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Speakeasy Introduces Broadband WiFi Sharing Plan
An anonymous reader writes "Today, speakeasy (the greatest ISP ever) sent out a letter from the CEO introducing their NetShare Wi-Fi plan. It lets you share your broadband with your neighbors, with Speakeasy handling the billing and splitting the fee 50/50. More ISPs should be like this!"
According to the article, this applies if you get either a T1 or IDSL. IDSL maxes out at 144kbps up/down. Thats not much of a connection to share in the first place. Getting a T1 for a residential place is not all that likely even if you do cut it down to 50/50.. still a lot to pay. If youre a business user, you might not want to share the connection for security reasons.
I've had their service since DirectTVDSL crashed. They are VERY Linux friendly - their terms of service are REALLY reasonable, for the most part "do what you want as long as it's legal." Did anyone notice they are one of the three repositories for rpmfind??
I'm a happy customer!
Have you compiled your kernel today??
Oh, all that garbage about not be allowed to have any device that disguises where a communication originated from. Quite a few states are at least looking at it. I believe someone adopted it already, but I'm not sure. I want to say somewhere around Minnesota, but I can't recall.
In any case, routers fall directy under this proposal. They're also talking about hooking up 5 machines to one connection is ripping off ISP's or some such garbage. Yet ISPs seem to keep handing out routers and this new Speakeasy plan is even better.
I wish politicians would stay out of technology altogether.
The way I interpret this is that Speakeasy is saying that this plan makes it easy for people who don't live in an area where ADSL/SDSL is avalible to share a connection and split the costs, much like the co-ops mentioned awhile back. They are NOT limiting the kind of connection you can use. I would look into setting up a 3-10 Mbit line and sharing that! The costs would still be very low, but imagine the speed when no one else on your network is online - great for getting iso's and other "files"
I asked the same question of them recently, and was sent this in reply:
http://www.speakeasy.net/pricing
Actually, as part of the beta crew (with my neighbor), they provide support for all of their services (email, etc) but you have to do the support for the wi-fi connection since you're the one who knows it and has configured it. It works pretty well for me and I get to use the money from my half to pay for upgraded speed.
Hatch
They're not really splitting the cost. You, the neighborhood admin, can set whatever price you think your neighbors will bear.
"Who sets the NetShare customer pricing?
We put the power in your hands! As the Admin, you can select any retail price from $20 to $50, in $5 increments, and from $60 to $100 in $10 increments."
Your bill gets cut in half, they get new customers, they do all the billing, and you do all the local footwork and admin. Signing up people who would otherwise not have gone to DSL.
I run an open network for people passing by who might want to use the net for a while. I leave my network wide open, with DHCP and all, because when I travel, I apprecieate others who do the same.
However, I pay $100/mo for my dsl (split with housemates, we all value having a 1.5/768 connection), and I'm not paying that to give other people full-time premium dsl in their homes for free. This guy approached me and offered to pay in on our dsl bill, and I don't see our choice of media as having anything to do with the ethics of charging him.
I keep a pretty close eye on stats for our little net (linux hostap puts these in
I'll have to look into the NetShare thing, one the login stops 404ing, as giving him an email address and having him pay speakeasy directly may be a nicer option.
I hope to be able to continue to run my network open though.Whatever. I block outbound port 25, too. Does that also make it not open? Still seems pretty open to me, strangers can browse the web just fine... I was thinking of limiting it further, so strangers could get online, but could only make TCP connections to a whitelist of ports (ie 22). That way people can ssh out and check their mail, and if they're savy enough they can bring in a full net connection from outside. Now _that_ would be "not really open", though still open enough for a lot of wifi travelers I know.
__
Choose mnemonic identifiers. If you can't remember what mnemonic means, you've got a problem. - Larry Wall
I like Speakeasy. I was their customer for almost a year, but had to leave for SBC because they couldn't give me good service. That's not why I fault them.
The problems?
1. Hold times for customer service. 10-15 minutes was normal for me.
2. They sometimes didn't followup on open tickets. I'd call, get a ticket opened, and wait for days for them to call. Then, call back and ask about it, and hear "Gee, this ticket has been open a long time... sorry." No shit!
In general, they give good service, though it comes at a premium.
man xwd
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
They've been advertising this WiFi thing on their webpage for about a month now.
The rest of that letter is more interesting. Here are some excerpts:
In addition, we also plan to support IPv6 [editor's note: !!!], multiple connections for bonding or redundancy, individual customer firewall options, improvement of peer-to-peer applications such as video conferencing and application sharing, and, eventually, relatively advanced applications such as IP multi-cast through the last mile. Of course, we will always place an emphasis on assuring the fundamental network reliability and performance our members require.
[snip]
Many of you have tried our new and much improved Web-based Email service. You may have noticed this service also includes Calendaring, Reminders (via cell phone, email) and much more. I am excited to announce today that we will soon add a service option to allow true shared calendaring for Business-Class members.
[snip]
Although VoIP (Voice over IP) has been, in our opinion, a bit over-hyped for the past few years, we believe that the technology and service has advanced to the point that it is now a viable alternative phone service for many people. Accordingly, we are exploring a Voice over IP solution that will allow Speakeasy customers to use their broadband connection to make local and long distance calls. More details to come as we complete Beta trials and determine cost and features.
Interesting, eh?
...also said that they were planning on adding IPv6 support on their new backbone. Woohoo!
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
This is a great idea, a real win/win situation. Problem is that in Australia you need a carrier license to do this if you derive any financial benefit from providing carriage to a third party, even if it only cost recovery. I would love to have my neighbours finance an upgrade from 512/128 to 1.5Mb/256kbs.
I am already a speakeasy customer with ADSL. I already share my bandwidth of 802.11b. I already have a couple of people walk down the street and get on my connection. The unfortunate problem is i had someone send spam from my network and speakeasy shut off my service. They dont put up with their customers sending spam which i actually appreciate. When i called them to have it reconnected they told me how to configure my linux firewall to block people from doing that. thats what i want in an ISP, i want them to be able to walk me through configureation of my linux boxes so that i can share my connection safely.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
It's a scam. I explain why here. But the basic gist is that you only get 50% of what your "customers" pay speakeasy credited back to your account. They don't mention this until you're on the MySpeakeasy page where you can set it up (screenshot).
It makes far more sense to not tell them you're sharing, and just have your neighbors pay you directly. And until the NetShare plan was unveiled, that was an OK thing to do. Now... I may actually need to find a new ISP because of this, if they intend to enforce this nonsense.
__
Choose mnemonic identifiers. If you can't remember what mnemonic means, you've got a problem. - Larry Wall
the page referred to in the original article
http://www.speakeasy.net/netshare/
has a link labled "learn more"
it takes you here
http://www.speakeasy.net/netshare/learnmore/
and it's SPELLED OUT there
"..including crediting the Admin's account each month for 50% of the basic Customer fees."
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Speakeasy has always allowed you to share your connection with whomever you wish... If you are sharing to people you trust will keep up with their share of the payment, then there is most likely not a reason to use this program
Actually, it is a requirement to use NetShare if your line is residential and you are collecting fees. So, yes, you can share with whomever you wish, but you'd better be using NetShare if they are paying you! From the NetShare FAQ:
Use of NetShare is mandatory if broadband circuit is residential and you intend to collect fees from third parties accessing your network.