|
Using Hotel Telecommunications Facilities
While most hotels appreciate their professional guests, not all of them make it easy or inexpensive to telecommute from their rooms. The following tips can help save you money--and keep your blood pressure down--when using phone and data lines away from home. - If your hotel has a dedicated business floor, make every effort to stay there as these rooms are set up with the business traveler in mind. These rooms are more likely to offer dual telephone/modem lines, fax machines, and free local calling than other rooms. You are also less likely to have punk rockers or screaming children for neighbors.
- Hotels often charge guests high service fees for making long-distance calls from their rooms. However, in the United States, hotels are required to provide a connection to any long-distance company's access number for the same charge as a local call. So use your calling card and save money by placing your calls through your own long-distance carrier. Or, just go downstairs and use a lobby pay phone.
- Hotels usually charge hefty fees to use their fax machine. If you need to send or receive a fax and it's impossible to do so from your room, a cheaper option might be to use one at a nearby store or business center.
- Remember that many parts of the world--including most of Europe--use a different voltage system. This means that you'll need adapters for anything you plan to plug into the wall, including your laptop. Also, some European countries (notably Germany and Austria) have noise on their telecommunications lines called "tax." This noise, used to monitor rates of usage, can be very disruptive to modem communications. Consider buying a filter.
Related Links
For computer-specific information, see Traveling With a Laptop.
There is a lot of excellent information about making modem connections abroad at http://kropla.com/phones.htm.
|
|
|
