What do you use marina wifi for ?

BlueSkyNick

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As wifi technology has developed, and due to a massive increase in portable devices, there is a much greater demand. Tariffs also vary from place to place, and nearby pubs and cafes often provide a service usually for free.

I would be interested to know the main reasons for using wifi, whether on board at your home marina or as a visitor elsewhere.

If a marina service is 'free to all' there is risk of contention on the bandwidth on busy days. To prevent this, it is possible to allow a certain amount of free usage for basic internet access, and apply a charge for higher bandwidth services such as video downloads.

What type of applications would you wish to use at no cost, and what would you will be willing to pay for, at a reasonable charge ?

For example....
Simple web browsing for information, such as weather
Access to emails
Skype?

through to

Online gaming?
Live TV?
recorded TV on IPlayer?

Business applications, such as software development requiring high upload capacity, good quality Video conferencing;

What ever you would like to add ... !
 
I use it for most of the things I use my DSL for at home.... eg general browsing, email, and occasional streamed video.

i'd not pay a premium... i'd just use 3G instead.... but would be somewhat surprised to have to pay for decent wifi on top of berthing fees

I'd expect a better service for berth holders than visitors though!
 
I am not prepared to pay the premium at my marina for wi fi, and for me the only purpose it does serve is to show what a good buy the iPad and 3G are.
 
Mostly YBW.. weather forecast, emails
though some members post video clips, which are pretty useless on
Spectrum as it is too slow to work... or it simply bumps you off half way through refreshing a page..
Indeed mostly I have to use my 3g mobile service to get onto YBW ...


I wouldn't pay Spectrums visitor rate for the poor quality service I get as a bertholder...
 
Frankly I'm impressed that Tomahawk even managed to get half a page

I've been sat on the pontoon before now right underneath the Spectrum route and still not been able to get a connection!

If I was paying for it I'd be pretty unimpressed 'cos it's pants

I mostly use either my 3G dongle (when it gets a signal its very good but can get expensive) or tether to the phone on Orange (rarely lets me down and cost limited to a max of £1 a day)
 
Presumably through their VPN. Do you then have to download/upload lots of big attachments, eg Powerpoint presentations, or just boring bean-counter stuff on Excel ?

Mainly Citrix or rdp connections through VPN although occasionally I need to download large amounts of data to sort out.
 
Why not put it in then monitor usage with a free for all first few months? Then you get to advertise as well as collect usage data.

To be honest we are now past the stage where you can charge for wifi, it's just another expected service like loos and showers. I actually avoid hotels which charge and marinas will eventually go the same way.
 
And what you like me to do if it is totally overloaded on a rainy day in July when everybody and his dog wants to access the interweb ?

Nothing. If its free nobody will expect a great service. To be honest at your place people will likely not use it much.
 
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