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Comcast Sued For Turning Home Wi-Fi Routers Into Public Hotspots

HughPickens.com writes: Benny Evangelista reports at the San Francisco Chronicle that a class-action suit has been filed in District Court in San Francisco on behalf of Toyer Grear and daughter Joycelyn Harris, claiming that Comcast is "exploiting them for profit" by using their home router as part of a nationwide network of public hotspots. Comcast is trying to compete with major cell phone carriers by creating a public Xfinity WiFi Hotspot network in 19 of the country's largest cities by activating a second high-speed Internet channel broadcast from newer-model wireless gateway modems that residential customers lease from the company.

Although Comcast has said its subscribers have the right to disable the secondary signal, the suit claims the company turns the service on without permission. It also places "the costs of its national Wi-Fi network onto its customers" and quotes a test conducted by Philadelphia networking technology company Speedify that concluded the secondary Internet channel will eventually push "tens of millions of dollars per month of the electricity bills needed to run their nationwide public Wi-Fi network onto consumers." The suit also says "the data and information on a Comcast customer's network is at greater risk" because the hotspot network "allows strangers to connect to the Internet through the same wireless router used by Comcast customers."

7 of 291 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Comcast Business Class by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    If I had only two bullets and was locked in a room with Comcast, Hitler, and Osama Bin Laden... I'd shoot Comcast twice.

  2. Re:Comcast Business Class by Mr.+Sketch · · Score: 5, Funny

    If I had only two bullets and was locked in a room with Comcast, Hitler, and Osama Bin Laden... I'd shoot Comcast twice.

    Well, yeah, because the other two are already dead.

  3. Re:Comcast Business Class by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Waste of time, it's a corporate entity.

    What you do is shoot the lock on the door, then find a paper shredder.

  4. Re:Comcast Business Class by gwstuff · · Score: 4, Funny

    Nice! Now you're stuck in a room with Osama and Hitler pissed off at you because their cable TV doesn't work.

  5. Re:Comcast Business Class by davester666 · · Score: 5, Funny

    And you don't want to pollute potential sources of food with lead.

    --
    Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
  6. Re:Comcast Business Class by internerdj · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just put on Comcast's hat, say thank you for calling Comcast support, and beat them with the pistol; it will be the best Comcast service call they have ever made.

  7. Re: Comcast Business Class by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 4, Funny

    If you're not using their wireless, just put the router in a metal box.

    Then Comcast will charge you a Faraday Cage container upgrade. They'll say you need to have a field assistant do the install, they'll come out sometime between 1 and 11. That being months, as in sometime between 1 for January, and 11 for November. Then a $9.99 rental fee per month. Then you get calls from their friendly techs to have you upgrade to Faraday Cage Turbo(TM) for $5 a month more, or Faraday Cage Blast (TM) for just $8 a month more!!

    Jokes aside, it does suck that Comcast is forcing this on everybody. It's good to be the king, err, monopoly.