The WiFi High

Ashish K Tiwari outlines how wireless connectivity is gaining ground in hotels

A friend, on a business trip overseas, was waiting at an airport for her flight to another destination where she was to make a presentation prepared the previous night. Before boarding, she decided to take a final look at the presentation, which was on her new laptop. The moment she turned it on, something strange happened. An icon popped up on the screen informing her that there was a wireless network available. She clicked on it and was soon surfing the Web at an astonishingly high speed. Later, she learned that the Internet connection was enabled through WiFi.

Though our airports will take long to offer WiFi, most of the national and international hotel chains in India like the Oberoi, Taj, ITC, Leela, Sarovar Park Plaza Hotels, Le Royal Meridien, Hyatt, etc are making the service available to their guests (particularly for properties in metro cities). But it comes at a cost as against some airports abroad where the facility is free.

What is WiFi

WiFi is the short form for ‘Wireless Fidelity’ and represents a significant advance in digital communications technology since the Internet. WiFi makes use of unused broadcast frequencies to transmit and receive Internet signals. This means that Internet access is available without the current dial-up or wired broadband options. Also, Wifi is a wireless communication standard that is very fast (11 megabytes per second or 11Mbps).

How the system works

In most hotels, the service providing company installs the broadcasting device termed ‘hot spot’ at different locations in the hotel, like lobby, guestroom, restaurant, coffee shop or poolside. These hot spots, which have a range of 100 to 300 feet, act as the Internet broadcast/transmission centre. To receive the Internet signals on his/her laptop, the user has to slide in a wireless network interface card (PCMCIA Card) into the slot in his/her computer. This card is usually bought from the hotel he/she is staying in and it has a time limit for which the facility can be used. It acts just like the prepaid Sim card, available with various airtime options, for cellular phones. The time options available with the PCMCIA card start from 60 minutes to 24-hour durations. Charges could range from Rs 350 per hour to Rs 800 per day (24 hours).

Indian hotels have partnered with international companies to provide this service to their customers. For instance, the Taj and Le Royal Meridien have tied-up with Cisco to WiFi-enable their properties, Sarovar Park has tied-up with a Malaysian firm.

Future applications

As WiFi usage builds, industry experts forecast that its applications will converge with cellular technology — voice and data communications will also be done in the WiFi stream. It will enable geographically dispersed project teams in remote offices to communicate seamlessly with access to real-time data. On the meetings and conferences front, real time conferencing (and instant message systems) could witness a sea-change. During a presentation, with high-speed web access at their fingertips, attendees will be able to check the Web to verify and challenge the presenter’s statistics. The potential for increasing audience interactivity would be greater.