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Travelodge doing new WiFi? "Been doing that for ages!"

Excitement mounts at Colubris and also, at Spectrum Interactive plc , a Colubris Premier Partner. To their great satisfaction, they say, and to that of their client Travelodge, you can at last spend five quid an hour on WiFi Internet when staying or visiting the hotels!

Except, it didn't say five quid an hour. The announcement said: "Costs to the consumer for Wi-Fi at UK and Eire Travel Lodge Hotels: www.travelodge.co.uk/Wi-Fi/ " - which you should not click on, because it is what we in the trade know as a Four Oh Four - a non-existent web page.

So, in search of a scoop, we used an old reporter's trick, and read the press release until we found the phone number of the Travelodge Press Office.

They said: "You wot? Oo sent you that release, then?" (or words to that effect.

Apparently, they've been providing WiFi Internet for guests "for ages." Nobody told them about the press release. And the information we want is actually on www.travelodge.co.uk/wifi/ - without the hyphen, OK?

Embarrassed, we hung up and went into a dark room, where we stuck pins in a wax model of the Colubris press officer.

Mark Lewarne, chief executive at Spectrum Interactive said: "The Colubris intelligent networking solution met all of Travelodge's requirements. " That's the official line, anyway:

"The Colubris Network Management Solution was key in enabling Spectrum Interactive to complete Wi-Fi deployments in all 330 hotels two months ahead of the expected delivery date. Equally important is the scalability and performance as the company plans to expand to 500 hotels by 2012. As Spectrum Interactive has exclusive Wi-Fi rights for all Travelodge hotels until 2014, it was vital that the solution had this level of scalability."