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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."
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."
When I signed up for Comcast Business Class recently, they told me I had to use their modem+wireless router combo.
I managed to put their modem in bridge mode (i.e. let me use my own router) and "disable" the wireless functionality so I can use my own access points, but I can't seem to find any way to disable the damn public network.
I've confirmed that the public network uses a different public IP (clients connected to it get a private IP), but I'd still like to be able to disable it.
Bastards.
Comcast requires all subscribers to use binding arbitration for all legal disputes about their services. The customer can also save money and stop the use of the Comcast modem by buying her own modem for $30-$80.
... but their Xfinity Wifi Hotspot program, if implemented correctly, shouldn't cause customers any real harm.
What I believe happens is that your modem gets virtualized into two modems/routers. Cable Internet is already based on shared broadcast signals, so in terms of bandwidth it should be identical to adding a second, mostly inactive cable modem somewhere in your neighborhood. Since the 2nd modem is virtualized, it should not affect your transfer rates or bandwidth quotas.
This second modem is connected to a second, virtual router, with its own SSID. Unless there's a vulnerability in the router (which is possible), users of the Xfinity Wifi Hotspot should not be able to access your network, use your IP address, etc.
Available bandwidth could conceivably be reduced, due to more packets in the air, but WiFi is already unregulated and subject to additional interference. Increased load on the modem/router could theoretically reduce your bandwidth as well, although probably not by any noticeable amount.
The best claim is based on increased electricity usage. However, the additional energy needed is probably negligible. Here is a link to a blog post about the increased electricity costs, where they conclude it's about $8 per year in the mid-Atlantic area -- if it's being used. Comcast could give everyone a $1/mo credit for enabling the Xfinity WiFi Hotspot, completely eliminating the issue.
and thats the thing they're getting sued over.. ..there's something seriously wrong with our legal system..
Why sue? For $80 she could buy a Surfboard 6141 at Best Buy, and save the money by not paying modem rental. The modem will pay for itself in 10 months. If she is using Comcast's phone service, she would need to buy an eMTA (Embedded Multimedia Terminal Adapter). Although some cable franchises may not allow them on their network. One of the reasons I did this was to avoid being a node on their public network. Another one is that I have a router with custom firmware that I am quite happy with, and their integrated unit will probably not allow dd-wrt or tomato. I like to be in control of my own network.
I would imagine that the setting could be turned off in the rental eMTA from Comcast. In my subdivision, I have only seen one XfinityHotSpot network, and it was only for a short time, then it disappeared. My guess is that the Comcast customer noticed this brand new XfinityHotSpot had as strong a signal as their own router, and figured out how to disable it in short order.
One of the things that bugs me about America is this mindset that we seem to generally have of, 'sue first, look at other options later, if at all.'
When you're dead, you don't know you're dead. It only affects the people around you. Same thing when you're stupid.
I live in a rural area, and do dual-sport motorcycle riding on mountain trails in the Appalachians. There is a small "town" where we stop to fuel up and eat, and this place doesn't even have cell phone service. However, I did find that there is an Xfinity hotspot. Actually, I didn't even know what the Xfinity thing was until seeing this story, but it now makes sense why there was a "commercial" hotspot at this little crossroads. They allow two one-hour free trial sessions a month, which just happens to be about the frequency I ride through there, so it has been extremely useful to communicate while having lunch. So I give Xfinity a thumbs-up as it was that or nothing at all (and I do mean nothing) in this one particular place.
What Comcast needs to do is share just a tiny bit of this revenue with customers whose routers provide this service. It might only amount to a dollar or two a month, but that would be an incentive to have it turned on, and would offset the extra cost of electricity.
Better known as 318230.
As long as Comcast lets me share my cable TV with all my friendly neighbors as well. Since we're all in the sharing mood...
Wrap aluminum foil around it - to block the signal?
..........FULL STOP.
No you don't, use the trial option. You only need an email address and zip code. Both are easily faked. Then you need to change your mac address every 1 hour to bypass their time limits.
I've had good luck with the Motorola SB6141 DOCSIS 3.0 modem. (The SB6121 is apparently an obsolete model.) Eventually DOCSIS 3.1 modems will be available.
It took me an estimated 9 hours of communicating with Comcast representatives to get Comcast to bill at the advertised rate, instead of far more than Comcast advertises. This is what works: Call the Comcast executive offices at 215-640-8960. Be very polite and logical, but insistent.
