Microsoft teams up with Google to oppose hotels blocking personal Wi-Fi hotspots

Google and Microsoft are joining a wireless industry lobbying group in a bid to oppose a recent hotel industry petition, which seeks the FCC's permission to block personal Wi-Fi networks set up in hotel rooms by customers. The two giant companies may not see eye to eye each day, but they have banded together on topics to represent and protect consumers – this being one of them.

According to the report on Re/code:

This summer, the American Hospitality & Lodging Association and Marriott International asked the FCC to declare that a hotel operator can use equipment to manage its network even if it may result in 'interference with or cause interference' to a [wireless device] being used by a guest on the operator's property.

Hotels argue that they have measures in place to protect customers from "rogue wireless hotspots that can cause degraded service, insidious cyber attacks and identity theft". Both Google and Microsoft have asked in a filing to kill the request, noting guests accessing their own Wi-Fi have equal rights to use the unlicensed spectrum.

Source: Re/code

Rich Edmonds