(FORTUNE Magazine) – What could be worse than a slow Internet connection in Rapid City? Business travelers have grown accustomed to their high-speed Net access in hotel rooms in high-speed cities like New York or San Francisco. And according to the market research firm Cahners In-Stat Group, about half the hotels in America are planning to offer broadband Internet access within the next year--but most of the broadband activity is in hotels that welcome a lot of business travelers. Out in the hinterlands, far beyond the last strands of T-1 lines, cable modems, and DSL service, travelers experience something very different when they try to log on. The sound they often hear is the lonesome, screeching call of the low-speed dial-up modem.

Take heart, road warriors. By using two-way satellite links provided by Tachyon, On Command (the company that sells pay-per-view movies in hotel rooms) now provides broadband access to hotels in places like Branson, Mo., and Key West, Fla., offering connection speeds up to 50 times faster than dial-up modems.

The laptop-toting traveler lucky enough to book one of the 7,000 rooms served in On Command's broadband hotels will typically find an Ethernet jack in the room. In others, the Net link is through the TV and a wireless keyboard. Because the TV screen's size and resolution are different from a PC screen's, the On Command system uses a version of Microsoft Internet Explorer to display typical Web fare like e-mail, news and sports scores, and chat sessions. There is no access to Internet newsgroups or FTP sites, however.

The cost to travelers for the On Command service is the same--$9.95 a day for unlimited access--whether the connection goes through land lines or satellites. According to David Simpson, a senior vice president for On Command, travelers may never know whether their bits come down from outer space or from down the road. Given the high cost of dialing out through a hotel switchboard and the occasional need to make a long-distance call to the nearest Internet access number, a flat fee of $9.95 a day can be a bargain.

Here's hoping the prices stay that low. Hotels are notorious for jacking up prices on this kind of extra. Some especially greedy hotels charge a $9.95 Internet access fee for a 24-hour period starting at midnight. They get you once when you log on for e-mail before bed, and again when you check mail in the morning before checking out. On Command's system, on the other hand, starts the 24-hour clock when you first log on. Other hotels jack up daily rates when lots of geeky guests arrive for, say, a tech conference. Want another stupid hotel trick? Some bill the departing guest for Net access, and as soon as the guest is out the door, print a new check-out statement saying the guest denied using the service. That way the hotel keeps all of the Internet fee, instead of sharing the booty with the provider. "White-glove hotels are worse than anyone," says one insider. Hey, these are the joints that charge $1 per local telephone call and a 40% premium on long-distance charges. So what do you expect?

--P.H.L.