I’m at a holiday park in Germany this week for a last minute ski trip with my family. A company of 7 adults, 3 MacBooks, 6 iPhones, an iPad and Samsung phone in total.

One week internet access: € 110

Like in many other parks and hotels, we were required to purchase Wi-Fi access codes per device (MAC address) per day or week. One week would cost €10, so that would be €110 in total to connect all devices.

Water coupons?

Rediculous of course! I see that paid Wi-Fi access has been quick money for them for a long time, but really.. nowadays internet access is much like water and electricity and I don’t have to purchase coupons for that do I?

Working around

So my brother and I set out to work around this and the solution proved rather easy. We wired up one laptop to the Wi-Fi router and used that laptop’s Wi-Fi to share that connection.

Here’s how you do it, in case you run into the same problem some day:

1. Buy one Wi-Fi access code.
2. Find the Wi-Fi router and see if you can move it to some place more convenient.
3. Use an ethernet cable to connect the laptop.
4. Use the access code to connect.
5. Go to System Preferences > Sharing.
6. For Share your connection from: select (Thunderbolt) Ethernet.
7. For To computers using: select Wi-Fi.
8. Click on Wi-Fi Options… to set the network name and password.
9. Share the login with your friends and family.

Let’s hope that when we all do this, they will no longer have an incentive to let us pay for it at all.

Is this legal?

In case you are wondering if this is legal, the terms for the particular park we stay at has a whole section on Wi-Fi abuse, but nothing about (freely) sharing it.