I just spent three weeks on the road, working remotely in Europe. Along the way, I stayed in hotels in London, Paris, Lisbon, Madrid and Barcelona, and in my winemaker friend's Gite. Now I'm back in the USA and realizing that despite all the claims our Information Service providers make about being the best, it seems hotels still don't understand broadband like they do in Europe.
For example, in the Intercontinental O2 in London I was seeing speeds of 50 megs consistently, both in my room and in the common areas. In Madrid at the Intercontinental it was 6megs, but a rock solid 6 everywhere. Even in the Les Cocallieres Gite in Montpeyroux I was getting between 1.5 and 3 megs, but a solid speed, that handled real time voice easily. In Paris at the Intercontinental Avenue Monceau I found the speeds to be 10-15 megs most of the time, and is Lisbon Estoril I was getting up to 30 megs, but the usual connectivity was around 10-15 megs on average. In every case streaming, voice calling, audio and video conferencing were possible without any degradation.
I'm back in Miami and the hotel is not the Intercontinental, and my streaming of Showtime is buffering all the time. I can't watch Homelands debut without buffering every 5 to ten seconds, and I'm sure it's how the network was designed and how the downstream service providers are peered. Rather than "out" the hotel, as this is not the Miami Intercontinental, I'll talk with the front desk later today, and see what can be done, as I'm spoiled by what my experiences were like the last three weeks….