What do you use marina wifi for ?

I pay a reasonable charge for a reliable connection, cos otherwise I'd be a lot more restricted when I could go to the boat.
 
Online weather, GRIB, emails, a bit of browsing mainly YBW, Skype when out of UK, but I only use wifi if it's free and not running at snail pace, else I use a 3G dongle.
I was impressed with my French Domino 3G this summer.
Work use is a thing of the past :D and don't bother with TV but do sometimes catch up on radio programs if cricket is polluting LW :mad:
 
lustyd said:
Nothing. If its free nobody will expect a great service.
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I can't agree with this - we provide great showers for free, and people expect them to fully serviced. Ditto water and electricity. If we provide it, we want to do so to a high standard.

lustyd said:
To be honest at your place people will likely not use it much.
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Why do you say that? What do you know that I don't?!
 
moodyNick said:
I can't agree with this - we provide great showers for free, and people expect them to fully serviced. Ditto water and electricity. If we provide it, we want to do so to a high standard.



Why do you say that? What do you know that I don't?!
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Nick not trying to be difficult but:
Berths, Showers, Toilets, Electricity are considered essential services so in a good marina would expect those to be impeccable.

Laundry and Wifi are not so essential and although I would expect a good marina to supply these services. If it was free I would understand if it was busy, if I had to pay as well I would expect nothing but the best service.

Considering a top marina this makes an interesting choice how many "pay" & go Wifi services really work and supply any form of value for money?

Then they have to consider the "Hi Rollers" the people who expect pay and get what they want now. Free or not makes no difference they want the best. Maybe they should offer 2 services:
Slow and free: Basic browsing Weather, Email, forums ;) etc
High speed and payed: High data etc.
 
onesea said:
Showers, Toilets, Electricity are considered essential services so in a good marina would expect those to be impeccable.

Laundry and Wifi are not so essential and although I would expect a good marina to supply these services.
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At Rouen marina all of those services are supplied free, not quite impeccable but a good standard, and if you pay for five nights, you get seven.
That's what I call value for money.
 
I don't use wifi on the pontoon other than via a 3G payg dongle, and the only to check weather and e-mails. The marina has Spectrum but it is expensive and I sail to get away from computers etc. I do wish more clubhouses had free wifi (in exchange for patronage) especially where 3G is weak.
 
Phoenix of Hamble said:
have a package that includes unlimited internet usage....
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Me to. I love three.

I stream radio 4, watch iplayer videos, work (which is nice), and have even recently bought an xbox and played on xbox live (but quickly got bored of games, so it's a glorified dvd/iplayer player now).

No need for wifi, which the marina here doesn't have anyway.
 
moodyNick said:
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 ... !
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we’ll laugh at this one day. Wifi will be everywhere, free. Still too slow tho.
 
in the UK = nothing.

There's nowt I want the internet for that I can't get via my phone included in my monthly tariff - either on the handset itself or connected to my laptop if I want a keyboard and a bigger screen.

As I am currenly semi-living aboard during the week then "nice to have" would include a little of watch-again-tv (ie I-player) but I'm not bothered enough to want to pay for it.
 
Brigantia said:
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)
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We've wifi Spark in our marina - it's totally rubbish, unusable. I've complained to the marina but to no effect. I just use 3G now.
 
Well that's strange......we have Spark in our marina too and I watch tv via the wifi when I'm on board....mind you I'm only 12 feet from the repeater. Having said that, the marina opposite frequently shows up on the list of available wifi.
 
We’ve been parked in Ipswich for a while and at first the Spectrum wifi was, without doubt, the worst we had ever endured anywhere since leaving Australia – 3rd world countries had better service.

And that was using an external Netgear booster (with a steel boat it’s usually pretty pointless trying to use wifi below without it).

What used to really get under my skin was that Spectrum used to charge you for ringing up to let them know their carp system was down again – leaving you waiting for interminable, and chargeable, minutes as they told you how important your call was to them.

But now, I must admit I would count it as one of the better. The Office here had a big barney with Spectrum, got a load of new gear installed and it works pretty well now.

So Spectrum can produce a decent service when they get their botties kicked.

We’re going to be moving down to Brighton imminently and I believe that is also a Spectrum site – although unlike Ipswich, I believe you have to pay for the privilege of using them. It is not something I am looking forward to because I do not a great expectation of good service – so there may be a post here soon asking for advice about the best short-term internet access system over here.

Thinking back to my previous life when still running my business, the Spectrum brand is now so poisonous in my mind, even with the vastly improved service in Ipswich, I wouldn’t have touched them commercially.

Spectrum have now been taken over by a mob called Arqiva so I must make sure if the service is a bad as I fear it might be, I do a global substitute of Arqiva for Spectrum in my complaints emails.
 
tcm said:
we’ll laugh at this one day. Wifi will be everywhere, free. Still too slow tho.
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If true its much more likely to be delivered through something like the current mobile distribution network. 4G/5G should make WiFi mostly irrelevant (too localised), but will be slow to implement outside the larger economic geos (even there lots of investment is required to upgrade existing delivery systems)

A factor that affects both GSM and WiFi internet acess is capacity loading. That loading is multi layered, all the way up to the internet backbone. After school is awful wherever you are and whatever access method you use. If you're prepared to use 'out of hours' you'll get much better service.
 
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RobbieW said:
If true its much more likely to be delivered through something like the current mobile distribution network. 4G/5G should make WiFi mostly irrelevant (too localised), but will be slow to implement outside the larger economic geos (even there lots of investment is required to upgrade existing delivery systems)

A factor that affects both GSM and WiFi internet acess is capacity loading. That loading is multi layered, all the way up to the internet backbone. After school is awful wherever you are and whatever access method you use. If you're prepared to use 'out of hours' you'll get much better service.
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Agree with what you say about 4G, havent heard of 5G yet.

On loading, I am surprised you say it is at all levels, but I have been out of telecomms for 6 years now. Is your information in the public domain, or is it anecdotal?
 
moodyNick,

I can only sympathise, you asked a sensible and professional question seeking to improve service and fairness, and got jumped on from all sides as to why you weren't providing Jodrell Bank direct to every boat for free, or better, pay them to take it !

Nice try though.
 
HinewaisMan said:
Spectrum have now been taken over by a mob called Arqiva so I must make sure if the service is a bad as I fear it might be, I do a global substitute of Arqiva for Spectrum in my complaints emails.
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Arqiva are a very big mob !!! Started out life as the IBA, Independant Broadcasting Authority, basically transmitting TV signals for ITV companies. Then became NTL and a lot more commercialised. They have been exploiting the economies of scale, for example by leasing out space on their high sites to mobile phone companies and anybody else who needs somewhere to put antennas.

It is interesting to see they are now promoting their Wifi services on the website homepage.
 
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