Slashdot Mirror
Comcast Converting 50,000 Houston Home Routers Into Public WiFi Hotspots
New submitter green453 writes: 'As a Houston resident with limited home broadband options, I found the following interesting: Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle reports (warning: paywalled) that Comcast plans to turn 50,000 home routers into public Wi-Fi hotspots without their users providing consent. Comcast plans to eventually convert 150,000 home routers into a city-wide WiFi network. A similar post (with no paywall) by the same author on the SeattlePI Tech Blog explains the change. From the post on SeattlePI: "What's interesting about this move is that, by default, the feature is being turned on without its subscribers' prior consent. It's an opt-out system – you have to take action to not participate. Comcast spokesman Michael Bybee said on Monday that notices about the hotspot feature were mailed to customers a few weeks ago, and email notifications will go out after it's turned on. But it's a good bet that this will take many Comcast customers by surprise."'
This follows similar efforts in Chicago and the Twin Cities.
We have this stuff here in Netherlands at one of the biggest providers (Ziggo). It seemed great to me at first, but turned out pretty much useless.
The problem is, these are home routers inside homes, this means they are low powered, not at ideal locations (not many homes in the mall, highway, train, etc), and also inside usually thick walls that stop a lot of the signal. It's just a frustrating experience, with your phone often falling in and out of connection and such. The 4G network gives a much better experience.
It's not *free* wi-fi. You still have to have a Comcast account to connect to any one of them.
Here are some facts:
- Public wireless users will be using a different IP address from the LAN/internal wireless users.
- In order to use the "Public" wireless hotspot, you will need to already have a Comcast username and password. It's not OPEN wifi, but open to other Comcast subscribers.
- "Public" wifi bandwidth will not affect the bandwidth of the home router (so says Comcast).
Because someone might attach to your Wi-fi and share something in a manner that infringes copyright. Then, the MPAA/RIAA will come after you.
Note, I completely agree that targeting people based on IP address is idiotic, but you would be the person who would either need to spend the time/money to fight this lawsuit or would need to settle with them (likely agreeing that you did the crime) to make it go away.
On the upside, it could add more dents into the "this IP address proves it was that person" claims of the MPAA/RIAA, but who would want to volunteer for this expense? Or, more accurately, who would want Comcast to volunteer them for this expense unless they go through technological measures to opt out?
You obviously didn't read the article. They are using the wifi and completely segregating traffic. It appears with a distiinct SSID and on a different IP. The capacity is on a different channel, so gain the host user isn't affected.