If there were anything a hotel did do to minimize reception,
Just to make it clear it it highly unlikely that they sat down and said 'Ok now, how can we messup phone reception today!' Its just the nature of how wireless communications work, they don't like going through solid objects.
or did not do that they affordably could do to maximize reception, that was the thought that would elicit that response. Hotels do make such decisions as whether or not to allow programming areas to be a wi-fi hot spot or to make people pay through the teeth to access wi-fi, as well as whether the computers they provide for patrons are free in a business office (such as at Doubletree) or charge through the teeth with a minimum $20 deposit (such as at Hilton). As far as I knew, they could have made a similar decision to not have the most universal access for some other reason that would make them money.
There is a difference however, for Wi-Fi they can sell the network key, or time on there computers, they can not sell time for there cell phone repeaters. Repeaters range form $250-$5,000+ depending on how good of a one you want to get.
Then you have to multiply that by how many will be needed to cover the entire hotel. That comes out to a large chunk of change for something that they get no additional direct revenue from. (The word-of-mouth praise might result in a few more bookings, but they are the hilton they are big enough to not need that as desperately as other hotels)
They could actually setup there own Cell Phone tower, and let patrons use that. And if you have that level of control over the tower you can filter who you want to give access to who you want and deny who you don't. So they could make money off of that, but they would have to pay thousands for the hardware itself, and probably thousands more to the cell phone companies to make the contracts and its all a big headache and a risk that nobody cares enough to pay MORE to use there phone.
It sucks for businesses to have to go the legal route, because I for one know how to setup that system for under $1500 in parts. Completely illegal but I know how to do it.
Am I to understand that it is only on the levels that are below ground that there will be problems using cell phones, then?
We can not garentee that, personally my phone works for calls for all but the parking area/exec tower. Texts work all over the place. But thats the point of this thread, different carrier/phone combinations produce different signal strengths.
There were definitely situations in the CS last year that were successfully managed because of the ability to quickly text/call staff. This is one reason for the concern (& yes I've changed phones & carriers since then for $ reasons).
This year staff will most likely be having nextel, I am not sure how they will be distributed, but its the same system the hotel staff uses and they have repeaters in for them specifically so they should work all over the place for staff-staff communication if needed. I'm not sure who is exactly in charge of them to ask how they are being distributed.
The other thing is that if it is the lower-level floors in both buildings that lack cell access for many, if not most, patrons, then perhaps we could have some signage that alerts people to this possibility, and perhaps when people check in with kids they could also be alerted to this. I could easily imagine parents worrying unnecessarily that their kids have left the hotel, because they can't reach them by phone/text, when they've simply wandered into a cell-phone-dead-zone.
This might be a good idea, but a lot of the time, people with cell phones know that going underground will hurt there reception. And with all the different combinations of phones/services, we cant say exactly how strong the signals will be.
