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Wireless Internet Co-Ops?

Posted by Cliff on from the tough-tasks-in-today's-broadband-market dept.

einstein asks: "How many other geeks out there are purchasing high speed commercial net connections to the remote areas they live, and then selling access to their neighbors to help cover costs? I know of a remote area with about 20-30 house all of which could access a wireless lan connection to share a 1.5 ADSL connection. I'm planning on bugging the neighbors to see if there interested soon, and I'd like to have some idea if this has worked for other people. So, who's doing this in a Co-Op fashion, and how is it working?" This probably won't be possible with most residential DSL providers, however would they let this fly on their commercial lines?"

5 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Risky by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'd be concerned about liability. What if one of your neighboars does something sleazy and/or illegal like scanning for vulnerable servers and r00ting them or sharing tons of music or movies on a file sharing network and the RIAA sends a cease and desist letter? You might get your service terminated because one of these bozos does something stupid.

  2. All I have to say is CYOA by Typingsux · · Score: 3, Insightful
    You will be the person using the connection according to your ISP. If one of your users go awry downloading kiddie porn for example, you better have some logging to back your ass up.

    --
    The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
    1. Re:All I have to say is CYOA by King_TJ · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Whatever.... It's also been argued that your best bet is not to log anything or make any attempts at restricting access based on content.

      If you're truly just providing the connection and not taking any steps that show you're able (and willing) to monitor what actually travels over the connection - you have much better legal ground to stand on if they come after you for a user's misbehavior online.

      (EG. Your mailman can't be arrested just because he delivered you envelopes containing child porn photos. He had no way of knowing what was in them.)

  3. Shouldn't be a problem by Sandman1971 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I used to work for a backbone company, and I have never seen a contract for commercial connections that do not allow you to resell the bandwidth, so this shouldn't be a problem.

    Just keep in mind that if one of your 'users' does something like send out spam or does illegal activites, you may be held responsible since it's your/company name on the contract with the ISP (hence get contracts drawn up for your users who will connect, in which case you'll need to do some type of monitoring in case the cops show up investigating a possible crime).

    In other words, cover your ass.

    --
    It's better to burn out than to fade away
  4. Re:You need to be able to re-sell by Sabalon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Hmmm...well the service comes into your home and into a wireless access point.

    Ask the company to show you the connection between your location and the neighboring premise.

    Of course, it's a BS answer to them...but I would expect a new TOS real soon mentioning wireless :)