The Misery that's the 'Free Hotel Wi-Fi'

I'm back from my weekend trip to LA and it was a very picturesque drive back and forth. I had my MacBook Air, iPad and iPhone 4 with me along the way. The Virgin Mobile Mi-Fi gave me internet connectivity on the wi-fi only iPad. It was the first time I've really used the Mi-Fi since getting it last week and I was pleasantly surprised. In most instances it worked better and had faster speeds than the 'Free wi-fi' in the hotels I stayed at. Which brings me to the main point of this post.

If it's free and open to the public, beware!

Each time I've used the free internet at any hotel it's brought me back to the harsh reality that internet speeds and bandwidth are still not good enough in this country. I know we are still way better than a lot of other places around the world but come on! There were moments this weekend when I was getting downloads of a mere 0.25 Mbps at my hotel. Thank God for the Virgin Mobile Mi-Fi which at times gave me downloads of 1.2 Mbps, pretty good for a little device like that. Uploads were also good at about 0.6 Mbps.

Hotels advertise free internet and it's a good thing if you believe something is better than nothing. Some hotels will even charge you for a connection (the most I've paid is $12 per day for a horrible connection. It was too late to cancel my order!). Does it really cost that much to provide a faster connection? I don't mind being charged a little extra for the room but give me a decent connection. Free or paid, it's the same internet connection which makes it worse.

The internet at the hotels I stayed at was free but even watching a YouTube clip was a drag most of the times with buffering issues. I tried making a Skype video call and the image quality wasn't great, obviously. It was okay for browsing for the news or checking my mail but apart from that it made me cringe. And here's the bigger issue with public wi-fi... it's unsecured! Meaning, whatever information you send (login information, form entries etc) while connected to an unsecured network can be easily viewed and retrieved by other people connected to the same network. In other words, do not login to your bank account through a public wi-fi.

My Mi-Fi filled this gaping hole regarding internet connectivity. I ended up connecting my MacBook Air to it too. Did all my browsing on it, mail, twitter, YouTube etc. Heck, I even watched a few shows on Netflix with it and it worked like a charm. For now, every time I travel, I will be using the Virgin Mobile Mi-Fi to connect to the internet. At least I know it's secured to a certain degree and much better than the 'Free Wi-Fi' provided by the hotel.