T-Mobile announced a major hotel Wi-Fi installtion win. It will deploy Wi-Fi in 350 Red Roof Inns throughout the US. This is obvously good news for T-Mobile and bad news for the companies you would normally associate with a hotel Wi-Fi installation, such as Wayport, Stayonline and STSN.

Red Roof Inns is owned by the French chain Accor and I suspect T-Mobile's German parent played a large role in winning the deal. T-Mobile said that it now has 7,600 hotspots globally, most of which are Starbucks locations.

I had expected that T-Mobile and Wayport would have some sort of reasonable roaming deal in place by now. Given this announcement, I'm less optimistic that such a deal will happen. If I were Wayport, I would certainly relish T-Mobile roaming dollars but I would also be concerned about T-Mobile taking market share.

If I were T-Mobile, I would want to get access to Wayport's network so I could have a lock on the largest US network and offer potential retail and hotel chains a very large universe of potential vistitors. But T-Mobile has other problems to focus on; I keep hearing rumblings that Starbucks locations and airline partners want greater control over their Wi-Fi networks so they can give access away for free.

So we shall see. I still hold out hope that a T-Mobile/Wayport deal will happen this year.