According to the FCC, Marriott hotels has agreed to pay $600,000 to settle allegations that the hotel chain was intentionally blocking visitors from using mobile hotspots so they'd be forced to use pricey Marriott Wi-Fi services. According to the FCC announcement, Marriott thought it would be a good idea to use technology that sent de-authorization packets to user devices, kicking them off of their own personal hotspots or tethered smartphones.
Instead, Marriott charged users from "$250 to $1000 per device" if they wanted to access Wi-Fi, according to the FCC.
“"Consumers who purchase cellular data plans should be able to use them without fear that their personalInternet connection will be blocked by their hotel or conference center,” said Enforcement Bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc. “It is unacceptable for any hotel to intentionally disable personal hotspots while also charging consumers and small businesses high fees to use the hotel’s own Wi-Fi network. This practice putsconsumers in the untenable position of either paying twice for the same service or forgoing Internet access altogether,” he added.
This isn't Mariott's first brush with bad Wi-Fi related ideas.
Back in 2012 we noted that New York's City Marriott hotel locations were taking a page out of the bad-idea ISP playbook and had started to
use Javascript to inject ads over the content viewed using the hotel's free Wi-Fi service. As was the case when
ISPs tried this a few years back the backlash was fast and furious, particularly from ad and content developers who don't like having their own content blocked by traffic stream manipulation.
