“The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday warned hotels and other entities against blocking personal Wi-Fi access, or hot spots, saying it was illegal and could incur heavy fines,” Eric Walsh reports for Reuters.
“‘The Enforcement Bureau has seen a disturbing trend in which hotels and other commercial establishments block wireless consumers from using their own personal Wi-Fi hot spots on the commercial establishment’s premises,’ the agency said in a statement on its website,” Walsh reports. “It said an investigation at a resort hotel and convention center in 2014 had found Marriott International Inc had blocked consumer access to hot spots, and it warned that such activities could lead to heavy fines.”
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<Gautham Nagesh reports for The Wall Street Journal, "Marriott International Inc. agreed to pay a $600,000 civil penalty for blocking people from using personal Wi-Fi networks at Nashville’s Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center, one of the largest hotel and convention centers in the eastern U.S."
"'It is unacceptable for any hotel to intentionally disable personal hot spots while also charging consumers and small businesses high fees to use the hotel’s own Wi-Fi network,' FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc said," Nagesh reports. "Marriott said the blocking was an attempt to protect guests from 'rogue wireless hotspots that can cause degraded service, insidious cyber-attacks and identity theft.'"
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The fact is the blocking was an attempt to “protect” guests from wildly underpaying for Wi-Fi versus Marriott’s overpriced forced ripoff.
Marriott should also be forced to pay a pro-rated portion of every single person’s cellular bill who had hotspot capability but was blocked from using it.