Hotel Broadband FAIL
Tonight, I am staying in one of my usual hotels while in the Bay Area. Aside from the usual corporate shuffling on preferred hotels, I can think of one reason I will avoid staying here in the future: their broadband, or lack thereof.
When I realized how bad it was, I figured I’d try EVDO with my Sierra Wireless AirCard 595U. I hadn’t installed the drivers on this laptop since the last time it was reimaged, so it was off to sprint.com/downloads in order to download the Sprint SmartView software. I started to download the software through the hotel broadband and watched as it downloaded at dialup speeds.
Plan B was to use a phone I am currently beta testing for Nokia to download the same file, though I left the download running on the hotel broadband as a sort of speed test. Even though I started downloading the file on the 3G phone *later, *the phone download finished first. I had the file installed on my PC and Sprint EVDO service up and running in no time!
I am certainly going to fill out the comment card for this hotel stay. If I had more time, I’d try and corner the hotel management and discuss the issue with them directly.
