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OpenThread / Hotel WiFi / iPads / Hotel Technology / Joe Sharkey / Joe Germanotta / iBAHN / Hotel Bandwidth / → All Tags

Would You Pay for More WiFi Bandwidth in Your Hotel Room?

Welcome to our OpenThreads, a free-for-all forum on a hotel-related topic. This is where you can tell us how you, the hotel guest, operates inside a hotel, not the other way around. So jump right in and comment away!

Perhaps the next time we spy iPads in the guestrooms, we shouldn't geek out so much as these tablet devices might be the reason why a hotel's WiFi network is so slow.

NYT biz travel reporter Joe Sharkey says that hotels blame the rapid rise of the iPad and other tablet devices for putting a strain on their network's bandwidth capability. That's because people are checking in and logging on not just with their iPad but their laptop and cellphones (Um, yes. Guilty.)

Sharkey quotes David W. Garrison, the chief executive of iBAHN, (you may know iBahn as the company that's always charging you for internet in your Marriott Hotel room) as saying the iPad is "the final nail in the coffin" for the idea that hotel WiFi should be free. Well, so says someone who's business is to charge for WiFi.

However, the bandwidth problem is a big problem. We talked about it during our 2011 Hotel WiFi Report in April and here's what Joe Germanotta of GuestWiFi about the heavy issue:

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Hotel Openings / Yotels / Hotel Fun / Geek Hotels / Hotel Technology / Joe Germanotta / Hotel News / Digital Nomad Hotels / → All Tags

Yobots, Lady Gaga's Papa and a Digital Nomad's Wet Dream are Coming to the Yotel

Where: 570 10th Ave [map], New York, NY, United States, 10036

Without a doubt, we are geeking out over the arrival of Yotel Times Square, set to open on June 1st, thanks to the combination of affordable (somewhat) lodgings with pure high-tech fun like touch screen check-ins, retractable beds, free WiFi and mood lighting. Oh and the Yobot.

Yes, when the Yotel opens it will have a robot on site whose sole job is to store your luggage into lockers in the lobby. The NY Times reports:

It’s just a robotic arm, not humanoid like [The Jetsons' robot] Rosey, and it’s as much entertainment for passers-by as it is utilitarian. Your bag goes on a slab that Yobot then picks up and slides into one of 133 lockers, usually with a flourish of dipping, twisting and other acrobatics. You get back a bar-coded ticket, which you insert into the system when you want Yobot to return your bags.

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Hotel WiFi / Celebrity Scoop / Lady Gaga / WTF Hotel News / Joe Germanotta / → All Tags

Lady Gaga's Papa is the Godfather of Hotel WiFi

It seems that the daddy of Lady Gaga and hotel WiFi have entered into a very good romance. We say that because in reading about the eccentric Gaga in January issue of Elle magazine, she mentions her dad's no "paper gangsta." She telles Elle:

My father is a really powerful man, a telecom guy

So how is making all this bank? He sells WiFi to hotels. (Can you hear that? That's the sound of our USB Wireless card dropping to the ground.)

Joe Germanotta started his own company, Guest WiFi, in 2002, but it's now listed as a past gig on his LinkedIn profile. He got out of the WiFi game to become the owner of House of Gaga Publishing. (We don't blame him.)

But we love that he was a pioneer of hotel WiFi early on—2002 was the dark ages of hotel WiFi. Papa Gaga even company grew to count over 70 hotels and conference centers as clients.

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