Fed up with hotel Wi-Fi charges? Pack your own Internet
Most of us take for granted these days that we can stay connected wherever we go. But more often than not, when you check into a five-star hotel, getting online is not a given. Instead, you're likely to discover that access to Wi-Fi will cost you the price of lunch.
Many of the top luxury hotels charge from $10 to as much as $30 a day to connect to the Internet. The Plaza in New York, for example, charges $13.95 a day for Wi-Fi -- even though corner coffee shops and budget hotels routinely offer access for free. As the Wall Street Journal recently pointed out, the Wi-Fi revenue helps make up for the fact that in the cellphone era, few patrons pay to use hotel phones anymore. Business travelers with expense accounts may not hesitate to pony up for Wi-Fi, but many travelers resent the extra charge.
There has to be a better way.
One alternative is to travel with a mobile hotspot device. Many of the top carriers offer devices or allow you to pay a bit extra -- $15 a month for AT&T -- to include mobile hotspots with your phone. The devices themselves range from 99 cents a month for AT&T's Unite to $49.99 a month for Verizon's Jetpack.
But remember the devices alone aren't enough. You still have to be signed up to a data plan, which may charge additional fees depending on the amount of data you use each month. You can get a mobile hotspot device with Verizon, for example, but it will cost you an additional $60 a month for 2 GB of data.
Another alternative is the Freedom Spot Photon from FreedomPop, which provides a 4G wireless hotspot without requiring a plan. It retails for $99 and gives you 500 MB of data each month for free or 2G of data for $19.99
CNET recently checked out several more good options from Clear, T-Mobile, Samsung and more.
Deciding between paying for hotel Wi-Fi or investing in a mobile hotspot option comes down to a personal calculus of how much you travel and your data usage requirements.
If you want to stream movies and use up tons of data, maybe the Wi-Fi at the hotel is the best bet. Just checking email? Then a hot spot plan that gives you 500 MB will suffice. But that might be overkill for the infrequent hotel guest. On the other end of the spectrum, if you're playing online games or downloading big attachments, or if you travel a lot, you might want to upgrade to a bigger data plan.
One lingering concern is that all this planning ahead will be rendered moot by hotels trying to block outside Wi-Fi networks. That appears increasingly unlikely, however, now that the Federal Communications Commission expressed its opposition to such practices by fining Marriott $600,000 for blocking personal signals.