Comcast Resists Call To Open Home Wi-Fi Hotspots, Cites Potential Congestion (arstechnica.com) 99
Three U.S. senators today urged Comcast to open all of its Wi-Fi hotspots to children who lack Internet access at home during the pandemic. Ars Technica reports: A letter (PDF) from Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) says that Comcast recently refused a request to do so because it would cause congestion for subscribers. But the senators argue that "Comcast's excuse simply does not add up." Comcast has been praised by advocates for its pandemic response, which includes two free months of home-Internet service for new low-income subscribers, temporary suspension of its data cap, and making many of its hotspots free to the general public. But while Comcast opened up 1.5 million hotspots located at businesses and other public areas, there's another category of Comcast Wi-Fi hotspots that still require a Comcast login and subscription. Those are the hotspots that are enabled by default on Xfinity routers used by home-Internet subscribers.
Since 2013, Xfinity gateways have broadcasted a separate network that other Comcast subscribers can log in to with a Comcast username and password. Unless you've disabled the functionality, anyone within range of your Comcast router can get Internet access if they have a Comcast subscription or have paid for a temporary Wi-Fi pass. Wyden, Harris, and Booker argue that Comcast should open these hotspots to children without Internet access during the pandemic so that kids can get free broadband at home instead of having to go to a parking lot or other public places. In the letter, the senators ask Comcast to answer a list of questions by May 22. They also want the company to provide specific details on how opening up the hotspots would affect network performance.
"Please identify the specific performance issues that you anticipate would impact Comcast subscribers and their ability to get the level of service for which they pay if Comcast removed the paywall on its residential public Wi-Fi networks," the senators wrote. "For each issue you identify, please explain why the use today of a subscriber's public network by someone who has purchased an access pass from Comcast does not cause the same problem."
Since 2013, Xfinity gateways have broadcasted a separate network that other Comcast subscribers can log in to with a Comcast username and password. Unless you've disabled the functionality, anyone within range of your Comcast router can get Internet access if they have a Comcast subscription or have paid for a temporary Wi-Fi pass. Wyden, Harris, and Booker argue that Comcast should open these hotspots to children without Internet access during the pandemic so that kids can get free broadband at home instead of having to go to a parking lot or other public places. In the letter, the senators ask Comcast to answer a list of questions by May 22. They also want the company to provide specific details on how opening up the hotspots would affect network performance.
"Please identify the specific performance issues that you anticipate would impact Comcast subscribers and their ability to get the level of service for which they pay if Comcast removed the paywall on its residential public Wi-Fi networks," the senators wrote. "For each issue you identify, please explain why the use today of a subscriber's public network by someone who has purchased an access pass from Comcast does not cause the same problem."
Umm.. (Score:1, Funny)
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You don't get billed for usage by others accessing your router's Xfinity hotspot. What impact that has on your bandwidth, I don't know.
Re:Umm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Does it consume cycles and memory on the router itself?
Then fuck off. It degrades service, by definition. Physics ain't changed since yesterday.
Re:Umm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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WiFi is shared. It _will_ have an impact. Even if the WiFi rates are higher than the Internet rate, it will increase latency and can impact speed between WiFi connected intranet devices.
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It made Wi-Fi in my hi-rise unusable, what with 20 Xfinity hotspots all overlapping channels .
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Increase processing means more electrical use as well and heat generated and that means more energy expended to deal with that.
Even if it only results in a couple of extra dollars per month on your electricity it still results in you paying for someone else to use a device you are paying for and have every right to keep them out of.
This is tantamount to ISP's renting your car out for free during the time you are not using it and car-pooling with others when you are using it.
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I really hate the flame wars online, and I'm not trying to start one, but you're off base. You're doing what so many people do- they take a philosophical concept, then apply it broad-brush. The heck with actual numbers, right?
Example: Xfinity Arris TG862G/GT cable modem / gateway: idle watts: 7.00; max watts: 7.30.
http://www.tpcdb.com/product.php?id=2104 [tpcdb.com]
MAX is 0.30 above IDLE. 0.30 W @ $0.15 per KWH = $0.0324 / month. 3.24 cents a month, if it's running at MAX power. And even that's ridiculous, that s
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No, I am not off base. The minor difference in cost has little relevance at these prices. You could steal something from a store worth 3 cents and it is still theft. I do not have the power specs for that device and a monitor tracking it's actual power usage or its thermal specs but the cost of the electricity for that device alone is not all there is to it. It adds heat and even if that is only just another 3 cents or just 1 cent there is still a cost to folks. That does not even account for what the
Re: Umm.. (Score:1)
You should leave those kids alone, then.
