Price of High-Speed Access Could Come Down Soon So maybe you don’t see neon signs advertising “Free high-speed Internet!” on every other roadside motel yet. Or even in the newspaper ad for your favorite upscale hotel.
Be patient; prices are heading south. How do I know? By watching my bandwidth bills, paying attention to the news – and reading between the lines.
My DSL bill has gone from $99 to $59 per month since the beginning of the year. My carrier made no big announcement, nor did it heavily advertise the “free first month” incentive for new subscribers. And within a recent one-week period, three hotels made high-profile announcements about their broadband connections that suggest the trend is catching on in the hospitality business.
- Hawthorn Suites revealed that it would add new high-speed wireless computer system in all of its North American properties by the middle of 2002. Each hotel will receive a super-fast T-1 line, central server and router, desktop computers, wireless antennas, software, and training for its staff. Connections will cost $9.95 per day.
- Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, North America’s largest owner and operator of luxury hotels, is outfitting all of its rooms with high-speed connections by early 2002. The property says that its move will give guests more bandwidth per guestroom than any other hotel company in North America. The service will cost $9.95 per day but will be offered free of charge to Gold and Platinum tier members of Fairmont President’s Club.
- Wayport, which specializes in offering high-speed Internet service in airports and hotels, announced an agreement to install wireless and wired Internet access to the new Nashville Marriott at Vanderbilt University. Expect to find wireless Internet access in the hotel’s lobby and common areas, as well as wired service in the property’s 307 guestrooms and suites. No details on costs or connection speeds were released.
What does this mean to you? Those desperate warnings you’ve read about overpriced hotel Internet connections might be more of a myth than a reality of life on the road. In the future, the charges for Internet connections could vanish entirely as the bandwidth supply overwhelms demand.
No one would be happier about that than the people who have to make a remote Internet connection and are in a hurry to do so.
“I am totally fed up with bad lines, waiting 30 minutes or more for my Outlook to sync over a dial-up connection, only to find that the connection is lost at the last minute,” complains Ian Greenway, an insurance manager in St. Petersburg, FL. “I want data fast!”
Agrees Luke Alexander, a manager for a data systems developer in Santa Clara, CA.: “I do a lot of international travel and copper wires suck. If there is a dedicated Internet connection, I get to avoid the hotel phone system.”
Steven Hymans, the vice president for of brand marketing at Hawthorne Hotels, who is the point man for the chain’s broadband initiative, says travelers shouldn’t get their hopes up too soon. He says hotels like his haven’t figured out if high-speed access represents an opportunity to profit or to offer what’s called a “value-add,” which is industry-speak for a something that hotels give away in order to make customers like them better.
“We’re still asking ourselves a lot of questions. I think that as a new generation of software and hardware gets rolled out, prices in general will come down. I don’t know if that means prices will come down for high-speed Internet connections, though,” he adds.
Hymans and other hospitality industry insiders I interviewed for this column conceded that broadband prices are unlikely to go up. It’s a relatively safe bet that rates will fall. The big question is: when? Free broadband remains rare, but the anecdotal evidence that prices are being aggressively cut by hotels is becoming more plentiful.
That’s good news for bandwidth-starved travelers.
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