Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Hotel speeds up Net service ; Online: Sheraton Tacoma now has largest wireless network among Northwest hotels

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 19:32:11 -0500

Hotel speeds up Net service ; Online: Sheraton Tacoma now has largest wireless network
among Northwest hotels
Source: The News Tribune
Publication date: 2002-12-17

Guests at the Sheraton Tacoma Hotel expect that in America's No. 1 Wired
City they will get super-fast Internet connections.

Starting this week, they can.

The downtown hotel on Monday began marketing a high-speed wireless
connection - also called wireless fidelity, or Wi-Fi - in all 319 guest rooms
and the adjacent convention center.

"Guests want higher speeds," Sheraton manager Mark Mathews said.

The hotel, which caters mostly to business customers, had offered the
traditional slow dial-up modem lines. But that just wasn't good enough for
guests anymore, Mathews said.

With the new wireless network, guests can attend a meeting in the
convention center, stroll the lobby, grab a drink in the bar or watch TV in
their rooms without losing their Internet connection. No wires required.

They simply turn on their laptops and click on their Web browsers to access
the wireless network. The signal immediately connects to the hotel's access
Web page. There, patrons can sign up for $9.95 a day.

Earlier this month, the Sheraton hired Portland-based Eleven Wireless to
install 31 wireless hubs in the hotel. The cost was about $80,000.

Eleven CEO Josh Friedman said this is the largest wireless network in a
Northwest hotel. The company has put similar networks in three Portland
hotels. More Northwest hotels, including some in Seattle, are on the way.

"We have covered every square inch of the hotel," Friedman said.

Wi-Fi has been gaining popularity this year in hotels, airports and other
businesses where large groups of people gather. Consulting company
Yankee Group projects there will be 5.37 million users of public Wi-Fi
networks in North America by 2007, up from 30,000 this year.

Mathews said guests have been requesting fast Internet connections for
some time. The network allows guests to connect to the Internet through a
wireless modem that they bring with them or borrow from the hotel.

Eleven Wireless will teach the Sheraton staff how to help guests with this
service.

This is a huge step for Tacoma that will help sell the city as a convention
destination, said Ruthie Reinert, executive director of the Tacoma Regional
Convention and Visitor Bureau.

"Because the city has used the 'America's most wired' slogan, meeting
planners are assuming that Tacoma hotels have (high-speed wireless)," she
said. "We get questions about that kind of connectivity."

Now, Reinert can tell potential convention organizers about the new network
and win a few new visitors.

The network can easily be used to equip convention booths with high-speed
Internet access. Each booth would get a box to plug into.

That is another benefit of the wireless service, Mathews said. With a
traditional wired network, the convention center would have to run wire to
each booth, which costs a lot of money, he said.

http://cnniw.yellowbrix.com/pages/cnniw/Story.nsp?story_id=35219354&ID=cnniw&scategory=Telecommunications%3AWireless&

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