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Regarding the TOS I am not ware of such arrangements, but if that is part of it and customers have agreed then the question comes down to if that is legally enforceable. If so then yes the customers have no choice
You should have stopped with that comment. You've already acknowledged you have no idea what's in the TOS from Comcast, nor the fact that they agree to offer their AP in exchange for using another user's AP for the same purpose in a different location. This AP access requires a username and password so it is recorded who was using your side-channel AP access. The final option you ignore is the Comcast customer has the option to opt-out of the whole program.
because we all know that if someone uses that AP for something illegal that customer is the one getting their door kicked in and thrown down in the front lawn as police yell child rapist in their face in front of their neighbors.
This is wrong for so many reasons I'll let its
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I followed this rollout, and customers could not actually opt-out. If customers read every TOS they were presented with, the US economy would grind to a halt, and companies would go belly-up en-masse. Those adhesion contracts are about as good-faith as the National Enquirer. It’s a farce and everyone is aware of it.
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MAX is 0.30 above IDLE. 0.30 W @ $0.15 per KWH = $0.0324 / month. 3.24 cents a month, if it's running at MAX power.
Times how many customers? I could retire many times over on what Comcast saves. How much would it cost to secure the rights to infrastructure across the country just to set the hotspot up? What consideration did the customer get for the concession? This is a boon for Comcast, and the customers actually pay monthly for the devices. Plus, where I live, power costs way more than that. Where
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If you can justify 3c, I can justify $3 and the government can justify $3M.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors WiFi.
WiFi is a shared medium in a very limited bandwidth (2.4 and 5GHz). If 10 people use the antennae simultaneously, you have to share your bandwidth. This is a service you paid for and which Senator D-* (off course) want to steal from you under the guise of helping other people.
Hey you won't miss 3c of salt, how about all your neighbors come use your salt shaker. How about all your neighbors come
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Increase processing means more electrical use as well and heat generated and that means more energy expended to deal with that.
Even if it only results in a couple of extra dollars per month on your electricity it still results in you paying for someone else to use a device you are paying for and have every right to keep them out of.
This is tantamount to ISP's renting your car out for free during the time you are not using it and car-pooling with others when you are using it.
Relax, you can opt out. There is a switch on your Comcast profile you can flip to turn off home sharing. If you do so, you lose access to other Comcast subscribers' hotspots, but that only seems fair. I personally turn it off because I use my own WIFI routers and turn the radio on my Comcast modem off altogether as I don't want the interference, but they are very up front about it in the TOS.
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Relax, you can opt out. There is a switch on your Comcast profile you can flip to turn off home sharing. If you do so, you lose access to other Comcast subscribers' hotspots, but that only seems fair.
I use my own cable modem and my own wifi router, so don't need to turn off home sharing / xfinitywifi. It's not possible to begin with. I am still able to sign on to any xfinitywifi hotspot I come across away from home.
It's a little more nuanced (Score:2)
Yup, it's physically impossible for it to not impact your speed. If it was free for everyone the impact would be huge for certain users.
If they can handle 2GB/s per device, but you only pay for 1GB/s, yes, it is possible to not impact your service. I can rant about Comcast all day and all night, but I live in dense urban area and love the xfinity hotpsots. I can use my ipad in the park or a waiting room much easier. I never really noticed a difference between turning it on and turning it off. Pre-COVID, I got a lot of value from other hotspot.
I STRONGLY dislike comcast and don't trust them one bit, but I give credit where credit is d
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You're trying to tell me that an ISP, a category of companies infamous for underbuilding, overselling, stealing, and flat out lying to Congress...
You're telling me that ComCast is going to overprovision anything and not just steal it from me?
Where do you buy your weed?
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He who robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.
So glad you love the hotspots. I bet you’d love all the beer in my fridge too. Comcast would give it to you if they could. Give credit where it’s due.
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BT offers something similar in the UK and the impact is negligible. The service is on a separate SSID and bandwidth limited to only use a small fraction of what is available, and at low priority so if your packets are waiting to go out they always go first. The router has enough CPU and memory to handle both at max rate and large numbers of connections.
