Good connectivity is paramount in hotels, not just for general day-today operations but your guests need good wi-fi for their activities, hotels have been marked down for less on TripAdvisor. Hotels that have an unreliable connection to the internet are likely to experience slow speeds and possibly significant downtime. Your connectivity needs to be adaptable and flexible to your needs but ultimately, it needs to be reliable.
There are two types of connectivity for hotels; business broadband and Ethernet.
Business broadband connections are often described as ‘fibre’ even though fibre is used in only part of the network. Ethernet was designed for businesses, not the residential market. Its key advantage lies in its use of dedicated high-capacity fibre optic lines. Ethernet services are dedicated, uncontended broadband services with guaranteed bandwidth, synchronous speeds and SLA’s.
Ideal Connectivity Solutions for Hotels
Small Hotels with up to around 15 rooms could easily use an FTTC with good), however with FTTC you may need multiple circuits, if FTTP is available this would be ideal as we can deliver 1Gb with a 50 Mbps up so this is perfect for a small hotel.
Large hotels would need Ethernet connectivity, just because of the amount of internet access they need to provide their guests. The type of ethernet connectivity would depend on the needs of the hotel and total size.
Business Broadband Connections
Fibre Broadband (FTTC)
FTTC is Fibre to the Cabinet is where fibre-optic cable is used from the telephone exchange to the green, roadside cabinet and then, copper cable to the business.
FTTC can achieve speeds of up to 76Mbps for downloads and 19Mbps for uploads.
Fibre Broadband (FTTP)
FTTP is Fibre to the Premise is where fibre-optic cables are used to transmit from the exchange all the way to the business’s premises. FTTP provides bandwidths of up to 1Gbps for downloads and 500Mbps for uploads.
Both FFTC and FTTP make sharing files easier and allow users to connect with remote workers and regional offices via video conferencing.
FTTC is more commonly available but FTTP will eventually become the standard of broadband.
Ethernet Options
Single Order Generic Ethernet Access (SoGEA)
Usually, you’d install a phone line with broadband but with SOGEA, you have broadband without the need for an underlying voice access product whilst offering speeds up to 80Mbps. SoGEA is offered at the same data rates as FTTC broadband.
You can get contended and uncontended services with SOGEA. The bandwidth is asynchronous, however with SOGEA Ethernet you can have an uncontended synchronous 20Mbps / 20Mbps service, but this is dependent on your distance from the street cab.
Speeds: Up to 80Mbps
Fibre Ethernet
Uncontended, guaranteed high bandwidth and uptime.
Fibre Ethernet uses bearers. Bearers are the bandwidth size of the available circuit, it’s the maximum speed that the circuit can go up to. With Fibre Ethernet you can get 100Mbps bearers and add on block of 10Mbps, 1Gbps bearers and add on blocks of 100Mbps up to 500Mbps then after 1Gbps or 10Gbps bearers that you can add on blocks of 1Gbps.
Speeds: From 10Mpbs up to 10Gbps
Ethernet Flex 1Gbps
As a City Fibre Champion, we are able to offer the competitive Ethernet Flex 1Gbps solution. It is an extremely affordable solution that even gives you the ability to get bandwidth, on-demand for no extra cost.
Speeds: Guaranteed 200Mbps both up and down, 1Gbps burst at no extra cost, Unlimited usage.
Converged Ethernet Options
Converged Ethernet is the fully managed variant of standard Ethernet and combines both Voice and Data on a single high-speed connection prioritising all voice traffic to guarantee the number of concurrent calls required and quality, without degradation of the service during periods when traffic usage on your circuit could be in high utilisation.
With Converged Ethernet you get dedicated, uncontented, guaranteed bandwidth speeds and SLA’s.
Enter your contact details into our Connectivity checker to see what solutions are available for your Hotel.
Wi-Fi for your Hotel
Wi-Fi as a marketing tool for Hotels. Good Wi-Fi strength and availability, results in good reviews (or less negative reviews) on TripAdvisor and you can use it to collect data (of course, following GDPR and other data protection laws) to continue marketing to your guests.
You could collect email addresses, or build an idea about your customer base so you can target them further e.g. Are they there for business or pleasure? What age are they? Etc. To put it simply; more information about the customer means more chance of targeting them to come back for repeat visits which means more money for the hotel, which means any technology costs achieve a high return on investment.
To do this, you need a public wi-fi network which is secure and separate from the wi-fi network you’ll user for day-to-day operations in your hotel.
Wi-Fi Security
Wi-Fi security is a key concern for hotels and it should be but you shouldn’t reject the idea of going wireless when there are things that can be put in place to minimise your risk.
As far as Wi-Fi security, specifically, we utilise the following products which mean that you have a strong and resilient network:
- Policy Enforcement Firewall – with deep packet inspection to ensure that each connection and user session is secure. Our next-gen mobility firewall is aware of user roles, device types and app flows.
- Wireless Intrusion Protection – throughout your network to prevent denial-of-service, man-in-the-middle and other security threats. There is no need to separate RF sensors and security appliances.
- Policy Management – identifies all devices and users so that if an unknown device tries to connect, it is rejected and you are notified.