Following a long and interesting conversation with the very helpful John Bollen, who's Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer at MRI, we can now present a full and accurate picture regarding the rollout of free Wi-Fi across the group's Las Vegas properties, which is indeed underway. First, some general background.
As guests' technology needs and usage expanded hugely over the past few years, the group started receiving more and more demand for property-wide Wi-Fi access, which MRI is in the process of responding to, but it takes time and there are some challenges along the way. It's also an expensive undertaking, both in terms of start-up costs (in-depth property surveys, running cables, placing interior and exterior antennae, training staff), monthly Internet-provider service charges, and ongoing maintenance (software updates, rebalancing RF signals, and so on).
Before Wi-Fi technology can be added, a full Radio Frequency Survey (RFS) of the property must be performed to determine the best placement of the antennae, for example. RF and water don't mix (i.e., radio waves don't travel well through that medium), so the Botanical Garden & Observatory at Bellagio poses some challenges (in particular, the large juniper bushes) and things often need to be reconfigured on a seasonal basis when a display changes (for example, if a waterfall feature is added for Spring, or a sprinkling of snow for the winter holidays). You won't find Wi-Fi at all at the Dolphin Habitat or the Secret Garden at the Mirage for the same reason. Similarly, ultra-high ceilings at New York-New York pose a different set of problems, as does the shape of the Luxor pyramid.
A different issue, and one that we ran into while first trying to get a handle on what was going on with regard to MRI and free Wi-Fi access, which was first announced back in January, is the training of staff. As with any company, some employees are more tech-savvy than others and Wi-Fi and how it works can be a tricky concept to get your head around. Hence, while the aim is for anyone dealing with the public to be able to answer guests' queries from an informed perspective, in reality that may not quite be the case. It's one of the reasons why we received somewhat conflicting feedback when we randomly called various MRI-property concierges, reservations agents, and front-of-house staff.
Also, as the installation process takes time, on-the-ground training typically doesn't take place until the services are ready to go live at a property, so even though a guest may happen to find an old legacy Wi-Fi hotspot somewhere, staff may not yet have been informed of the new Wi-Fi services about to launch. The rollout is in various degrees of progress at Luxor, Excalibur, New York-New York, and Monte Carlo, some of which had existing in-room Wi-Fi or older hotspots that needed to be removed prior to a property-wide installation of Cisco's system.
Still, the Wi-Fi rollout is now well advanced, we were assured, and most properties will be fully wired (or, rather, "wireless") by the end of the year. Here's the current lay of the land, property by property:
When we questioned how the properties could justify charging a resort fee for in-room Wi-Fi, when it was free to anyone downstairs, the answer came back that non-guests receive less bandwidth (enough to check your email just fine, but not to, say, stream a movie), plus it's limited to two hours duration. Where it exists, all you need is to log on with a valid email address to get access.
Hotel guests, who access the Wi-Fi using their room number and name, receive higher bandwidth -- enough for multiple devices in the same room, so mom can be downloading a new book to her Kindle, while dad's checking his share prices (or vice versa), and one of the kids is listening to tunes on her iTouch, while the other's playing on his Nintendo DS. (Many resorts limit in-room use to one device, even if you're paying a resort fee, simply because they don't have the bandwidth to accommodate more than that and are obliged to discourage system overload with prohibitive log-on fees.)
Conventioneers, who may have very large bandwidth needs, can upgrade to an even more robust service, as can those with trade booths etc., who may have some seriously heavy-duty Wi-Fi requirements.
So, now you know. For other major Wi-Fi hotspots around town, check out the listings in our Visitor Guide (which is also a mine of all kinds of other useful information).
