Free wifi or not

Is it unreasonable to ask….

….. whether this wifi is free or not?

A UK based hotel chain recently ‘improved’ its customer offer by making its wifi offer free of charge. A saving of £3 per night and very welcome when many of their hotels (rarely in prime positions) suffer from poor mobile connectivity.

Then they have severely constrained the upload speed on the free service (either deliberately or through simple neglect) to such an extent that a simple email (no attachment) struggles to get sent.

They have of course complemented this free offer with a £5/night ‘high bandwidth’ offer for customers wishing to download movies, play games etc. That high bandwidth offers better upload speed……….