The Vegas WiFi Conspiracy

In Las Vegas, I like to stay at one of a few hotels: MGM Grand (preferably), New York New York, Luxor. Aside from being owned by the same parent company, these hotels have something in common: they charge $14 per day for Internet access.

I've never paid this extortionate price. I have cellular data service, so in theory, I shouldn't need hotel WiFi, right? Well, there's something else these hotels have in common: being inside them disrupts cellular data service. Seriously. The connection, despite a strong signal, is lousy, slow, with higher latency than usual, and constantly drops and reconnects every few minutes (with a new IP address, causing existing connections to hang). Voice service works fine; it's only data service that is affected.

And it's only inside the hotels. Go outside, and everything works great. Even in the parking garage in my car, it works great. Back in the room, it's almost unusable. Every time, at all of these hotels, every time I'm here.

I have a theory. A hotel building this size would have to have cellular repeaters inside, or else the signals wouldn't get through and peoples' phones wouldn't work. Is MGM Mirage, the parent company of all of these properties, deliberately interfering with data service on their repeaters in order to “encourage” you to pay the obscene price for hotel internet service?

This time, with the Verizon MiFi, I tried something new: I took the device and put it in the window of my room, between the curtain and the glass, in the hope of picking up an outside signal instead of a repeater inside the building. Poof! It works. Normal low latency, fast downloads, and a solid connection that pretty much stays up. I'm not kidding. Occasionally they still manage to make my connection drop, but only enough to be mildly irritating, and it works great otherwise.

I'm not usually into conspiracy theories, but this one is looking more and more likely. And, score one more for the MiFi over a tethered phone, laptop data card, or a USB device, none of which could pull this trick off.

UPDATE: Now that the weekend has arrived, and with it the Vegas weekend crowd, this technique is proving insufficient. The cellular system here is obviously overloaded; my connection is falling back to 1xRTT (instead of EV-DO), and I can't stay connected for more than a few minutes at a time. Voice service is also affected. Just another reason weekends in Vegas suck.

The rest of my MiFi review:

Part 1: The Verizon MiFi 2200

Part 2: Experience On The Road

Part 4: The MiFi In Rural Areas, and Final Conclusions

MiFi Firmware Upgrade (on a Mac)

Comments

[Skuzz]

While I enjoy a good conspiracy theory as well, I'm thinking it is more likely they just wired the hotels for 1x voice service and that data works at all is just because of spurious reception getting into the room through the window occasionally.

When you connected further into the hotel room were you on 1x or EV? Was your cell ever on EV inside the hotels, or just 1x?

That said, I think it's ridiculous they charge for WiFi service in hotels at all.

[Jeremy]

Yeah, "conspiracy" is a bit of deliberate hyperbole.

The hotel repeaters are EVDO, though. Inside, even deep in the casino where outside signals are unlikely to penetrate at all, you get a full EV signal.

I'll be hitting Vegas again in a few weeks, so I'll have yet another chance to try to get connectivity. Or resort to driving out to Starbucks for free WiFi, which I've done there quite a few times.