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Comcast Converting 50,000 Houston Home Routers Into Public WiFi Hotspots

Posted by Soulskill on from the just-what-you-never-wanted dept.

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.

12 of 474 comments (clear)

  1. Liability by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So does this mean that charges for copyright infringement (or other such activities) will no longer be brought against people based on IP Address evidence alone? Because this certainly gives a lot of people a lot of plausible deniability.

    Secondly, how are the clients being compensated for the hotspot service they are now providing?

    1. Re:Liability by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Yes, this is a shitty thing to do, but, Comcast is a shitty company, so no surprise there. But there is a simple answer. Turn it off. If you don't know how, do a little research and figure out how. If you can't be bothered to expend a little mental energy, then it must not be much of a problem.

      No no, the answer is to sue Comcast.
      What they're doing is 100% illegal irrespective of the shit they put in their TOS/Eula.

    2. Re:Liability by jythie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Comcast is a major cable company, they do not 'break' the law, they write it.

    3. Re:Liability by jedidiah · · Score: 1, Insightful

      It's a broadcast device. EVERYONE around you is effected. This will just add to the electronic clutter of your neighborhood. If it doesn't annoy you directly, it might annoy the guy next door and interfere with his network.

      --
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    4. Re:Liability by jxander · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Step 1: Connect to "external SSID"
      Step 2: Download illegal music/movies/pr0n/etc
      Step 3: Deny responsibility, as the "culprit" was connected to the external SSID and clearly not YOU, connected to the internal SSID.

      Add a step for MAC spoofing, if you really want to go that extra mile.

      --
      This signature is false.
    5. Re:Liability by Zordak · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Comcast will be just as liable as they are now. This is not Comcast giving people access to your private network. For this to be even technologically feasible, it's going to have to be configured so that every router broadcasts the same SSID. That means it's going to be a separate virtual network from your home network. So some random guy is not going to be able to log onto your shared folders and print to your printer. If somebody downloads porn, it's going to show that it was some user (with a username and login) that logged into the public Comcast network, and happened to do it from your router. (But more than usual, see my .sig)

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  2. Liability by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My guess is that you'll be compensated by having access to a city-wide wifi hotspot.

  3. Re:Who owns them? by Burdell · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It is my understanding that this will be done only on Comcast-owned equipment, and using a separate logical connection (like a VLAN) from the local subscriber data. This won't affect any subscriber data cap one way or the other. If a subscriber cancels, they probably unplug the Comcast equipment (so the wifi goes down) because they are supposed to return it to Comcast (or get billed).

  4. Re:Public WiFi? by khellendros1984 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In that case, you're paying to use it, you're just not paying extra to use it.

    --
    It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
  5. Re:Monthly quota? by backbyter · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The usage is tied to the visitor's account, not necessarily the home owner. Does lead to interesting questions though. Is a subscriber usage limited (capped) when using other peoples wifi, if not, what happens when the home owner logs into their own router as a visitor?

  6. You gotta love their style... by Thruen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    First, they charged me for the connection to my house at a certain speed. Then, they throttled everything I'd want that speed for. Then, they charged Netflix for the connection to my house. Now, they're offering the connection to my house to other customers when it already can't keep up with my needs or come close to their advertised speeds. What am I even paying for? The joy of twice monthly hour long phone calls to resolve outages?

    I bet they'll count this as "upgrading their infrastructure," just another fine example of the innovation they claim will come to an end if ISPs are better regulated.

  7. Re:Converting Turning? by Jmc23 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You don't get to be a slashdot ed. by being able to control your addictions!

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