The problem is that given it's only wifi the range is very limited, it causes 2.4GHz congestion and it's usually not fast enough to stream more than 240p whi
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Not sure how they have the bandwidth for these things. Bandwidth is so saturated, that Comcast had to implement caps. To enforce “fairness”. How do they have any bandwidth left over for an additional network? Damn bandwidth hogs hogging up all the bandwidth like bandwidth-hogging hogs!
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I do see that opening up the WiFi networks could be predicted to degrade service for the paying customers as each home/building is tied to a particular node
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PowerBoost was recalled... now the top speed is a true 1 Gigabit.
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My understanding is that it is a completely separate data channel - for practical purposes, it's like having two cable modems and wifi APs (more efficient than that because of overlap in equipment). It does consume some small additional amount of power, but I'd bet it averages no more than a watt, and maybe less (since most of the time nobody is connected so it is largely idling); that's 8.76 kilowatt hours per year. For me (if I had this), that'd cost me 80 cents a year for the additional electricity.
Howev
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t does consume some small additional amount of power, but I'd bet it averages no more than a watt, and maybe less
You know who you remind me of? Those hucksters selling free energy devices or useless power factor correction garbage and making outrageous claims.
TANSTAAFL.
You got got components? You're using my electricity. You sharing my componentry? Now you're using my stuff and stealing my electricity!
FSM Slashdot, I thought we upheld basic physics here.
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I posted above, for example: Arris TG862G/GT http://www.tpcdb.com/product.php?id=2104 [tpcdb.com] idles at 7 W, max = 7.30 W. So the delta is 3.24 cents / month.
And as absurd it is to even discuss such a negligible amount:
- we can probably assume that the modem isn't idling for the entire month- it must be doing some work if the direct customer is using it.
- and, the piggyback WiFi user would have to run maxed out 24/7 to push it to the 3.23 cents / month.
Somebody out there knows what this kind of discussion is called
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My understanding is that it is a completely separate data channel - for practical purposes, it's like having two cable modems and wifi APs
It isn't... the cable bandwidth is a red-herring everyone is getting hung on here. The *REAL* issue is the spectral utilization of the wifi channel. The same radio just broadcasts multiple SSID's (which already incurs a fixed airtime overhead for beaconing). Having someone actually using the xfinitywifi SSID (esp. at lower data rates due to the fact that it is likely someone further from your AP than all of the devices in your house) ABSOLUTELY increases channel utilization and lowers YOUR wifi throughpu
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Wifi is a shared medium. Irregardless of whether it takes away from SLA bandwidth or volume caps, it would have an impact on performance, and invites more RF interference into the area.
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Especially with multiple said routers visible from your home. It can all but render wi-fi useless, and when you tell Comcast this, they’ll simply ignore you.
But that’s just a philosophical argument, it isn’t like Wi-Fi really suffers degradation with scores of access points on the same channels. It’s all in our heads because we have it out for Comcast.n like everyone apparently, since it was voted most hated company in the USA by Consumers Union multiple years in a row.
Philosophica
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Well, it does help to have a valid argument. Assuming those access points are the ones provided to customers which are being discussed, that RF interference would be there whether or not Comcast had their "outside" SSID on them in addition to the customer's SSID.
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"You don't get billed for usage by others accessing your router's Xfinity hotspot" that would not be an issue except in usa pretty much nowadays.
well maybe in australia?
but if there's an usage limit on your own landline use, but you could use the open wifi hotspot without the usage limit, why not use it? the whole thing of opening it up shits on their business plans that depend on the metering.
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Pretty sure you get billed by your power company, though. Just a couple of dollars a year no doubt, but multiply that times millions, and Comcast just got a ton of free power.
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The impact would be on the wifi side. To my knowledge, Comcast routers don't have a separate wifi radio for the Xfinity Wifi SSID. So you'd be sharing your wifi bandwidth with whoever else was using it. If we assume that whoever is using it is not in your house or apartment, then chances are that they have a weak wifi signal. This will degrade your wifi performance as a result, unless Comcast implements something along the lines of what Ubiquiti calls airtime fairness (which I doubt that they do).
I'm not ar
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Re: Umm.. (Score:2)
Their WiFi isn't already 'open' (Score:1)
Set up an AP with the SSID of xfinitywifi. Gather the MAC addresses of those that connected. Change your MAC to one of those.
