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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!"
No, I actually mean it.
This is a great way to get the penetration without the risk of people fucking up the configuration of innumerable devices. No more battling with IOS or iptables. No more wrestling with the choice of sendmail, exim or qmail. Now, someone else does all the grunt work, you just sign up users - And you get money for it.
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
I wonder how this appiles in states where using a router is (or will be) llegal. Its amusing to me that ISP's hand out routers themselves, or in this case encourage connection sharing. Kinda spits in the eye of certain lawmakers that think they know something about technology.
I'm all for the WiFi boom, but I wonder what new (read: idiotic) laws are going to start surfacing if people are broadcasting their internet connections around.
In Washington, Free == Illegal
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
In English, that means that a lot of the infrastructure costs XXX million dollars, no matter how many customers they have and only a few things actually cost the company more as they add more customers. Because of this, I cannot understand why they would want to let people split service costs.
This article made me think of a joke I once heard... A man goes into a restaurant and sees a sign: "All you can eat 10 dollars, half of all you can eat: 5.50"
Doesn't it seem counter-intuitive for them to offer this service? I mean, increasing the number of people on residential circuits without increasing the number of paying customers is just going to degrade the service for everyone. People are still going to do it behind the backs of ISP's, but they are actually promoting it. Also, what determines which house gets the access point if the price is split 50-50 for everyone? Just a curiousity.
The site is down, or I would look to see if there are extra fees for getting service like this, or what other restrictions are put on. All-in-all, this seems good for the consumer, since you can get cheaper net access if you can get neighbors to chip in, without fearing the wrath of your ISP. Probably the RIAA should take a lesson from these people.
bananas like monkeys.
I hope the other ISP's take notice before Speakeasy overruns them.
On second thought, please come to California and overrun my DSL provider soon.
All they have to supply is the bandwidth (damn cheap, unless your neighbour is a spammer) and some light-duty billing support (also damn cheap) and email services (also cheap). In return, they get a nice new income stream.
Definite +4 insightfull!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Am I responsible for the NetShare customer usage?
So what liability will you incur if your neighbor you just signed up :sends fraudulent spam
defaces a website
cracks a site and steals cc info
publishes libel and slander
distributes child porn
distributes the latest eminem track
etc
This might be taking on more than I'd want to deal with!
I got a new neighbor who had the bright idea to ask me about running cat5 to my house, so we could share dsl costs. I told him that, since he only had a laptop, he should get a wireless card instead, and I'd get him online.
Now he pays a share of the bill, in exchange for connecting to my AP. If he knew anything about wireless networks, and/or knew that I was already intentionally running an open AP before he moved in, he might not be so willing to pay for an equal share of the line... But he doesn't! =)
I wonder if running a NetShare AP rules out running a wide-open free AP. Neighbors won't want to pay if they can get it for free, right? I think my setup now, with free access for anyone who knows what free access is, and payment from those who don't, works well for the time being. Nobody better educate my neighbor, though, or I might have to install NoCatAuth or something.
__
Choose mnemonic identifiers. If you can't remember what mnemonic means, you've got a problem. - Larry Wall
I'll vouch for that. Conversation between me and lady tech at speakeasy:
tech:"how do you know your connection is down 30% of the time?"
me: "I use Big Brother to monitor it."
tech:"Oh cool, we use that here too. Is there a URL you can give me to look at it?"
me: "Hmm, no, it's on a server inside my network, and I don't have a hole punched in the firewall for it."
tech:"How about emailing me a screen shot?"
me: "Hmm, hang on- I don't remember which program it is that does screen shots in Linux."
tech(sounds of her standing up):"hey guys, anyone remember how to do a screenshot in X?"
I was speechless...
Please help metamoderate.