Don't check your internet access speed with Speedtest.net. Apparently that web site always reports the advertised rate, the connection rate, not the data delivery rate. DSLReports Speed Test shows that I get one-seventh the speed Comcast advertises.
Comcast was the 2014 Worst Company In America.
Comcast has apparently found that most people don't spend the many hours Comcast makes it necessary to protest over-billing.
It's interesting to me that Comcast apparently expects employees to abuse customers, and Comcast employees hear that as permission to abuse Comcast, also.
Apparently the U.S. government no longer protects the people, but just allows any abuse that will make the rich richer, or allow the violent to be more violent.
Because I have BT broadband in my home, people in the street nearby can use a BT hotspot. The quid pro quo, Clarisse, is that I get to use a massive number of hotspots for free in return, as part of my monthly service.
Parked in a street outside my kid's band practice waiting to collect here ? There's a hotspot. Sat in a cafe ? There's a hotspot.
In fact in a typical densely populated neighbourhood I get almost solid wifi coverage for miles and miles. Is that worth $8 a year to me ? Probably. And it's an option I can always switch off.
Now
- I'm no fan of Comcast (though it's a few years since Iived in the USA)
- Sure, someone might discover a flaw in their router and bridge the networks (but then they might discover a flaw and just hack my personal wifi network anyway).
But overall, what the hell are most people REALLY concerned about ? The electricity is the only real legit grounds for complaint and you can be sure that if they'd rolled it out with a pro rata cash back to compensate for the juice used there would still be people moaning.
What I really want out of a home router is
- my own private wifi
- a public facing hotspot (in return for which I get to use a million hotspots nationwide)
- a guest network for people who visit. Who may not have an account with my ISP but whom I don't want on my LAN either, In fact I'd rather have the option to create a shortlived temporary login for this guest account.,
Does anyone offer the third of these yet ?
I had Comcast for residential service for two years not long ago (2010-2012), and they gave me no problem with using my own modem. (They did try to charge me for not returning it when I disconnected service, but corrected their error without a hassle.)
They also still list acceptable personal modems on their website:
http://mydeviceinfo.comcast.ne...
Here in the Netherlands our largest cable providers (Ziggo and UPC) also turned every home cable modem into a public hotspot about a year or two ago. All customers are given an account to use the hotspot network anywhere in the country. It can be pretty handy if you are with a laptop in a city and need internet access. Your laptop will get get a connection and away you go. They are on separate IP space, and don't affect your usable bandwidth or throughput as they are lower priority traffic than your own subscription traffic. While this functionality is opt out rather than opt in, you can just login to the console of your cable modem and disable it as desired. When you opt out like that however you also lose the access to use hotspot network entirely. The cost of using the network is to participate. The only thing that I see wrong with it is that it is an opt out system rather than an opt in. But I can also see that something like this wouldn't reach the "critical mass" to make it all work otherwise.
Yes, the list is out of date, but you're missing the fact you don't really need it. Comcast uses the regular DOCSIS cable modem standards in the US. When you go off to BuyMore to buy a cable modem, they actually advertise (1) that they're DOCSISx and (2) that they're compatable with Comcast in your area. Using "the list" is like walking into, uh, BuyMore, looking at a DVD player, seeing it actually has a picture of a DVD of The Matrix on it, and then going on to Warner Bro's site to see if it's on an official list of DVD players that play The Matrix.
Here's what happened when I signed up for Comcast service. I went online, I selected the service I wanted, I was asked if I wanted to rent their modem, I declined, and then I set up an install date. I then went to Best Buy and bought an off-the-shelf Zyxel modem. On the install date, the installer ran the wire, plugged everything in, verified I had a connection, wasn't sure if it would work as it wasn't on his list but tried it anyway (no, he didn't need convincing or anything, he just hadn't heard of the modem, though he looked less unsure when he saw the magic "DOCSIS3" words on the box and told me I'd gotten a pretty good modem in that case), sent the MAC address to Comcast, and that was pretty much it. Other than the usual account misset-up snafu, which had nothing to do with my selection of modem and was never blamed on the modem, everything when smoothly.
You guys are inventing conspiracies that do not exist. Comcast doesn't force anyone to use their routers. The set-up of xfinitywifi is not a threat to your security or bandwidth. It is useful (and I've made use of it) to have access to Wifi away from home.
At best, some of you may have had some pushy salespeople. Pushy salespeople suck. Comcast sucks for using pushy salespeople. But their Internet service, salespeople aside, is great, and xfinitywifi is a good idea, regardless of how bad their sales department is.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.