Few travel issues are as frustrating as poor mobile phone coverage. Yet unfortunately the hotel industry has found it incredibly difficult to avoid.

A few hotels are lucky: they have no coverage problems, based on some combination of building design and the location and capacity of nearby cell towers. But many hotels, particularly in urban areas, face multiple challenges. Key public and back-of-house areas often have no signal even if guest rooms do. And the increasing use of energy-efficient windows makes it harder for signals to penetrate to the interior, meaning that many newer or retrofitted buildings often get poor reception. Each mobile network also has localized issues with cell tower locations and/or capacity. It is not uncommon for only one or two carriers to work well inside a particular hotel; others might only reach certain floors or sides of the building – or be completely absent.

Solutions like Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS) have been used in hotels for well over a decade. They work well but are prohibitively expensive for all but the largest hotels. Furthermore, DAS installations require approval of each mobile carrier, which has become harder and harder to get.

Wi-Fi is of course an alternative, but higher friction. Many hotels correctly focus on reducing Wi-Fi logon friction, especially for loyalty program members. But low-friction is not the same as no-friction, and any friction at all can be too much for many guests.

Based on an informal survey of people in my own network (who are more tech-savvy than the average hotel guest), their most typical behavior is to use the hotel Wi-Fi for their laptop or tablet. But on a mobile phone, away from their home or office, most of them only connect if there is a specific need. This could be if they plan any bandwidth-intensive activities like video streaming, or if they cannot get an adequate cellular connection. Mobile data charges used to be a consideration, but most mobile phone plans in the U.S. (and a growing number of other countries) now offer unlimited data. And navigating through a captive Wi-Fi portal on a small device with a tiny on-screen keyboard can be challenging.

Wi-Fi networks are also significantly less secure than cellular networks. That means that guests with security concerns (or whose companies have them) either cannot use them at all or must use additional protection layers on their phones and other devices, such as a Virtual Public Network (VPN). These security layers add both sign-on friction and monthly subscription costs, which are often per device.  

Of course, many phones and carriers now support the sending and receiving of voice calls via Wi-Fi. Unlike cellular, however, Wi-Fi calls are likely to be dropped if the guest is on the move. Wi-Fi calling also usually requires configuration changes on the phone that are unfamiliar to many users. Without those changes, the absence of a good cell signal will mean that calls cannot be made or received. If an outbound call fails, the guest will know it and can (with some inconvenience) make alternative arrangements. But if they miss an inbound call or text message, they will be completely unaware, at least for a while (this can also be the case for outbound text messages). This has happened to me a few times, and it can be very inconvenient when you are traveling and meeting someone else on the move; one of you calls or texts the other to coordinate where to meet, and the other only sees the message hours later.

In addition, many hotels are offering more and more self-service capabilities designed for the phone, such as guest messaging, mobile key, and room service ordering. But these all require connectivity. If a guest has not connected to Wi-Fi and does not realize that they have no cellular signal, they may simply conclude that your digital services are nonresponsive. When that happens, your attempt to engage them not only failed, but backfired by delivering a poor experience. Even a low-friction Wi-Fi authentication process does not help if the guest does not realize that a poor cellular signal means they need to switch to Wi-Fi.

For years, many of the larger brands offered persistent Wi-Fi authentication, meaning that once a known guest has authenticated at one hotel, they had automatic connectivity at any hotel in the same brand family. However, this was usually based on recognizing static device addresses (called MAC addresses). The move by phone manufacturers to randomize or rotate MAC addresses is rapidly rendering this approach obsolete.

The good news is that new, more cost-effective solutions to cellular coverage are emerging. They are not all universally available, and do not solve 100% of the problem, but they can greatly improve guest satisfaction and make your digital services more available to all guests. The costs depend on many factors but can often be quite reasonable. My blog this week can help you navigate the questions of whether you should consider one of these solutions, and if so, what options you might want to consider.

As usual, I relied heavily on information provided by industry experts, in this case senior executives at Cox Private Networks, Dense Air, Eleven Software, HPE Aruba Networking, and JMA Wireless. I thank them for sharing their time, knowledge, and perspectives. I am also indebted to Dayna Kully, an independent consultant with 5thGenWireless, for her guidance and review (although any misstatements are entirely mine!).

I should note that the companies mentioned here (and others) have widely varying solutions and business models. You may or may not be able to use a particular approach depending on (a) what infrastructure you already have and (b) whether you use or are willing to use other solutions in the provider’s portfolio. Because of these dependencies, these considerations (and estimates of the associated costs) are beyond the scope of what I can cover here. You can, however, raise them early in discussions with any of them to better focus your efforts on the more feasible options.

Is There a Problem?

Your first task should be to determine whether you have a cellular coverage problem, and if so, its scope. Maybe you already have guest complaints or staff experience to highlight the issues. But many hotels do not.

