Slashdot Mirror
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!"
Thats pretty cool. But what if someone breaks the Terms of Service. Would they cut the connection altogether?
I doubt any technology like this will get to ISPs in Iowa any time soon. :(
Sounds like Speakeasy's real benefit comes from the fact that the customers will be directing their questions to their local connection rather than calling up Speakeasy's support line. That benefit alone probably outweighs any losses they are going to incur.
Because: people are going to do it anyway, and NOT pay for it. This way they get to at least know what's going on, at least to some users. They can reach extra users with zero work on their part, other than billiing.
In the end, it's silly of course.. ultimately, people will have neighborhood wireless networks set up, and be sharing resources with each other other than just their internet connection.
"Because of this, I cannot understand why they would want to let people split service costs."
Because lets say a customer just won't pay X amount of dollars for broadband. He or she can't afford it etc. With one more person they can. Now the ISP has a sale that they wouldn't have had. Up to the demarc the bandwidth is the same. The customer is the one who might notice a difference in performance as their next door neighboor is on a downloading spree. As far as the ISP is concerned they have made a sale and are still getting the full amount had the customer been able to afford the access and paid for access all by themselves.
What happens if you get busted for sharing music? Are you now legally responsible for your neighbors actions or are you free and clear because no one knows (not even you) who did the alleged file sharing. Logs? we dont need no stinking logs.
If your neighbors are sharing a connection with you it should be obvious to them whether you are paying your share of the bill each month. I'd say it could create more of a sense of accountability in regard to keeping the neighbors happy and the connection up. After all, nobody wants to be the guy who got everybody's connection turned off because he forgot to pay the bill for 60 days.
hopefully (assuming youre the one sharing the dsl) are running longs. if youre the one leeching, lets hope they're not. ;-)
I have been wondering that for a while...
I live in a group house, and there's 9 of us with wireless ethernet running throughout the entire place. If RIAA sues because they suspect one of us is downloading something illegal, how do they decide who gets the blame, if all 9 of us are dhcp'd behind NAT, with only one publically addressable IP? You can't fathomably put it all on the one sap who registered for the DSL connection can you?
come on.... you aren't open. admit it.
Revolutions are never about freedom or justice. They're about who's going to be top dog. -- Kilgore Trout
Costs that Speakeasy has to deal with are inflated over the bare cost of service and hardware.
As more ISPs do this, they put the admin tasks in the hands of capable users (hopefully better than the MCSE's they got conned into hiring). That simplies things a bit. That means that they no longer have to guarantee the speed of broadband. It allows the market to loosen up from the usually stagnant progress it's had. when you have two variables (performance and price) rather than this rigid 56k no more no less, DSL speed no more no less, customers can be satisfied and fewere are left out of the picture.
Don't we want to close the digital divide?
As Speakeasy (whoever it is up the chain) no longer has to buy as much hardware, the hardware sellers have to drop their prices, which is good for Speakeasy.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
From their FAQ:
What I get from this is that they don't mind your sharing your connection, but that if you want to charge the neighbors than they're requiring you to use this new system to do it.
It also sounds like they'll provide your neighbors with email accounts and stuff if they sign up.
It all seems pretty reasonable to me....
Speaking for myself, if I were using my neighbor's connection a lot, I'd certainly be more than happy to chip in for it.
--Bruce Fields
As someone with a firm grounding in economics, I must admit that I just don't get it. ISPs and other groups have high fixed costs, and low variable costs
The answer is right there. Their highest fixed cost is the DSL circuit they rent from one of two surly companies in direct competition with them, the ILEC or Covad. If they can get you to do the advertising and on site support for your service that eliminates their largest variable cost and much of the risk. Since the fixed cost becomes lower per customer they can charge a larger premium on the bandwidth costs and make a bundle.
There was some discussion of this last year in the NYCWireless mailing list. Basically at the time most DSL providers were starting to bless WiFi and Time Warner cable and the Verizon ILEC were banning them. The reason seems to be pure economics, the WiFi friendly companies rent the fixed lines and pay monopoly prices, while the monopolies own the lines and have little or no incremental costs on the lines. The WiFi friendly companies can offer WiFi as a competitive incentive with little cost, while the monopolies see this as one less potential customer on the line they already have to the your house. They are each acting in their percieved medium-term interest. Long term the independent DSL providers see that if each neighborhood had a community built network they could sell bandwidth and more importantly services without much dealing with the old monopolies, there is plenty of competition (at least in NYC) in commercial scale bandwidth. You can even lay fiber yourself in New York without a right of way if you do it at a certain depth in the roadway. The independent DSL providers know they can crush the old monopolies when it comes to customer service. The old monopolies see the independent DSL providers as gnats that will go away because they always have to pay the ILEC for the DSL circuit so they can't be lower cost. They don't want users to get into the habit of treating their "net connections" as internet connections (i.e. that can be further routed.) Plus, soon independent DSL providers won't be able to rent just the copper so even the nominal competition of Covad will be gone. (Covad is just praying a Democrat, any Democrat, gets elected and installed next time around.)
I just checked and looks like you can get it in Des Moines. So stop making Iowa look like it is worse than people think it is already! You could also do it all yourself minus Speakeasy if you can't get their access in your neck of the woods.
dave
>Thats not much of a connection to share in the first place.
I would think its doable if you could throttle speeds. It would be nice to be able to tell my linksys, "Okay give the people with this MAC address 128up and 128k down." Now two guys running Kazaa won't make everything slow down to a crawl.
Unless Speakeasy is going to send me a kick ass router/wireless AP that can manage connections like this it just sounds like a headache.
A LOT of companies (mostly software) do NOT sell their software directly. They use resellers. This creates not only great relationships, but also adds a free sales force. I think SpeakEasy is applying that model here.
Gee. God forbid someone work hard and achieve something they want. Not giving it away to someone else is wrong! /sarcasm.
Its called capitalism, and freedom. Welcome.
I could also get a 1.5/256 line for $39, from a local ISP who isn't earthlink, and if I didn't want the upstream thats what I'd probably do. If you know a way to get 768k upstream (or, ideally, more) on a non-business (aka residential) DSL line for less money, please do let me know.
Other reasons I wouldn't use earthlink:
Last I heard, their DSL still required PPPOE or some other nonsense
They don't want you to run an open WAP
Their tech support is retarded (I've dealt with them on behalf of a client, and I think I actually taught them some things about earthlink's hosting services.)
IIRC, they're owned by some religious organization I want nothing to do with. But I can't remember what the story on that was, and a quick googling didn't turn it up. Maybe just a rumor.
They tell people it's Their Internet (as in, "It's Your Internet"). What a bunch of crap.
__
Choose mnemonic identifiers. If you can't remember what mnemonic means, you've got a problem. - Larry Wall
I can just imagine that I'm playing an 'important' CS match, and my neigbor starts up kazaa... Then some idiot starts DLing porn and britany spears mp3s from him, consequently my ping skyrockets to 400ms.
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!" :P
Err... you sure this wasn't written by the CEO of Speakeasy?
--