If that hole is closed, throw up a splash screen with prompts for a username and password.
From what I can see, this is only illegal if you actually use the credentials. Definitely open to other interpretations though.
If you ever have to connect to Comcast, it should be considered a 'hostile network'. They really need to get their act together.
Ugh (Score:2)
Way to make socialism look like a bad idea you bunch of jackasses.
If this was for poor children to get to school then you could be handing out access passes to schools with reasonable limits to make sure you don't degrade the service down to unusable levels.
No, let's just pretend teh tubes can take endless streaming upload with no degradation and look like heroes of the downtrodden. RAH RAH RAH!
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"a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole."
No... I would say socialism is busy making socialism look bad. But this is what socialism is for. Taking away property rights from people and giving them to politicians and businesses under the guise of... well you said it... being heroes for the downtrodden. RAH RAH RAH.
This is what socialism is... Politicians telling b
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That's unrestrained socialism, which I would agree is bad, but only as bad as unrestrained capitalism.
The very idea that I'm on Comcast's side in an argument makes me throw up in my mouth a bit.
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All extremes are bad. That is why my philosophy is take all the best elements of everything and combine them. But Socialism is a problem all unto itself. Socialism starts off with the idea that government now owns you and all your property. Sure we tend to only stick to socialism lite... where government steals money from others to give to the voters that voted for them to steal it... but the states that survive with socialism are all underpinned by capitalist economies.
But being on Comcasts side is ir
Re: Ugh (Score:2)
You don't understand words. Contradicting yourself in the second sentence. Hilarious, Mr Astray.
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Not sure where y'all are getting socialism from.
Comcast provides a router, which unless disabled creates a new hotspot that any of their paying customers can access in addition to your own home wireless network.
Senate has said "gee Comcast, you really have the density in your coverage to give good access to the kids who are supposed to be using the internet for school some level of access if they have none or sub-par".
Comcast says "but if we just give out access a student doing his/her homework could provid
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Not sure where y'all are getting socialism from.
Comcast provides a router, which unless disabled creates a new hotspot that any of their paying customers can access in addition to your own home wireless network.
Senate has said "gee Comcast, you really have the density in your coverage to give good access to the kids who are supposed to be using the internet for school some level of access if they have none or sub-par".
This.. right here... is socialism.
Senate says "show us the things that a kid who is getting free access can do that would disrupt your customers' experiences that a paying user doing the same thing wouldn't?"
This is too; I have teach a few senators how network contention works for free because....?
(FWIW my two local colleges have increased out door wireless coverage and encouraged folks to come and sit in their car and use portable devices while connected, and the local school board is sending around buses with i'm guessing several cell-based hotspots and covering areas for 4-5 hours per day in large parking areas to do the same for k-12 students who have no access or no high speed access - good part of my county is somewhat rural)
Excellent; colleges tend to have fat commercial links that they couldn't possibly fill with the WiFi bandwidth available from the carpark. Doesn't really apply to domestic broadband though...
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If Comcast doesn't get to decide what happens with it's infrastructure, then how do they own them? This is only at the stage of bluster and point scoring, but if the government actually "did something" then how would that not be taking ownership? And who are the government if not the representatives of the people (workers)?
You can take a purist view if you like, but please go ahead and show me how anywhere is a pure capitalist society. Just about all of the west are social democracies to some extent, albeit
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now you just lost your entire argument.
Because government is not perfect in its execution and idea for someone it is okay for government to break its own constitutional laws? What am I supposed to read here?
We are not expected to be a pure capitalist society, forming a government means that there is a limit on capitalism by its very nature. Take for example property. If you can lose you property if you do not pay taxes then government owns property and not the individual. You are just renting it from th
Re: Ugh (Score:2)
Having a bad day? Do take your meds.
Re:Ugh (Score:4, Insightful)
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Cool cool, you've registered as never to be granted a donor organ, right? Or when you say "believe" you're a bit loose with terminology?
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Many people, myself included, believe socialism
Or when you say "believe" you're a bit loose with terminology?
Man, socialism is hot now. Everyone is doing socialism. But GP was doing socialism before it was cool to do socialism.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
A lot of people believe that. A lot of them have no idea what socialism even means, or are unable to conceive of it as anything but an all-or-nothing demolishing of private property. To many people, socialism just means 'Anything the government does that I don't like.'
