Wirin' up the Ritz - hotel to get 100Mbps Ethernet

The Ritz in London has turned to Colt Telecom and hotel broadband specialist ISrighthere to provide guests with a 100Mbps internet connection.

That is a contended connection, meaning a guest would have to be online alone at a given point in time to get that full fat pipe bit rate, and it does come at a hefty £20 per 24-hour connection block, but the upmarket hotel says that the speed for most people still makes the service Europe's fastest.

A value on the deal for Colt and ISrighthere hasn't been disclosed.

All parties regard the new offering as a complement to an in-hotel Wi-Fi service, which will mainly be used in the lobby and meeting room areas.

The 100Mbps speed is made possible by Colt supplying a fibre connection to the premise. Until now, most hotels and public places provide connectivity - whether wired or wireless - using DSL for backhaul, something that greatly limits the speeds end users can experience.

Colt rival Interoute and another hotel specialist STSN are also looking at Fast Ethernet broadband services for hotels around Europe but by February this year were still mainly sticking to connections at around 16Mbps.