How do we convince all hotels to just provide free WiFi, no passwords?

After traveling around the world I definitely see the cheaper hotel better wifi paradox.

Expensive chains require a terms of service to cover the liability of illegal goings on with use of wifi.

Cheap hotels don’t really pay too much attention to that and so the wifi is simply a password given at the front desk.

To tell you the truth I would require people to have sign a TOS as well if I had a hotel.

These businesses are highly regulated and inspected. For cheaper hotels if they get sued they can just sell or walk away from it and still be alive.

Back in my home country I gave free wifi to some people in the village. And at some point I had to take it away.

So many people started to gather around the front of my house that it became annoying. Some people even started to come into the property. Suffice to say I shut it down soon. Then everyone hated me.

It’s not as easy as it sounds.

Nothing is free.

Depending where you are, its illegal. For example in France, if you dont keep a register of whoever used your wi-fi, you are in breach of anti-terrorist norms.

"Spreading the word" isn't needed. There are plenty of low-friction tech solutions to public Wi-Fi onboarding and the people responsible for these systems know about them.

The persistence of stupid captive portals etc. is an intentional move by the hotel, coffee shop, wherever. Their marketing department values your eyeballs + any data you provide as part of sign up. It's stupid because you're trying to get online, you don't want to experience this friction, but it's a "customer touchpoint" and the venues don't want to lose it.

Source: have built large Wi-Fi networks for 15 years, helped develop Passpoint support on Android, ran large U.S. coffee shop Wi-Fi, ran citywide Wi-Fi in NYC.

As for the cost, I agree. Just charge me more on the room itself. But in EU and many other countries, you are responsible for knowing who does what through your network.

As for the user experience, why not just give you a personal generated password when you check in? Then they have the info they need, and you just need to enter the password. Both iOS and Android support auto filling SSID and password through a QR-code and NFC, so that's the best solution I think.

Most hotels are small businesses. Business ISPs are expensive for the amount of bandwidth that then needs to be shared across rooms. They need ways to limit who is accessing it.

The more expensive the hotel, the more likely the customer is business traveler and can expense the cost or won’t be too inconvenienced by add-on charges.

What makes you think you're entitled to "free WiFi, no passwords"?

It's a service the hotel (or restaurant, library, etc) is providing to its customers - not any rando who happens to be within radio distance.

Why should you be special and not have to provide some form of authentication that you "belong" there?

How do you think having an open access point would provide a good experience to hotel users when anyone can log on?

And what problem are you trying to solve?

I mostly stay in Hiltons. You just enter your last name and room number and you’re in. It’s even an easy enough process with my Roku stick that I take with me that doesn’t have a browser.

Not a good idea considering the security and privacy of open WiFi.

Just get everyone on the planet to stop committing crimes on other people's wifi, or at least have the decency to use a vpn. I doubt any hotel would really care about passwords if they weren't getting C&Ds from mpaa/riaa.

Some captive portals require a password, but all seem to require acceptance of their ToS.

Is there any precedence that a provider of open Wifi is absolved of any responsibility for nefarious activities by end-users when their ToS is agreed to?

And share their bandwidth with any of the surrounding businesses/individuals who don't want to pay for their own?

Are you sure we can't just keep the systems that ask for room number and last name with no rate limiting that just bills the occupant of that room when they check out? I'm a big fan of those. /s

I've noticed the cheaper the hotel, the more amenities they have, like free wifi. Why? It seems like it should be the opposite.

Same way you convince any business to do anything: market pressure or regulation. Regulation to make hotels provide free wifi is never going to happen, not in the US anyway. I have no idea how you could get market pressure to accomplish this either.

So, basically you the answer is you can't.

I believe monetizing Wi-Fi is the solution. Most cellular traffic is transmitted while indoors in range of a wi-fi access point. If you could pay e.g. Boingo $15/mo to aggregate paid wifi access then it would be well worth it. Ideally the revenue share would encourage nearly every business to offer a roaming SSID, as ubiquitous as credit card acceptance.

https://blog.google/technology/area-120/orion-wifi/

Feels like https://freifunk.net/ deserves a mention in this thread. It's an association in Germany that works on broad, open access to the internet via Wifi (with optional Meshing functionality). They have, among other things, ISP status - so if you provide an open Freifunk Wifi based on their infrastructure, all/most potential legal troubles go through them and not through you.

Hotel manager, chiming in.

> If there's any kind of pasword—they're doing it wrong.

Dare I ask, why? Everyone and their dog understands that WiFi access usually requires a password. Also, the hotel I manage is in a residential area, and we'd rather NOT have neighbors free-loading off our WiFi.

Get a travel router.

I have the Gl.inet Slate, and when I get to my hotel each week, I just plug that in, maybe log into its admin interface and deal with the captive portal (not always necessary since I usually stay at Marriotts and it use remembers), and then all my devices connect to that like I’m at home. Super seamless.

I need to go through and setup ad blocking and possibly default VPN/Wireguard connection, just haven’t gotten around to that part yet.

It may be illegal, it also opens up security issues if the network is unsecured. I definitely hate the login pop-ups, I'd rather use a username/password using the standard OS prompt.

I never use WiFi when I am in a hotel because I am most likely traveling and want to go outside and have fun / explore, not browse the Internet in my room.

If you find yourself in a position to organize a conference or large gathering, vote with your organization's money and don't book places with abusive wifi policies, even if it isn't completely free. I have seen Marriott hotels extorting groups for $10k+ for internet access at the last second, for instance. If we stop giving these crooks our money the market will sort it out.

Don’t stay at hotels then, only stay at airbnbs/vrbos that have good wifi.

Why do hotels not do this already?

Most of us book online any... so uhhh why not just ask for the mac address of the machine, add it to the network on check in, remove it on check out?