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There's a converse though. "Anything the government does that I do like" is not socialism.
Government taking tax money to fund public broadcasting services? SOCIALISM!
Government taking tax money to fund road maintenance? Not socialism. Even though the government actually owns the roads, a means of production.
Government run education system? Socialism.
Government run postal service? Not socialism.
This even applies to non-economic things. It's common to see people decrying non-discrimination laws as socialist.
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Many socialist countries suggest otherwise. Nordic countries, for example, have some of the highest quality of life in the world. Way higher than the UK or US, strongly capitalist nations.
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Nordic countries have strongly rebuffed the claim they are socialist countries. https://www.acton.org/publicat... [acton.org]
The Nordic countries HAD the highest quality of life through very conservative social policies. They started expanding these under more socialist government programs and are now rolling them back again because it bottomed their economy out very quickly.
Those strongly capitalist nations you point out have existed way longer and way stronger than any other nation. The UK is just a speck on the map,
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Your article references a report by a right wing think tank called CEPOS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
So when you say "Nordic countries" you mean one partisan free-market conservative outfit.
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Scandinavian countries are highly capitalist, and incredibly high on the Economic Freedom Index [wikipedia.org]. Entrepreneurship and free marke
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How about you stop lying for a change? Your own link even exposes your untruth. To quote your article, he said:
"Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy"
He was explaining Denmark to an American audience where socialism = communism and a planned economy.
Denmark is a social democracy. It has capitalism and the economy is not planned, but the principals of socialism such as strong worker and consumer rights, a strong state with big public services and regulation that address
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I have karma to burn
Great, if in the US and you promise not to collect Unemployment, Social Security and do not sign up to Medicare/Medicade then I will respect your comment
And yes I know you are paying into some of these items, but if your belief is strong it should not matter
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What do any of those have to do with socialism? Socialism is government control of the means of production. You know where socialism exists? Venezuela.
https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [slashdot.org]">Tourists flock not to the beaches, but the slums to see '21st-century socialism'. From a trickle a few years ago there are now thousands, travelling individually and on package tours, exploring a leftwing mecca which promises to build social justice in the form of "21st century socialism".
Jeremy Corbyn said: "Chav [youtube.com]
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Many people, myself included, believe socialism is a bad idea.
Requiring Comcast to open up some WIFI hotspots isn't socialism. It's a potential government regulation you disagree with. Socialism would be something like requiring Comcast and its investors give a labour union like the IBEW 50% of its board seats -- i.e. the workers participating in the control of the means of production. (Yes I know Comcast isn't unionized, it's just an example).
Tragedy of the commons (Score:2)
Some people have Xfinity WiFi just because their kids want it. If the neighbor's router was open to them, the parents would cancel the account causing Xfinity to lose too much of its subscriber base... and down goes the Internet in that town.
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It goes both ways (Score:2)
The deal is you share your idle bandwidth, and you get to access others while roaming. So when you visit a shop, wait to pick up your kid, etc, you get free WiFi. The downside, your electricity, and router works for others.
It is not designed to support 24/7 service at full level. By definition, it is leftover capacity. If the kids want real service, we should build a program to pay for it. (Give them a voucher, or have cities buy at gross and handle allocation).
But let's not try to do "something" which will
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This is great! (Score:2)
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Second, even if you use their router you don't have to broadcast an xfinity hotspot for others to use. Enabling the xfinity hotspot provides you free access to other xfinity hotspots, but it is not required.
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So you agree you have to pay to have your rented modem/router double rented with no compensation.
Your original wording implied you must pay the rental fees, and didn't have an option for not paying rental feels. I can see how you wrote it to mean what you're saying, but that isn't how it looked. The joys of text and an imprecise language. I agree that if you WANT, not needed or required, to provide xfinity hotspots you have to rent their equipment. I also don't know what you mean by double rented. You rent the equipment or your don't, regardless of whether you activate hotspots or not. Best I can inter
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I invite you to read the stories of average people who tried to disable it. I think you may be exaggerating the ease of said action. The majority of consumers have no idea that it’s running.
That’s why opt-out is not considered willful consent in most countries.
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The majority of consumers have no idea that it’s running.
While I don't doubt this, it's still up to the customer to know what they signed up for.
I invite you to read the stories of average people who tried to disable it.
