WiFi waste of money?

The WiFi is supplied by an external contractor and is charged for by a fee paid directly to them. I don't know what the tie in is with the club as far as financials are concerned, but unless it is costing the club lots of money, over and above the WiFi access fees, is there really a problem. Those who don't want the service don't pay. I doubt the club is likely to provide any cost information, so we will almost certainly never know if they are spending huge sums of money as you suggest.

I wonder if we tend to forget that when the Club embarked on the supply of WiFi to sites that data plans via a phone or Mifi hardly existed. If we still only used our phones for voice calls that situation would still exist. However things have moved on and data use via our phones probably accounts for the majority of phone use these days. Perhaps, if the Club had waited a few years, they may not have installed Wifi in the first place? I am often critical of Club Wifi as I find that it can be slow with dropped connections regardless of whether the site is Gold, Silver or Bronze. I rarely get a speed of more than 1 MB usually half that. However it does work after a fashion. I suppose in many ways we are spoiled by our home connections which are often high speed. What I have found is that I increasing use my phone to check e-mails, look at online banking and get the latest News whereas in the past I would have done all that  on my laptop. The problem I have found in using my Windows laptop tethered to my phone using 4G is that it is very data intensive. However I did recently experiment with a small tablet and that used a lot less data which might be the way forward.

David

I think it depends on how important it is to be able to use the internet.

I tried the club Wi-Fi for a year but found coverage patchy. I've not bothered with it since.

I now just use my mobile, and have two phones on different networks to improve cover, however  on some sites you still cannot get a signal. For example last year I spent 6 weeks in Scotland where in a lot of locations you struggle to get a phone signal, never mind 4g. 

Not really a problem as when out and about you can generally catch up on emails and banking etc. On some sites just going up the road a bit makes a big difference. But if not then I don't worry. I'm not so addicted to social media that I have to keep looking at it.

Agree with this, technology has advanced except in areas of the country where it lags behind and we find we are definitely better off using our own supplier and can use more devices, the club only allows one connection. I've just said in another thread when travelling we tend to use our phones more now, earlier on we used the laptop. Even further back I used to leave my phone at home as I wanted to escape from 24 hour communications but like everyone else now I seem to have become willingly tethered!

Interesting post. I'm retired and don't need to access emails etc particularly while we are away and have never used the Club wifi but I am using my phone (android) more and more to access the internet and find 4G (and less) adequate for my needs. 

I suppose in this day and age some people will want/expect high speed connection and if they are willing to pay for it so be it - so long as it doesn't become part of the overall charge for the pitch. 

It depends on how much time I get a usable system from CC. In the past OH rarely wished to use wifi and we carried a single 12'" laptop. Probably had usable wifi on at least 80 nights and so £25 was good value. Probably 20 nights when no wifi on CC. 

With both of us having tablets we may rethink next year. 

I'm surprised but pleased that so many of the posts have generally agreed with me in that in today's age using your own personal phone or other device to access internet etc is the way forward, rather rely on the club providing access at quite a considerable cost. To quote the club:

Here at the Club we know how important having a decent Wi-Fi signal is, so we’ve invested £500,000 into our network - with a further £500,000 assigned in 2018.

So £1m investment in supplying something that almost becomes obsolete as soon as it is installed. Maybe we could think of other uses for our £1m?

I have no interest in a smart phone. I want a phone that slips easily into the bottom corner of my front trouser pocket.  For internet I want a decent size screen. Because my usage of mobile phone is small I use PAYG. For me this often makes the annual CC charge reasonable as l use it frequently.

Double post

My suggestion was to make WiFi available in a certain area of a club site rather than the costly £1m investment to push it around the whole site. Why should we subsidise your use of the Internet ET?