legal??

My examples in The Flamingo Hotel in Vegas you have to connect to their wi-fi while inside the hotel. Forget about trying to work remotely there and use your 5G mobile hotspot.

At the Keseya Center in Miami ... at a recent concert there they had gates with ticket takers way out of from the front of the door. You walk up to them and they say get your ticket ready and you try but nope your ATT/TMobile/etc service is blocked you can only access getting your tickets via connecting to their wifi. My 5G worked fine until i got close to those non-ticket takers who prodded me to connected to the venue's wi-fi.

National Harbor (just outside of DC) .. inside the gaylord hotel and more so inside Burger Fi and others close by both my friend's Verizon and my ATT with full bars were blocked .. had to connect to their wifi.

Total B.S. and this stuff needs to be outlawed!!! I pay for service and if its readily available (full bars) I better have access or your paying me for time you are blocking me from using it.

> service blocked when inside a hotel

Can you prove this claim? It's literally illegal, and I don't believe it actually happens. There's a difference between active jamming and "our building is made of metal".

Umm it was something hotel were actively doing https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-e&q=fcc+hot... ... you don't think some are still doing so using the whole it's a big building issue argument along the way.

Also why when walking right up to those gates at the Keseya center outside and still outside getting right up to the gate to speak to the attendant did my service with full bars suddenly not work?

It maybe illegal but what are the profits reaped vs the potential fines?

Im usually downvoted for things I say (im sure you dont care to read all my thoughts all over the years on HN) but a LOT of them come true ... most recently about how much i hated Cruise cause they were startup bros trying to do the whole fake it before you make it with technology that can kills..fortunately it didnt kill anyone just unfortunately mangled a pedestrian. Let's see in a year if places start getting fined for this B.S.!

Virtually all those search results are about wifi blockers, not cellular blockers, apart from one random unproven claim on Reddit.

Blocking wifi is also illegal, and you will see from your own link that the FCC did fine hotels that were doing it.

On top of all the illegality involved in signal jamming....in fairness, AT&T signal in Miami is pretty awful no matter where you go IME

They aren't blocking cell data intentionally, that's extremely illegal. That's just how big buildings work dude.

And with a lot of people in one place connecting to the same cell tower that cannot reliably handle that many.

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