If you are unsure, you can start by analyzing your online reviews. Many hotels already have a tool that summarizes review issues, but if not (or if it does not provide enough detail), you can assign someone to collate the data in a couple of hours. How often is cellular connectivity mentioned as an issue? Are there specific locations identified, such as a guest room, a restaurant, the gym, or the conference space? Is it limited to specific mobile carriers? You might get some of this information from the reviews, or in some cases you may be able to identify which guest had the problem and their room number. With recent online reviews, you can try responding to the guest and asking them to send additional information to assist in resolving the issue.

You can also conduct testing. Use your own phone and enlist colleagues using other carriers, being sure to test all the major ones serving your area (in the U.S. this is normally AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon).

Get on a call and walk into different parts of the building, being sure to test public spaces, interior corridors, guest rooms on each side of the building and on a variety of floors including the highest and lowest ones, and back-of-house areas where coverage is needed. If you lose the call or the call quality deteriorates, you may have an issue.

You can also find free apps online that will measure signal strength, although a strong signal can still deliver poor performance if the cell tower is over capacity. For this reason, it is a good idea to test during the daytime, mid-evening hours, and weekends, since depending on your locale, one of these may present more capacity issues than the others. Do not rely on just looking at the number of bars shown for the signal on your phone; it is entirely common to have several bars but poor reception.

If you suspect a problem, you can sometimes get more specifics from the solution providers who would like to help solve it. They often know where specific carriers have poor signal quality or capacity and may be able to shed light on the cause. There is also a nifty tool (denseWare by Dense Air) that has a 3D map covering every commercial building in the U.S. It can estimate the quality of cell coverage by mobile, carrier, floor, and directional exposure. You can get a report for your building for free at this link.

Alternative Solutions

Probably more so than any technology used by hotels, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, so I will highlight the major solution categories, in roughly decreasing order of complexity and cost. I have tried to keep the descriptions simple enough to be understandable by non-engineers, so they will not be quite as complete or technically precise as an expert might like. Most hotels should consider more than one of these but will probably rule out some options quickly.

Distributed Antenna System (DAS): DAS is a great solution for large venues but is financially impractical for most hotels. It also requires location-specific carrier support that is becoming harder and harder to get (and in a hotel environment, this is not just one carrier but any that your guests might be using).

DAS basically creates a cell tower complex internally within a building and connects it to the carriers. Mobile phones simply connect to it as they do with a normal cell tower, and everything just works. It is widely used in stadiums, arenas, shopping malls, and other large spaces with heavy cell phone use. However, it only makes financial sense for venues and carriers in heavily trafficked facilities of a million square feet or more. Most companies that offer indoor DAS solutions have therefore introduced one or more of the other alternatives.

Passpoint: This is best described as a Wi-Fi based solution that emulates cellular networks, providing robust security and roaming capabilities. It is supported by most of the major mobile carriers globally, although at different levels of maturity. Passpoint can in theory be deployed on any Wi-Fi network, which means at virtually any hotel.  There are two main variations of Passpoint relevant to hotels.

• In the first (I will refer to this as “carrier Passpoint”), the mobile carrier contracts with a venue, and when its customers walk enter that venue, their phone recognizes the Wi-Fi network and switches the phone automatically to use it rather than the cellular connection. It is completely frictionless, requiring no action (or even knowledge that they have it) by the user.  It can automatically switch a call from the macro network to Wi-Fi or vice versa. If you check your phone in a venue where your carrier supports Passpoint, you will see a Wi-Fi connection even though you did not specifically ask to connect. However, carriers are prioritizing deployments that solve their own service or capacity issues, or that help them win large accounts. Most hotels are not high on the list.

• In the second (which I will call “private Passpoint”), it can be embedded in, and activated through, a brand app. That means that a guest with the app can use the Wi-Fi network in any brand property that has deployed the capability. In the early days, enabling a private Passpoint network was a high-friction process (especially on Apple devices), but it has gotten much easier; in many cases the complexity has been reduced to a single toggle switch. This can be done without the cooperation of the mobile carriers, but only to provide a Wi-Fi connection; it requires carrier support and agreement to be able to handle voice calls seamlessly (particularly for call handoff between the mobile and Wi-Fi network). Carrier support is now being offered by at least one major solutions provider in what might be called “multicarrier Passpoint,” meaning that the same provider and Wi-Fi network can support multiple (but not necessarily all relevant) mobile carriers.

From a technical standpoint, Passpoint is the “glue” that provides seamless connectivity between Wi-Fi 6E and 5G cellular networks (and later versions). The underlying technologies are becoming broadly adopted and are standards-based and thus relatively future-proof. Passpoint also supports partnerships between businesses that serve mobile subscribers (both the carriers themselves, and other consumer-facing businesses, including hotels), that can enable mobile users to automatically connect to any partner within one of their networks. These can represent monetization opportunities for businesses (like hotels) and create interesting cross-marketing opportunities.

