Jonathan Greene reports his hotel bandwidth is quite poor. He's staying at the Sheraton Harbor Island in San Diego for the Demo 2008 Conference. This is a hotel that is located directly across the street from the San Diego Airport and is very close to one of the main fiber rings in San Diego.
Access to higher speeds at that property is totally possible, but the issue is such that the hotel's parent brand, Starwood, and the property's ownership group tends to not really understand what the current "connected" traveler needs in the way of bandwidth and connectivity. They can survey all they want, the simple problem is when a group like the DEMO crowd arrives, they can't supply what they need and the conference has to bring in their own connectivity.
Sure, JG and others like him, including me, are resourceful enough to use 3G data, but even that at times, especially in a large resort or hotel complex even that isn't going to cut it. The totem pole effect still impacts 3G and sometimes walls, glass and other structures simple make that not work. Yesterday for example I watched my signal go from 3G to EDGE, back to 3G while sitting still in Ocean Beach, so the 3G argument isn't the answer.
Here are the things that matter which hotels and resorts would be wise to consider:
1) 45 Megabit Connectivity for a hotel up to 300 rooms
2) Low latency, such as a ping time to the ISP Network Ops Center of under 10 milliseconds
3) Wired and Wireless to the guest room
4) Single log on to both wired and wireless networks, including public areas
5) Wired and wireless capability in the conference areas, with different SSID's and a subnet that carves out some portion of the bandwidth
6) No less than 1.5 symmetrical speed to each user.
7) Ability to get more bandwidth on demand to meet the needs of the current guest load
8) No port blocking
9) True SMTP, Exchange, POP and IMAP capability, without the need to modify any settings (i.e. be standard)
10) A competent IT manager on duty at least two thirds of the day, the same way an engineer is on duty.
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