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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.
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?
This is about making some congressman or senator happy. They must have agreed somewhere to offer free wifi or something for cities in return for maintaining their monopolies. And this is how they're delivering.
On the backs of their stupid customers.
Seriously... if you have comcast... cancel them now.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
How long before someone releases a tool that would have a Linux-running computer or device with a WiFi card masquerading as an official Comcast WiFi hotspot an collecting the usernames & passwords of the users trying to connect ?
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The real problem here is people logging on to "comcast wifi" or whatever it's called using the same credentials they use to log on to their ISP account. How hard will it be for nogoodniks to set up hotspots called "comcast wifi" (or whatever) and scoop up all the credentials?
Here in NoVa Cox is doing the same thing.
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My guess is that you'll be compensated by having access to a city-wide wifi hotspot.
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).
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.
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?
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.
My point exactly. It's 'Subscriber WiFi', not 'Public WiFi' as TFA suggests.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Or swaps logins with another comcast customer, so they each use each others logins on their own routers.
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.
An idle router will surely use less electricity.
How long until someone presents them with a bill for the electricity use? It ain't free you know.
It's not the DMCA letters you need to worry about.
It's the copyright trolls and law enforcement people.
Because when you get served with a copyright infringement suit for downloading thousands of videos, or get hauled off to jail because your location was used for something illegal ... that's where the real problems begin.
Unless we're meant to believe that this will in no way trace back to the home-owner, and be a completely air-gapped and firewalled thing. And, I must say, I'm skeptical of that.
Because, really, as people have pointed out ... set up a honey pot, collect a few login credentials, and then you can go anywhere in the city and download anything with complete impunity, because it all traces back to some other sucker.
And law enforcement is going to need to come after someone.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I would rather have a system in which the public bandwidth comes out of the bandwidth I contract for, with my being compensated for the bandwidth the public uses and my being able to limit the public usage fraction either by bandwidth (personal QoS, I suppose) or by time of day. The marketing people could call this service your "Internet solar roof."
I gave the CC built in WiFi a shot but it's horrible coverage and firmware (features) turned me away. I did a live chat and had them turn the WiFi off and they did it immediately, that way I could just use my own. It comes back on automatically about every 6 months (I'm assuming because of some upgrade) and I just live chat with them and have them turn it off. It has a big bright light when it's on so it's easy to tell. If this happens to me (near Houston), I'll just contact them again.
Error reading device 'Signature'. (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?
You don't get to be a slashdot ed. by being able to control your addictions!
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
still eats up CPU and Wifi Spectrum and cable node space.
If Comcast assigns a different IP address to wireless users than to the hosting wired user, there wouldn't be any confusion over if the wired user or a wireless user downloaded evil files.
Unless Comcast assigns a unique IP address to each wireless user (which I suspect they won't on IPV4) sorting out which, of possibly many, wireless users connected at the time of the download may require more tracking -- which I suspect Comcast will do.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Cable broadband provider Telenet in Belgium did the same thing. When my old DOCSIS 2 modem died, they gave me (without any options) one of their all-in-one fancy new 'modems', with built in router with private + public wifi. To manage my modem settings i had to go to their webpage to change MY modem/router/lan/wifi settings, which would then be pushed to my modem locally. So if they're site is down (which happens quite regularly imo, for 'maintenance'), i can't manage my own LAN ! Heaven forbid if someone ever finds an exploit in those modems, all of their customers' LAN's will be compromised. I re-disabled the public wifi several times, after it got mysteriously re-enabled. Forget about calling support, you always get brain dead morons that won't deviate from their silly 'please reboot your modem' flowchart even though you can provide perfect logical reasoning to locate the problem. Power users are a nuisance to them. Repeated calls to support to ask for a normal modem as a consumer were all fruitless. I later played my cards different with the business support desk (as a business owner) and with some social engineering was able to get someone to give permission(!) for me to get a normal modem at my local telenet supplier. I have since installed this modem with behind it a router running custom firmware, where I control my LAN & WIFI. Speeds even more than doubled too ! As of last year Liberty Global own a 57.8% stake in Telenet. A USA telecommunications and television company that is buying up broadband providers worldwide. With recent revelations this is also worrisome, but we don't have another choice for cable provider. Stay vigilant people, and demand what you have the rights to !
why is this so complicated? comcast knows when you are at home, and when you are "roaming" on to other customers' wifi hotspots (because they make you login to them). wherever you are, your cap is applied to your account.
no, i don't have any special knowledge here, it just HAS to work that way or it's ripe for abuse.
Your paid subscription here might provide the money to hire said editor. Oh wait Slashdot is provided for free, what do you expect for free??gezz
Jack of all trades,master of none
If they require a Comcast customer login, then it's not a public wi-fi hotspot at all.
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Wish I had modpoints to mod this to -2, but Soulskill, you are definitely one of the top 3 best editors Slashdot has had, don't listen to these idiots.
Here in holland and across europe the same is being done. The thing is, technically, many homes are hooked up with a line physically capable of say 20mpbs, but with only a 10mbps subscription. The extra bandwidth can be alotted to "guest users".
Similarly, even if someone has a 20(or more) mbps subscription on a 20mbps line, he/she won't be using all of it all of the time. So you can again use part of the bandwidth for guests. In this case it would be fair to give the original subscriber priority to use whatever he/she wants, and put the guests at a lower priority.
Oh, security wise they also separate the original subscriber from the guests.
I have the impression they do this "sensibly": the subscribers don't really have a valid reason to be upset about it.
And the thing is: If you're a subscriber, suddenly there are hundreds or thousands of places where you won't be using your 3G datalink but a wifi hotspot. Faster, cheaper!
Comcast's WiFi Location Map is the hot new burglary tool. Thieves are so thankful for the time savings. Soon we will hear old crooks lamenting to their children how when they were kids they had to break into half a dozen homes just to find one with laptops and tablets.