Wireless Woes.
Posted on March 18th, 2008 by Simon Chen
Obviously the Westin has vision impaired people working for them. I think that’s the politically correct term for “blind” nowadays.
Anyway.
There we all were. All 300+ of us at the opening session of the Omniture Summit. Matt Belkin, the Head Of Omniture Consulting was struggling through his presentation waiting for the wireless in the ballroom to catch up to his requests.
It wasn’t like he was waiting for a YouTube clip to download or a Microsoft security patch.
Nope. All he was trying to do was demo some basic features of the new interface for SiteCatalyst - Omnitures’ core analytics platform.
It must jack the yanks off unbelievably when they come into town and then hit our archaic wireless infrastructure. You’d think that the Westin had just installed wireless and was sort of coming to terms with how much bandwith they might need.
Don’t you think by now the Head of Engineering for the hotel (any hotel) would just look at the order form on the wireless request and tick the box that said “warning, this capacity is not really recommended for private use. Typically only reserved for military installations, organisations wishing to conduct any sort of a jihad or suitable for a group of teenagers”.
Or something like that.
If it was me, I’d flood the joint with radio-waves. I’d make people sign a waiver when they came into the hotel saying that if they were pregnant or needed to operate heavy machinery later that day, then it was recommended that they shouldn’t enter. Or something like this.
When I was at Blogworld in Vegas, the organisers spent US$65k over the duration of the event on wireless base stations and more importantly, wireless capacity. They were in every session room, the hallways, the main lobby - just everywhere. There was no issue. And no presenter sat looking dumbfounded at their screen waiting for a page to load.
Now I know I have a.d.d. My 7 year old son gave it to me.
But in this day and age, hotels like the Westin (and the Hilton isn’t much better) need to pull their lazy ass fingers out and spend the money on the infrastructure they need.
Before we all go mad.
Apparently, the airlines (with the help of Boeing) have started to install wifi onboard. I just read a guy’s blog where he was on a Korean Airlines flight, and able to use GMail, normal web mail, VOiP and Video Streaming. All while hurtling through the air at 500+ miles an hour. And onboard Korean Airlines!
If you ask me, the only reason Korean Air has wifi antenna’s fitted to the rooftop of their planes is because they used to have a habit of crashing into the sides of mountains. Maybe wifi will help the rescue teams talk with the survivors via instant messenger.
Anyway. Back to the hotels.
Enough with your silly turn down services, your coconut butter herbal shampoo, your heavenly beds, your goddam TV’s that I need to call my children at home to teach me how to use.
I want wireless. I don’t want to pay $24 bucks a day to use it (hide it in the room rate if you have to). And I want it to work everywhere.
Matt Belkin did a solid job. He laughed it off. He shouldn’t have. But he did.
There was a lot of digital folk today at the Summit. Some of Australia’s largest companies were represented. C’mon. Let’s get serious. It’s 2008. Figure this shit out already.
Am I being pedantic? I hope not.
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March 19th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
No Simon you are totally not being pedantic, you’re just railing against yet another instance of a shameful Australian mediocrity in this area. As a person who organises conferences for the digitally literate, I agree with you 100%. Think of how awesome it is to write the cheque for that $24 a day for something like 20 speakers who are staying several days on your tab! Don’t get me started
But really, this is just another example of how poorly we are treated as broadband consumers in Australia, and how passively we accept this. I put this forward as the single thing holding Australia back in 2008.
But what to do about it? For myself I vote with my wallet and will always try to find the place with free wifi on wotif - a criteria that over rides just about every other aspect of a hotel. And I do always moan and give hotels and venues my rant about “living in the dark ages” when this inevitably comes up. But beyond that…..
March 19th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Spot-f*cking-on. ’nuff said.
March 24th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Westin St Francis in San Francisco includes in amenities: T1 and Fiber Optic High Speed Internet: http://www.westinstfrancis.com/amenities/:
not good enough for Oz?
I will be linking to this today. We really need to get the blogerati drawing attention to this and maybe, just maybe, someone at Westin will say “Houston….”
If it was one of the budget chains you might say, Oh well. But the Westin?
What’s really instructive here, Simon, is that no one from Westin is onto this like a shot, taking up your challenge, telling us what they are doing about it. In other words, they are not part of the conversation and don’t even know there is a conversation. I wonder how much they are paying some fancy PR agency to look after their interests? Too much, evidently.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
post script. As Maxine indicates above and as I confirmed just now in a phone enquiry, the Westin Sydney charges extra for Internet access (actually $24.95 per 24 hours). Maybe the US is different, I thought. Another phone call established that the Westin St Francis in San Francisco also charges extra for in-room Internet access, even though that is described on their website as included in “standard amenities”. The Westin group obviously has a different concept of “standard” from the rest of us. I think we have what might be called an attitude problem here?
March 24th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
[...] so, it seems, at least for the Westin group, if Simon Chen’s Wireless Woes post, about a corporate presentation last week at the Westin Sydney, is anything to go by. There we [...]