Marriott to implement largest hotel WiFi network around the world
Marriott today said it was installing WiFi at 400 hotels in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. STSN, a Salt Lake City company that installs WiFi in hotels, is doing the installations, and Marriott is one of the investors. STSN just announced it had received additional funding from the Intel Communications Fund, which will be used to fund the Marriott rollout.
WiFi will be available in specific Marriott hotels, including Renaissance, Courtyard, Residence Inn, TownePlace Suites, Fairfield Inn and SpringHill Suites. WiFi will be installed in lobbies, meeting rooms and public spaces and complement high speed access that is now in the hotel rooms. I assume that means the landline broadband service installed by STSN in rooms.
Marriott said it had been testing WiFi with STSN for seven months at the San Francisco Marriott, San Francisco Airport Marriott, Irvine [Calif.] Marriott, Salt Lake City Marriott Downtown and Residence Inn Salt Lake City Cottonwood..
No prices for the WiFi service was announced.
What this means: fiefdoms
So, what we're seeing is the creation of lots of WiFi fiefdoms. Hotels, conference centers and airports are, in many cases, offering WiFi service using their own pricing. Sometimes they have roaming agreements; sometimes not.
We're in the state of WiFi rollout chaos. The good news is major companies are being convinced of the value of WiFi and are installing hotspots. The bad news is many WiFi operators are jockeying for leadership. WiFi users who bite the bullet and subscribe to one WiFi service provider (network operator or aggregator) will probably find themselves in locations where they need to pay another provider for access.
Chaos can cause problems, obviously. But in chaos there are opportunities.
