In Asia there are tons of places with free Wi-Fi, even where there the tap water is not potable. At a bus stop in the middle of nowhere in South Korea. At a roadside cafe in Malaysia. At a cheaper-than-cheap hotel in Indonesia. Even some airports!
There are no "portals," no "user agreements," just beautiful open Wi-Fi scattered all over the place. It's hard to imagine spending even $5 at any place that wouldn't offer you internet access, much less the $150+ that Marriott charges its "guests."
Sooner or later all this unnecessary friction (sorry, "added value") is bound to catch up.
This works because the free wifi makes the people want to stay there and spend money there, so in effect everybody pays for the wifi. In high-end hotels the relationship is entirely reversed and people stay there because they want to stay there, and the wifi is used to extract more money because people actually need it while staying there.
It also needs to be kept in mind that all these asian small places have DIY wifi, while hotels got into the wifi game way too early and locked themselves into expensive, underdelivering and long-term contracts with 3rd party companies that do the wifi for them.
> while hotels got into the wifi game way too early and locked themselves into expensive, underdelivering and long-term contracts with 3rd party companies that do the wifi for them.
It's basically one group of scoundrels that got cheated by another group of scoundrels. I wonder though, how hard would it be for hotels to renegotiate those contracts - or drop them and eat the fee - if they actually cared?
I wonder how much problems companies can get into when providing open wifi in the respective countries.
I assume nothing ever happens in a lot of asian countries when somebody torrents their favourite new movie/tv show from one of these connections while I imagine US ISPs send nasty "stop it" letters every now and then. (even if the hotel might not be liable, that probably doesn't stop Comcast from sending them)
Brazilian GSM operators just announced (at TV) that they'll all (at the same time) start cutting internet access after a quota in order to provide their customers a better service.
Usually cheaper places have free wifi and expensive 5 star hotels have paid wifi, even in the same city. I think on reason is knowing their customers. A backpacker hostel won't be able to charge the backpackers €10 a day for wifi, the people will either choose another hostel, or go to a cafe. The people staying at an expensive hotel are less price sensitive and will pay up.
And post 4G, WiFi is becoming less of a requirement anyway. Just a few years ago steaming YT on my phone was troublesome, now I just assume it works (and 9/10 it does).
I can stream HD YT to my laptop (via tethered 4G) and it works most of the time (although sometimes drops me out of HD).
There are no "portals," no "user agreements," just beautiful open Wi-Fi scattered all over the place. It's hard to imagine spending even $5 at any place that wouldn't offer you internet access, much less the $150+ that Marriott charges its "guests."
Sooner or later all this unnecessary friction (sorry, "added value") is bound to catch up.