Hotel Broadband: The Ongoing Saga

As mentioned last week for the next few days I’m appearing nightly at the Hyatt Regency SFO. I don’t normally stay at Hyatt’s as they’re typically beyond my budget, but a UK based coworker is here and I decided to stay where they put him for convenience. He’s here two weeks so he got a deal, for my three nights I didn’t.

Anyway, returning to the theme of broadband this place, which is vast, has wifi throughout the rooms. Last night it was solid and pretty speedy. This morning it’s simply D.O.A. A call to in-house tech support, provided by a company called Z-Net, had me try various things…but no joy. I have both  a laptop and a netbook, neither of which get issued an IP address. Although both report decent wifi radio signals.

In the end the support tech had me fetch a wireless bridge de vice from the front desk. That worked for a few minutes then it lost its connection, too. After power cycling it a couple of times it’s online at the moment, but seems shaky.The tech told me that they may have some flaky bridge devices in inventory and to exchange it if it doesn’t work.

They want $9.95/day for the service, which is about normal. But given it’s not been reliable I’m starting to think that a T-Mobile 3G dongle might be a more definitive solution.

What’s the moral of the tale? It doesn’t matter of you’re paying $120/night or $220/night…you get about the same type of  internet access. The big advantage to the Hyatt would seem to be that the tech guy is on-site. But then again, this is SFO….not Wichita KS.