The ‘why’ behind shoddy hospitality Wi-Fi -- and how to fix it
YOU’RE on a business trip, in a hotel room, and the office wants you in a video conference.
But the signal from the free Wi-Fi is so bad it is practically impossible to use for a voice conversation, let alone live video.
Typically, in this scenario, the options are to use one’s own mobile data at high cost, or to phone the front desk for tech support.
There is a third option: bang on your neighbours’ walls and ask them to disconnect their phones from the Wi-Fi.
Obviously, that’s not practical, but it could well be the best solution, due to the way Wi-Fi is typically set up. “When Wi-Fi first came out, it was very simple but, to make it effective in a classic hotel environment or conference centre or stadium, is very complex, because there is lots of interference, and interference is the death of Wi-Fi,” says Nick Watson, vicepresident for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Ruckus Wireless, a global provider of wireless systems.
“Most smartphones tend to hang on to a Wi-Fi access point for the longest period, even when it’s not in use, so you need intelligence in the access point to kick off idle devices.
“No one wants to deal with that complexity, but if you don’t have it nothing works.”
The consequences have been felt by every business traveller, usually without knowing the cause.
The result of that in turn is general dissatisfaction with travel Wi-Fi.
Ironically, that is music to the ears of people such as Watson, who have been struggling to explain the importance of network architecture and appropriate are processed and connections managed smoothly.
“If you have multiple access points, they need to be sophisticated enough to mesh.
“Start-ups in this business take the approach of one access point in every room, but they don’t necessarily mesh. Many access points are two or three steps behind current international standards.”
Ruckus is also targeting another “vertical” where quality Wi-Fi is crucial, but the words “Wi-Fi” and “quality” rarely meet. “Higher education has unique requirements that are not immediately obvious,” says Watson. “Any environment with a lot of on-site housing of younger people has massive onboarding requirements.
“All have expectations of what they can do with the technology, and want to do what they did at home.
“It’s the same at hotels: people arrive wanting to stream video while chatting on the phone, they expect it to work, and they don’t expect to pay.
“People take it for granted that there is now embedded video in all things, from websites and e-mail to instant messaging. And now we’re used to that, there’s no going back to text-only.”
Wi-Fi is essential today. In the same way, high-speed Wi-Fi supporting bandwidth-intensive applications is offered today as a premium service, but will become essential soon. Very soon.