The Federal Communications Commission has fined Smart City Holdings, LLC $750,000 for blocking Wi-Fi hotspots at various convention centers around the country, the agency announced Tuesday. The Internet and telecommunications provider for convention centers and hotels has been blocking Wi-Fi access for visitors and exhibitors who use their personal mobile hotspots with their own data plans instead of paying for Smart City's Wi-Fi service.
Smart City provides service to convention centers in various cities across the country, including Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Orlando, Fla. The FCC received an informal complaint in June 2014 that consumers couldn't connect to the Internet through mobile hotspots at some of the locations the company serves.
Smart City typically charged consumers $80 a day to access its Wi-Fi. When visitors instead chose to use their own mobile hotspots, Smart City automatically blocked them from connecting to the Internet, according to an FCC investigation.
Smart City President Mark Haley released the following statement on the company's website after the ruling:
“Our goal has always been to provide world-class services to our customers, and our company takes regulatory compliance extremely seriously. We are not gatekeepers to the Internet. As recommended by the Department of Commerce and Department of Defense, we have occasionally used technologies made available by major equipment manufacturers to prevent wireless devices from significantly interfering with and disrupting the operations of neighboring exhibitors on our convention floors. This activity resulted in significantly less than one percent (1%) of all devices being deauthenticated and these same technologies are widely used by major convention centers across the globe as well as many federal agencies.
We have always acted in good faith, and we had no prior notice that the FCC considered the use of this standardized, ‘available-out-of-the-box’ technology to be a violation of its rules. But when we were contacted by the FCC in October 2014, we ceased using the technology in question.
While we have strong legal arguments, we’ve determined that mounting a vigorous defense would ultimately prove too costly and too great a distraction for our leadership team. As a result, we’ve chosen to work cooperatively with the FCC, and we are pleased to have resolved this matter. We are eager to return our energies to providing leadership to our industry and delivering world-class services to our clients.”
This is the second major Wi-Fi blocking case the FCC has enforced. The FCC previously fined Marriott International, Inc. and Marriott Hotel Services, Inc. $600,000 in October 2014 for similarly blocking Wi-Fi at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville, Tenn.
Via: Engadget
