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Comment by jawns | Hacker News Reader

One thing I'm curious about: If it's just actively jamming hotspots that got the hotel in trouble, couldn't hotels instead use physical materials to construct conference centers with limited signal?

Like, I know whenever I go into my local supermarket, I'm lucky if I can get a signal once I venture past the front door. There's no active jamming going on; it's just the way the building is constructed (I assume).

If hotels really want to force their own Wi-Fi on people, couldn't they do the same thing -- make use of physical impediments?

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That would also block cellular signals. Which might be a detriment or an additional "feature" depending on your perspective.

I personally wouldn't book a conference center which didn't allow the use of cellphones. Just too impractical as a lot of people use them as de facto 2 way radios (e.g. the people setting up booths, employees of the conference center, security, et al).

If word got out that a conference center was passively blocking cell phone signals by design, I'd venture that the business would pretty much dry up to zero.

Yes the hotel could do these things and the FCC probably wouldn't care since it's on their own property and doesn't affect anyone else.

However, when you start jamming other people's signals that's in direct violation of FCC regulations, so of course the hammer is going to drop. I'm really glad it wasn't just a token slap on the wrist. FCC made it clear that they are serious about this.

I'm not sure $600,000 even qualifies as a slap on the wrist. Marriott's revenues in 2012 were somewhere around $11 billion.

At the very least, it's a lot more money than they made renting wi-fi access during the event in question. Therefore, this behavior is unprofitable and will stop.

It's also enough to get the people who decided to do this fired.

It'd be about break-even if they have a convention each week, and get 25 exhibitors pay $500 each. So if they had a lot of exhibitors they convinced to pay, they could have easily made a profit after the fine.

The fine was for one location. I imagine it put a dent in their p&l. Likely would've been bigger if they settled on multiple locations.

If you make $120k a year this would be like the FCC fining you $5.

The fine was small. Getting that money back is the job of a class-action lawsuit as suggested elsewhere.

The other conditions of the decision put a stop to the activity, and require them to report on compliance for three years. That will be more onerous than writing a check, and may convince them to stop being such greedy dickheads.

It isn't really in their interest to have cell phones not work in any of their conference rooms. I imagine a lot of people (and businesses) would very quickly start booking elsewhere if they did that.

Most hotels that host business meetings or have many business travelers will install small cell distributed antennae systems to boost cell and data coverage because business travelers who don't have service in the rooms won't come back to the hotel.

>>> There's no active jamming going on; it's just the way the building is constructed (I assume).

You're correct there. Cell signals don't play very nice with concrete and steel. It also depends on who your carrier is and what technology their using.

Verizon uses CDMA, which uses a lower frequency (around 800MHz) which gives you better building penetration, as opposed to say T-Mobile that runs on higher frequency (1.9MHz) which tends to have issues getting through all that concrete and steel.

Slight correction, CDMA can be on any frequency. Verizon uses lower ones because they could afford to outbid everybody else for the licenses from the FCC.

I'm guessing, but that might be a few orders of magnitude more expensive than just using a jamming device.

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