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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?"
Providing it free as a service probably wouldn't be too difficult. But would it make sense to go through all the hassle for the few bucks you can make?
- To err is human; but to really screw up, you need a computer
At 768 up you would need some way to cap their upload. Otherwise you'd risk a neighbor ruining it for everybody.
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?
In the broadest sense, once people start paying money, no matter how small, the relationship changes.
When connectivity on Sunday at 7am goes down, people will look at where they can get help. If they have a door to knock on, then woe betide you.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
i can't think of a problem. the 802.11b/g spectrum is unlicensed. you can use it for whatever reason you wish. if your kick-ass provider lets you do this, then they won't complain.
as another poster said, is it really worth the trouble when it comes to billing?
also keep in mind that using wireless opens up their computer to the world. make sure folks know this before you let them join your network.
This is one of those cases where some simple common sense comes into play.
Alright, so you not going to be an illicit reseller, but an authorized body capable of forming a legal binding agreements with your customers.
ISP's do this all the time... they simple resell bandwidth they have purchased from their providers.
Basically, write out what services you will provide and clearly define what you won't allow. It needs to be clearly written and agreed upon by your clients.
After that, you simply need to track ip addresses (assumming DHCP will be in iuse), keep mail logs (if you provide smtp/pop service) and generally ensure that you can track illicit activity back to the source if requested to do so by a court order.
It's simply a matter of accountability and this is something you can easily do given it is a service you can provide.
Anything else is just extra, but it would probably be a good idea to track bandwidth usage.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
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?
If you go through Speakeasy, they set it up so that the people you sell it to are their customers, and not yours. The deal is that the more you sell, the less you pay. It's a good deal.
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.
Charging lets you assign value to your service, and assigning value is a key way to keep customers in line while covering your nut.
In terms of the cable modem companies "coming after you," you need only worry about legal competition -- no franchise agreements come to mind that completely lock out all broadband competition. It's worth noting, however, that Verizon has backed legislation in Pennsylvania to prevent municipalities from setting up free broadband services -- a bad step in the direction of market control.
If you *are* going to charge, then you've got some additional costs to consider:
Good luck!
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
Thats why they'd be pissed, at the very least they would cut off your service.
I think you missed the point. They can't cut his service, because they aren't providing it. What he means is that the CABLE companies might come after him because he is reselling the bandwidth he is getting from his DSL provider.
One reason they might do this is because they would be afraid that he might set some kind of example that their cable customers might expect they could get away with. After the cable company THEN has their own customers doing this, they are forced with the decision of either allowing it themselves, or cutting off their customers. That would be sending business to the competition.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
- You're now earning income. You at least have to tack this onto your normal income tax to be legal. If you're making enough money, maybe you also have to get a business license. - If you do have to get a business license, you have to deal with zoning laws. If this is a small business being run out of your home, you can't meet with clients at your home, at least in some states. There's a good chance you don't care about either of those, as maybe you're not going to pay taxes or file for a business license, etc, but you asked, so it's something to consider
This should answer your questions. It's all good.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
At least here in Australia if you provide communication services which cross a property boundary then you have to be a licensed telecommunications carrier.
I believe that in NZ this is not a difficult thing to do (about as hard as applying for a passport) but the Australian Government is not fond of the idea of administring millions of telecommunication carriers, and has made the process much more difficult.
I think if you dig deeper in your juristiction you will find that similar rules apply. Remember all the regulations which apply to carriers: having to provide wiretap facilities, etc. Legally, this could be quite messy
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Speakeasy even has a plan to allow this.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
1. You don't have to worry about the cable company. The cable company will only get pissed if the local government tries to provide broadband, because it would be unfair competition.
2. Triple check that the AUP for your DSL allows you to share and resell the service. Then check again.
3. If you are reselling, you will probably have to charge for sales tax, check your local tax authority.
4. There are probably FCC rules about the equipment that you can use and the maximum power that it can irradiate. Of course, if you are using turnkey COTS equipment, the odds are that it is FCC legit.
5. Check your neighbors and see what is the interest in this kind of service. If there is too little interest then you are setting yourself for failure, since your location is fixed and there is only so far you can reach.
6. Write your own AUP and make sure the CYA provisions are in bold, plain english a second grader can understand. Then take the AUP to a lawyer to read and see if he can poke holes thru it.
7. Be prepared for the technical support burden, even if most of your customers are geeks.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
It's absolutely amazing how many people don't RTFA or research anything, making statements like "Check your AUP" and things like that. For those people, I say: he is talking about a specific ISP (Speakeasy) that specifically PERMITS sharing, and even has a program set up (NetShare) to handle billing and such for you. Under this particular program, Speakeasy handles all the billing for you, and even gives you an additional IP address to provide to your "customer".
To answer the question, here are some pointers from somebody who is actually doing Speakeasy NetShare.
You do not need to worry (from a layman's viewpoint, IANAL, so check with your family attorney if you are worried) about filtering access. In fact, if you read the fine print of Speakeasy's documentation, you are not really permitted to do so. I was told specifically by a Speakeasy rep NOT to do this, even though I had the ability to.
Since Speakeasy will provide you with an IP address specifically for that customer, it will be easy (should fit hit the shan) to segregate your traffic from theirs. Speakeasy will be billing them seperately, so they will have their address and contact information should the RIAA/MPAA/LE come around. From a legal perspective (again, IANAL), you are no different than your local phone company.. you are only providing a conduit, passively, between the ISP (Speakeasy) and that ISP's customers (your neighbor using NetShare).
Over here, I have three specific ways of getting access. You can be plugged in to my personal LAN (which, BTW, is hardline). You can be accessing a free and open node (which runs NoCat), which is highly filtered and proxied. Or, you can be on the WPAd side of the house, which is the resale network.
Don't hesitate to participate in NetShare. It's an awesome way of reducing your monthly bill AND helping your less tech-savvy neighbors to get off AOL. Both are very worthy causes.
If you are in the united states, you should be extremely careful not to put yourself in the position of judging the legality of what your neighbors are doing. I have operated several open Internet systems, and the lawyers have specifically instructed me not to filter stuff preemptively, becuase this would vastly increasy my liability for anything I did happen to let through.
It does seem to be okay to do things like rate-limit people, or traffic shape so as to prevent one person from DoSing another, and probably to block forged IP addresses (if your ISP doesn't do that already).
However, I think you're in for a world of pain with the RIAA if you assume responsibility for making sure your neighbors don't violate copyright. Sure, you might be able to block P2P traffic, but who knows what other things they'll go after people for in the future. Maybe your neighbor will put up a web page on how to de-copy-protect CDs, and the RIAA will decide this caused them $500,000,000 of damage. Do you really want to be responsible for that?
Do some google searches for "prodigy case". And definitely don't try to institute any kind of blocking without first consulting a lawyer.
Assuming the poster lives within the United States, there are no special legal requirements in most cases. Simply declare the income on your tax return, and expect to owe the government some money come April (just like you're SUPPOSED to do when you sell stuff on eBay, or hold a yard sale, etc.).
The caveat here is *you* are the business - which means if someone wants to sue "the provider", they would be suing YOU, and anything you own is fair game in said lawsuit.
/~mikeg
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
It is 100% free, he sets the price, Speakeasy bills the neighbors. Speakeasy gets more subscribers for the same bandwidth, the primary subscriber gets money off his bill. That's all there is to this. The person essentially becomes a PoP for the ISP at this point.
"Perl 6 gives you the big knob" -- Larry Wall