As many of you may know, for the past six months or so I’ve been spending many days and nights on the road. Hotels and serviced apartments, flights that take anywhere from an hour to overnight are a staple in my life, and so is broadband access. But of late, I’ve noticed a few things that have me concerned about the road warriors ability to easily get things done as if the road was the same as their office.
Hotel Broadband-most of the hotel broadband was designed for use circa 2002 or so. What was installed back then was enough for 10-15 simultaneous users. Nowadays its likely in high technology area hotels, or where conventions and trade shows are located that the demand at any time is over 50 percent of the guests wanting to use the pipe.
My experience with iBahn hotels, a provider who used to be one of the best, in three straight Marriott property stays which they power, has me wondering if I should stop staying at Marriott properties. While the download speed in Las Vegas at the Residence Inn at Howard Hughes Center was decent, and while the property has 4 T-1’s coming to it, according to the manager, the upstream was horrible, making it impossible to hold a SightSpeed Video Call or hold a decent conference call using Skype and High Speed Conferencing from VAPPS, both of which are clients of my agency. The issue wasn’t the client’s technology, but the hotels pitiful broadband structure.
In Torrance, CA at the downtown Courtyard By Marriott, the quality was so bad, Ken Rutkowski and I didn’t record the news together. While the service quality was great on Sunday, by Monday the quality had dropped to the point of where latency and jitter were so high that it made it impossible to maintain any type of conversation.
In Philadelphia, at the Courtyard By Marriott’s Center City location the same rang true. What was really irritating was I opted to pay for the 1544kbps service, versus the “free” 384k service. I figured for $8.95 a day I would be on a better network. WRONG. Best speeds I saw were under 600k and the downloads of iTunes videos took forever, even though iBahn and Marriott promote the idea of faster broadband being for the person who wants to download or stream. Again, VoIP calls were passable at times, but at other points, just horrible.
A few weeks earlier at the Farimont in San Jose I had a outrageously good experience on the weekend, but come Monday and the arrival of the conference attendees the daytime braodband just didn’t duplicate what I had on Sunday. Again, it was the upstream path that was the killer.
Airports are also becoming a challenge. While some remain AT&T, T-Mobile or Concourse Communications properties, the latter now owned by Boingo, many are opting to be “free” and treating WiFi as an amenity. Unfortunately the “free” model is about as successful as Muni WiFi. Not very. Free means limits, and basically no real support. Speeds in Las Vegas and San Diego are just so-so, and good for simple surfing. But try to upload a Powerpoint, or have a web cam chat with your loved one just before you take off, and you’ll find that its a big hurdle.
Another issue of late is the whole idea of paper boarding passes at security. I tend to avoid paper whenever I can. Some hotels now want to charge for use of their “business” center to print boarding passes. Of course, those of us with PDAs and Smartphones already have the email with us so why can’t we simply show that or use our cell phone’s SIM card for authorization, especially folks like me who have already used CLEAR to be a registered traveler. In Las Vegas the Southwest front line reps tell me they complain about the e-ticket machines all the time, and I experienced first hand the problem. Armed with brand new AMEX and VISA cards and my driver’s license it took me at least a dozen different tries on various eTicket machines to get a boarding pass. Southwest says McCarran won’t let them use the same machines they use elsewhere (and where I rarely have any problems) but being that newer credit cards must likely have a higher and more sophisticated magnetic strip, it still doesn’t explain why my driver’s license which is few years older has any issues. Sadly, the Las Vegas Airport PR folks were both clueless and unable to get a real spokesperson on the phone, reminding me of my experience with San Diego Airport’s Technology Director. Simply clueless, and reliant upon outside “consultants” to make informed decisions. Remember, muni-authorities work on lowest bid, not best of breed, so the thinking behind many decisions is how much can we get for how little. With technology, you get what you pay for, so just like what happens with Free WiFi (it fails to make the grade) the same happens with all things technology when the same “low bidder” approach is taken.
On the other hand, I’ve had back to back sparkling experiences when it comes to airline security programs in the USA and now in the UK. CLEAR, or as I call it, the high speed cut in line program, and IRIS (in the UK) are pure joys. I “cleared” security immediately at Newark’s Terminal B to catch my morning “commuter” flight to London, and then after getting priority de-planing for flying Virgin’s Upper Class (gotta love AMEX Membership Reward points) I walked to the IRIS line, had zero wait, ran the eye scan, and was through UK Immigration in less than 30 seconds. Both CLEAR and IRIS are examples of how expensive technology can work, and work well.
I’ve also been very pleased with my Asus eeePC. Much like the Flybook, it’s a great “second” just in case computer, but I can do most of what I need with it so it’s a great toss in the bag back up to my ultralight MacBook Air.
Bottom line…travel is not all pleasure, but with some planning, and expense you can make it a tad easier on yourself.