Hotel fined for blocking customers’ wifi

Marriott has reached a settlement with the US FCC over a case in which the hotel was accused of knowingly blocking Wi-Fi hotspots set up by customers. With this, Marriott would like to ensure that customers use its paid services.

The American telecom watchdog FCC said in a statement that the hotel chain agrees to pay a fine of $ 600,000, about 479,000 euros, for blocking WiFi. The Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville, which is part of Marriott, was accused by the FCC of blocking all networks except the hotel itself, preventing customers from setting up their own Wi-Fi hotspots.

Because customers could not set up WiFi hotspots themselves, they were more or less forced to use the hotel’s paid WiFi functionality. According to the FCC, business customers using the convention center were charged about $1,000 per device

The FCC launched an investigation against the Marriot after receiving complaints about setting up Wi-Fi hotspots about a year and a half ago. As part of the settlement, in addition to paying $600,000, the hotel chain must report to the FCC every three months for three years on the use of Wi-Fi functionality in all its hotels. With this, the watchdog probably hopes to prevent the hotel from repeating itself.