We are staying at a hotel that offers broadband Internet connections in the rooms. The daily price is not cheap, to put it mildly, but that’s a small irritation next to the trick the hotel and its access provider — an outfit called iBAHN — play on people who travel with more than one laptop: requiring a separate signup for each computer rather than a rate covering the room.

Unfortunately, this is a fairly common scheme, designed to extract every last penny from people who are already paying through the teeth. I let the iBAHN “customer support” person know how I felt about this. He was totally indifferent, but at least he didn’t deny it. I also told a hotel manager that this was the kind of thing travelers especially loathe. He didn’t seem terribly interested, either.

Fortunately, we know how to user our Macs to share the connection. But this means that the person who orginally signed up for the service (or that person’s computer) must be in the room and running when the person who’s piggybacking off the other’s connection wants to go online.

Maybe it’s good business to irritate their customers this way. I know I’ve resolved not to return to this particular establishment.

UPDATE: iBAHN says hotels make the decisions, not iBAHN. From Shannon Michael, the company’s director of corporate communications:
iBAHN does not set purchase policy for the use of high-speed Internet access for hotels. Those decisions are made at the property or ownership group or brand level, and they are made in accordance with the brand standards of the decision-makers. For example, the La Quinta flag is now running an ad campaign that declares that “La Quinta is Spanish for “free Internet access” and thus all La Quintas offer free HSIA.

Therefore, for you to categorically state that you will not stay at a property with iBAHN service really doesn’t make any sense. If you want to make sure to get free access, you might want to check with the property before booking to find out what they charge (if anything) for their HSIA. Many travelers are finding, though, that because offering complimentary HSIA actually increases usage, it is harder and harder to find true broadband at hotels that offer the service free, especially given the fact that applications such as iTunes, Skype, Slingbox and video downloads are increasing the bandwidth needs for travelers.

Also, it’s been my experience (limited compared to yours, I’m sure) that when I’ve needed to run more than one connection in a room, hotels have been more than accommodating in helping me to do my work. In fact, in one instance, I was offered the use of a small conference room that was not scheduled for any meetings.