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Caveats In Reselling DSL Bandwidth To Neighbors?
chrisleetn writes "I'm contemplating getting Slashdot (Speakeasy) 6Mbps broadband or something similar and offering wireless internet access to my neighborhood. Speakeasy even has a plan to allow this. What should I be aware of as far as legal/business/regulatory implications? I know I need to restrict obvious illegal stuff and probably p2p to be safe, but is the local cable modem company going to come after me for competing with them? Has anyone done this who can offer some insight?"
You might want to set up something like NoCatAuth. NoCatAuth redirects users to a login page, implementing a captive portal system. This is important if you're selling the service because you want to be able to grant and deny access, and 802.11[A-Za-z] is otherwise full of holes.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
What you do with your bandwidth, as long as it doesn't violate terms of service, is your business, not that of your local cable company.
However, would your neighbors be willing to pay?
In my neighborhood, I can count no less than 9 unprotected networks. Most of them are all on the default linksys channel of 6 with the default SSID of "linksys". That can sometimes make them difficult to use since they tend to interfere. Some of them are configured well enough to be usable but are still not protected.
I've found that in the rare events that my internet connection goes down, I've been able to easily just use a neighbor's. I'd feel worse about doing it if it weren't for the fact that it's so common, but it's very common.
A friend and I drove around town one night with a laptop and a wireless 802.11g card and we kept finding Netgear and Linksys routers all night.
Most of them had the default passwords. It's very scary, really.
The scary ones are the ones who know enough to make serious changes to their configuration, but still don't have the sense to change their passwords.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Well, I certainly wouldn't sign up for your plan to share a 6 Mb connection with others.
But for those that do, what are you going to do to guarantee them that one of your neighbours isn't going to hog all of the bandwidth?
I know just in my house (also a 6 Mb connection), if I'm downloading something through Bit Torrent, it really slows down any internet stuff on the other computers, and if another computer here downloads a file or checks email, it makes games on mine stutter.
Are you going to give them bandwidth caps? And will those go down everytime you get a new customer?
Be VERY careful. If you help one neighbour even once with a connectivity issue, chances are your door will never be silent again. This is not a joke. Trust me, you will be sat in front of other people's computers more than you are your own. Be firm from the outset. I'm sure you have better things to do with your time than being dragged from house to house to put the WEP key back in, only to have some luser remove it again.
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
A few years ago an apartment resident (iirc) did something similar. I don't remember the details, just that he shared some service with his neighbors.
His landlord came down on him hard. A local company had an exclusive contract on providing that service and they demanded that the apartment complex deal with it. IIRC he was threatened with eviction unless he dropped the service. The story made the "legal issues" segment of the local news broadcast, and the lawyer told him he didn't have any options. He may have even been forced to drop his personal service even if he didn't share it with neighbors.
I'm showing my age here but I remember when it took a federal law to invalidate absolute restrictions on small satellite dishes. Exclusive arrangements on cable tv service were common and widely enforced.
The law changed the environment, but you should still check your particulars. E.g., I can easily imagine an apartment or condo complex banning wireless stations because 1) they wish to minimize interference between neighboring units and 2) they wish to retain the option of providing wireless service throughout the complex as a benefit of renting there. That's less likely with detached housing HOAs, but not impossible.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Technically, even when bartering goods and services, you are legally required to report the imputed value of any compensation you receive as taxable income. This is ridiculous of course -- but it brings to mind a general government strategy of control: if the government makes everything illegal, and enforce s the laws selectively, it in effect has the ability to do anything it wants to anyone it wants. You're probably better off without a true meeting of the minds on who does what in exchange for what. If you give away a service, and others give away services, and the value of anything given away doesn't exceed to 10 or $11k annual value, and nothing is a clear payment for anything, it's hard to pin a tax on you. Hmmm -- maybe the government has constructed a mechanism to encourange people to give assistance to eachother without necessarily getting something in return. Those clever IRS people really are doing the work of the lord.