The challenges with Passpoint are that today, it can be difficult for many hotels to deploy. Deployment of a private Passpoint network requires a level of technical expertise that hotels (other than a few of large groups) rarely have. Several experts I spoke with said that private Passpoint is now deployed or on the roadmap of most of the major hotel brands, but only as a part of their brand app, which many or most guests typically do not have or want.

There are also challenges with deploying Passpoint consistently in many countries, because while Passpoint is used around the world, the mobile carriers are in different stages of adoption. If you have a lot of international properties and want 100% consistency across your portfolio, you will need support from – and commercial agreements with – more carriers than is currently practical. Fortunately, a few managed service providers now offer multi-carrier Passpoint solutions with prenegotiated agreements that can be deployed within hotels within the U.S. (and some other countries).

One benefit of Passpoint is that it supports device trackability (albeit anonymously). Many marketers have been looking for a way to do this ever since Apple instituted device identifiers (MAC addresses) that change randomly rather than persisting permanently. Another benefit of Passpoint is that it provides carrier-grade security.

Hotels deploying private Passpoint networks will require contracting and technical support from their brands or third parties. Private Passpoint also requires an app download, which is a known friction point for many guests. Those without the app will be excluded from your hotel’s digital experience unless they manually connect to Wi-Fi, meaning less chance of generating digital upsell revenue or loyalty signups.

Carrier Passpoint operates with considerably less friction but requires connectivity to and agreement with every primary carrier in your country. That is an evolving situation, and service companies have started to emerge (including some of the ones I mentioned above) to manage the contractual and technical complexities. But it is a generational shift and may take five to ten years to reach maturity even in the more advanced countries.

Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) Solutions: This is a shared wireless broadband service available in the U.S. and some other countries, which operates in a spectrum close to Wi-Fi. It is referred to as “lightly licensed” in that anyone can use it, but spectrum is allocated in real time by a centralized management service, according to a priority scheme. It requires dedicated antennas within the hotel, but it operates at higher power. As a result, each access point can cover a much larger area, and they can usually be placed in corridors rather than needing to go into guest rooms.

At the back end, the hotel CBRS network is connected via the cloud to the mobile carriers, usually through a third party that addresses both the technical connectivity and contracting with each carrier. Once set up (and assuming connections to the mobile carrier), a phone simply sees it as a cell tower, meaning that international roaming is supported. Experts suggested that CBRS solutions might be overkill for a 100-room roadside motel in most cases, but they can make economic sense starting around 200-300 rooms. The cost is modest and only minimal recabling is typically necessary. Depending on the deployment model, it may also be possible to capture (anonymous) location data for connected phones.

To date in the U.S., AT&T and T-Mobile support CBRS installations, and a growing number of third parties offer CBRS solutions as a service for hotels. Most of them expect Verizon to come on board very soon, although other experts note that they have been “saying that for years” and also noted potential conflicts with Verizon’s other business units.  

Aside from carrier participation (which might soon be a non-issue in the U.S. at least), CBRS deployments face one major challenge for hotels. To get reliable cell service, the hotel’s service provider must have a Priority Access License (PAL). Without this, the necessary bandwidth may not be available when required. PALs are limited to 7 per county in the U.S., so your choice of providers will be limited to those who have both a product offering appropriate for hotels and a PAL for your county. Finding a qualified provider will probably not be a problem in most major metropolitan areas, but it could well be an issue elsewhere, at least in the short term.

Repeaters: This solution involves installing an outdoor antenna to capture a cellular signal from outside the building, which then amplifies it and retransmits it through an indoor antenna. It may be a good option if you have problems with the signal from a particular carrier, but it depends on the underlying cause. It also requires a separate on-site infrastructure for each carrier to be supported, and ongoing management and maintenance.

Small Cells: Most major carriers offer small-cell solutions that enable indoor coverage for their networks in smaller spaces. Picocells have higher power and range, appropriate for large interior spaces, while femtocells cover a smaller area, with a radius in the range of 30 to 150 feet. These solutions are carrier-specific and therefore not practical for many hotel applications, but they can be used to fix carrier-specific problems in public spaces, or to provide connectivity for staff or devices in parts of the building where cell signals are needed but cannot penetrate. Femtocell costs start at around $100-$200 and can be connected to the hotel’s Ethernet network via standard cabling.

Conclusion ‍

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to in-building cellular coverage for hotels, but the options are getting better and cheaper. While standard Wi-Fi is always a fallback option, it adds at least some friction for the guest. Depending on the implementation, a potentially significant percentage of guests will not bother to connect their phones to the hotel’s Wi-Fi, even if they use it for other devices. If you have a cellular coverage problem and have not looked at the options recently, now is a great time to do so!

As always, feedback to my articles is welcome. Since the host site does not support discussions, I will post a link to this article on my own LinkedIn page once it has been published, and I invite you to comment, like, or share from there!

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