Virgin Media Starts Turning Customer Routers Into Public Wi-Fi Hotspots (arstechnica.co.uk)

UK ISP Virgin Media is expanding its public Wi-Fi network by co-opting customers' home routers as hotspots. Only the most recent router design (the SuperHub v3) will be recruited at first, and customers can opt-out from the program if they wish. Virgin says the change will have "no impact on customers" because affected homes will be allocated extra bandwidth. ArsTechnica offers more context: A little background: a couple of years ago, Virgin Media started trialling a public Wi-Fi service very similar to "BT Wi-Fi with FON," where residential BT customers have their routers turned into hotspots. For some reason the broad rollout of Virgin's service was delayed until now. There are some curious differences between BT and Virgin Media's approach, though. For starters, it seems only Virgin Media customers will have access to this nationwide Wi-Fi network; BT grants free access to BT customers, but non-customers can pay for access ($5 per hour). The owner of that subverted hotspot doesn't get any of the money, of course. Furthermore, while BT customers must share their ADSL or VDSL bandwidth with any public Wi-Fi users, Virgin Media promises that "your home network is completely separate from Virgin Media WiFi traffic, meaning the broadband connection you pay for is exclusively yours, and just as secure."

Comments

I do not use ISP Routers. Only a Modem.

[Zombie Ryushu]

I do not use ISP Routers. Only a Modem. (the Modem acts as a PPPoE Bridge, it used to be an ATM Bridge, but now its a PPPoE Bridge.) and my Routers all run DD-WRT. I don't trust ISP Routers and neither should you.

Re:Comcast has done this for some time

[sobachatina]

If you don't understand the snark then why don't you "play along" at home.

Sure the idea is great for people consuming the service- it isn't so great for the unwitting customers providing the service at the expense of their bandwidth and security.

(Yes. I saw that they claimed it won't affect bandwidth or security. Why would you believe that?)

Re:Yes please

[magarity]

You should foresee the day the swat team kicks in your door at 3 am to shoot you for peddling kiddie porn.

more wifi hotspots means more contention

[j2.718ff]

Currently, I live in an apartment, with >12 visible WiFi networks. That means my WiFi connections are often quite poor due to overuse of the same frequencies. I can only imagine how poor my reception would become if these 12 WiFi routers were each acting as 2 WiFi hotspots.

Re:Xfinity (aka Comcast) doing this for years.

[Registered Coward v2]

The setting to turn it off is in the router/modem box. Not a big deal.

And tehn setting up a fake hotspot that allows you to spy on all the traffic coming through. Seriously, Comcast is training users their WiFi is safe; setting people up for scammers who decide to impersonate Comcast and steal whatever information they want while they route traffic.

Re:Yes please

[bill_mcgonigle]

Pretty sure Virgin is going to do the same thing that Comcast does now - separate IP range, separate SSID, separate MAC addys, separate bandwidth allocation/QoS...

And yet, the aforementioned SWAT Team / ICE brigate will demand _only_ to know the address where the traffic is coming from and by time Brad tells Tad tells Chad, that footnote on an administrative file will be brought up only in a wrongful death inquiry. (spoiler: use of force was justified).

cf. Court OKs Barring High IQs for Cops