Hotel Internet

I don’t spend a great deal of time traveling but when I do I become painfully aware that the Internet is not everything I expect it to be. I don’t mean that the Internet in America is necessarily worse than it is in Canada, although I feel it is better armed. What I mean is that access to internet outside of my home turf is expensive.

How expensive? Oh god, don’t ask. I had a bill for $80 for something like 4Mb I used in Australia last year. You know what? That’s fine. Phone companies are jerks, I’ve come to expect it. You can’t blame a mosquito for biting you, that’s just what they do.

I do, however, expect thing to be better when it comes to hotels. I’m already paying good money to stay there and charging for Internet seems outrageous. To provide Internet for an entire hotel is pretty much chump change. Let’s say that the hotel IT group isparticularlydim and all they do is buy a cable modem for each room and they pay retail for the cheapest high speed package available(more that sufficient). Well based on Shaw Cable’s pricing it would be about $50 a month. This works out to about 1% of the potential revenue from the hotel room each month.

1%.

That’s the worst case scenario with Internet provided the most expensive way possible. Buying in bulk probably reduced the cost by an order of magnitude.

Instead hotels charge insane amount for Internet. I’ve paid as much as $25 a night and $150/week. The prices are highway robbery. They have you trapped; there is no other way to get on line. This would have been okay a few years ago but now that we’re all addicted to the Internet hotels areeffectivelythe bully from Calvin and Hobbes(Moe) waving our stolen lunch money in front of us as we starve. It is meatloaf day too.

Oh I got your Internet, all right

What really gets my goat(my goat’s name is Arnold and he likes cupcakes) is that hotels never, ever advertise how much they charge for Internet. It appears nowhere on their website or their pamphlets. They sneak it up on you once you’re checked in. They know they have a captive audience and make the most of it. What are you going to do? Change hotels?

Well, actually, yes. I’m done with hotels which charge for Internet. Let the word go out that from this day forth I will never pay for hotel Internet again. If everybody else gets on board hotels are going to have no choice but to starting providing our life blood free of charge. Come join me in boycotting expensive hotel Internet.