How much free Wi-Fi do travellers need?

How much free Wi-Fi do travellers need?

Access to free Wi-Fi is non-negotiable for travellers these days, but hoteliers constantly grapple with the question of how much is enough.

To be fair, give them what they are used to in their own countries. About 50GB per day will be fair - an average number. Any less just shows how backwards our country is.

Edit - but then again SA is totally backwards. Most of our IT profession is up to **** and cannot provide decent quality services. Our Internet technology infrastructure from all services providers are about 30 years behind that of the US and UK.

So, hell, keep giving tourists 500MB free wifi per day, probably the most our telecommunications infrastructure can manage. Upping this figure to 1GB and more per day will probably lead to the simultaneous collapse of Telkom, MTN, Vodacom and CellC.
 
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Runs a business, wants to provide data for customers. Complains about 5Mb speed running as 1Mb from Telkom.

lol.
 
1gb should be fine... I doubt most guests will use it anyway.
 
To be fair, give them what they are used to in their own countries. About 50GB per day will be fair - an average number. Any less just shows how backwards our country is.

Edit - but then again SA is totally backwards. Most of our IT profession is up to **** and cannot provide decent quality services. Our Internet technology infrastructure from all services providers are about 30 years behind that of the US and UK.

So, hell, keep giving tourists 500MB free wifi per day, probably the most our telecommunications infrastructure can manage. Upping this figure to 1GB and more per day will probably lead to the simultaneous collapse of Telkom, MTN, Vodacom and CellC.

You are either clueless or have some isolated incident. 30 years ago, there was no web or commercial email. We have a long way and some next generation networks and equipment from providers in SA are some times ahead of some providers in the US and UK. Depends where you are in the refresh cycle.

Please give example of 50Gb a day, our company with offices all over Europe, UK and US will love the info. We have memo's internally regarding useless hotel's WiFi and the exorbitant costs charged. Free is not quite there anymore and many hotels are now seeing this as a charge for.

They either add the cost as an extra or part of the daily rate. The reality you pay for it.
 
1 gig a day is ok. I would not use more than about 300 megs a day. I was in Rotterdam 3 weeks ago in the holiday inn and the internet was crap. Another hotel was just a littlebit better. No charges.
Went to Tema ghana and got free internet at the hotel and it was flying. No limit. Yotube without buffering.
Tsogo sun at ort Johannesburg........ Very slow at my last visit.
I will never go to a hotel without free internet.
 
To be fair, give them what they are used to in their own countries. About 50GB per day will be fair - an average number. Any less just shows how backwards our country is.

Edit - but then again SA is totally backwards. Most of our IT profession is up to **** and cannot provide decent quality services. Our Internet technology infrastructure from all services providers are about 30 years behind that of the US and UK.

So, hell, keep giving tourists 500MB free wifi per day, probably the most our telecommunications infrastructure can manage. Upping this figure to 1GB and more per day will probably lead to the simultaneous collapse of Telkom, MTN, Vodacom and CellC.

What utter rubbish. You are clueless.
 
What fair ration of air and water does each instance of Person need?
 
Personally, I don't like the use of "free" in this or any other commercial context. There's no such thing as free anything. Not free wifi, or free minutes, or free calls, or free lunch. You pay for it anyway, even if the charger isn't itemized. Free stuff is a ploy that hooks the ignorant. I'm surprised people still fall for it.
 
To be fair, give them what they are used to in their own countries. About 50GB per day will be fair - an average number. Any less just shows how backwards our country is.

LOL wtf. :D

1gb should be fine... I doubt most guests will use it anyway.

I was also thinking 1GB. At least this much. Most people will probably not use it though. However, if you watch a bit of YouTube, 5GB may be better.
 
Personally, I don't like the use of "free" in this or any other commercial context. There's no such thing as free anything. Not free wifi, or free minutes, or free calls, or free lunch. You pay for it anyway, even if the charger isn't itemized. Free stuff is a ploy that hooks the ignorant. I'm surprised people still fall for it.

Well it is free, I've used free internet many times before and never spent a dime at the establishment, also utilized free toilets and tap water more times than I care to remember at countless establishments..

It is free in terms of it not being charged for, whereas some places do charge for offering the same service, that's free in my books. Just like some garages charge to use their restroom whereas others restroom facilities are free?
 
With uncapped accounts why is this question even asked?
Every guest should be able to get as much as they want or need.
 
I guess the 1gb was based on enough to get your browsing and any work you need to do done. What would be nice is if you could pay extra to access Netflix/hulu etc. When I went on the blue train they had popcorn hour devices in each cabin with a 2tb loaded with recent movies and various music which was quite nice but I still didn't find any good movies to watch.
 
its a hotel, with usually >100 rooms...

not sure how internet for such is run... but it cant be easy...

different hotels cater to its own niche market. a hotel catering towards families and such would require much less data per person than say a Hotel catering to businessmen.
 
Personally, I don't like the use of "free" in this or any other commercial context. There's no such thing as free anything. Not free wifi, or free minutes, or free calls, or free lunch. You pay for it anyway, even if the charger isn't itemized. Free stuff is a ploy that hooks the ignorant. I'm surprised people still fall for it.

It is free in the context that you don't get billed additionally. Some hotels bill for it actually. No one is naïve enough to believe that you don't "pay" for it. The costs are obviously absorbed with your billing. So your point is...?
 
Give them a gig. That's enough for skype banking bookings etc
 
There's no such thing as free anything. Not free wifi, or free minutes, or free calls, or free lunch. You pay for it anyway, even if the charger isn't itemized. Free stuff is a ploy that hooks the ignorant. I'm surprised people still fall for it.

At Mr. Shi's Dumplings in Beijing, the WiFi Password is written on the wall, just to hook you in. Had to pay for lunch as well :-)

P8139329tm.jpg

In Hong Kong, on the other hand, there were WiFi EVERYWHERE. In the streets, on the ferries, at the mall.

In the Beijing Grand Continental Hotel, they charged by the minute. So you had to make sure to kill the wireless connection when you were done.
 
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