As the AC mentioned, disabling is easy. They may have trouble with it coming back. Not everyone does. But, if they're turning it off they should be aware of its existence. If it's not working as intended, they should be taking it up with Comcast. It doesn't excuse the problem, but it isn't some wide spread issue affecting everyone that turns it off.
MBA's and Lawyers for the win! (Score:2)
One learns early in MBA school that to solve a problem, you have to have a problem. Us techies know that the bandwidth problem today is mostly made up. The MBA says, without the bandwidth problem, how could the cable companies solve the problem with tiered service? The lawyers note that "If you don't have an issue, we can't back you up in court."
This pandemic has laid so much of the corporate fakery bare. There is no reason we can't provide service to children trying to zoom chat with their teachers
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Congressional IQ National Average (Score:3)
" Comcast should open these hotspots to children without Internet access during the pandemic "
Uh-huh.
So Senators, do explain how any ISP would be able to limit a wide open access point to " only children without Internet access "
instead of everyone and their brother who happens to be in range and wants some free Internet. Ask any Security Consultant about the
potential pitfalls of open access points and watch their reaction.
While we're thinking of the children, I can imagine folks who come across a wide open Access Point would love the ability to download
all sorts of things they normally would refrain from since the access point wouldn't require any sort of credentials or login that was tied
to a specific individual.
Unless you have a plan to identify " Children without Internet Access " of course and issue them a unique login so that only they can utilize
this service.
Perhaps if you think having Internet Service is so important, why haven't you taken the Telcos / ISPs to issue about:
1) Cherry-picking where they deploy broadband
2) Our abysmal network coverage and laughable pricing compared to the rest of the developed World
3) What the fuck happened to those billions of dollars we taxpayers gave them to build said networks
You want to know why these children don't have Internet Access ?
Since you don't seem to be capable of understanding the obvious:
BECAUSE IT'S TOO FUCKING EXPENSIVE and UNAVAILABLE AT ALL IN MANY AREAS
I swear we really need to implement some sort of aptitude test for folks in Elected Positions. Especially the ones who create the laws
that govern so many aspects of modern society.
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"I swear we really need to implement some sort of aptitude test for folks in Elected Positions."
no no no no no please God no!
Not another one... someone who thinks the stupid show that these senators put on is accurate. No, they are quite smart enough to know what they are doing. Sure they have a lot of ignorance but they stay in power for a reason... by getting you to accept that they are just stupid instead of malicious!
When it comes to politics you do not avoid attributing to malice what is easily expla
Re: Congressional IQ National Average (Score:2)
Still struggling with your paranoid fantasies I see, Mr Astray.
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Still struggling with your paranoid fantasies I see, Mr Astray.
Either you’re a liar that doesn’t really think he’s paranoid at all, or you’re a dick that publicly taunts the mentally ill, which case it makes sense that you would be defending politicians.
What you didn’t do was rebut anything he said.
Frankly, I don’t blame you, since he’s probably correct. Psychopathy is probably a requisite to procure an endorsement from a major party in 2020. There exists far, f
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Fucking troll.
Hmm. (Score:2)
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solder a 50 ohm resistor
If the router has external antennas, you could replace them with SMA dummy loads.
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I guess I need to solder a 50 ohm resistor across the antenna leads of my Comcast router.
Figuring that more load was better, [i.ibb.co] Chuck soldered the family Buick across the router's antenna leads.
If I had free Wifi Access (Score:2)
I wouldn't be paying for a plan. Comcast know that if there's free WiFi access in a neighbourhood all of a sudden their subscriber count is going to drop by 30 - 70% making their service unprofitable, as well, their home routers weren't designed to have 200 people connect, their enterprise wifi hotspots and other items were. Their home routers were made to handle an extra one or two users, not the potentially hundreds of people moving on and off these networks.
It's a support nightmare that they just aren't
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Won't someone please think of .... (Score:2)
the childr^H^H^H^H^Hhomeless guy living in your alley.
Congestion (Score:2)
When not in home-office, I have a small apartment I commute to during the week, for work. It is pretty typical of a lower income area: lots of apartment, every one with a router. Being in an apartment building, I can see literally dozens of wifi networks - the congestion is horrible, meaning that effective wifi throughput absolutely sucks.
So: these "public" hotspots running on the same router. AFAIK they are competing for channels and bandwidth along with all of the other wifi networks. Getting rid of them
The stupid is strong with these people (Score:1)
Do they honestly not know how supply and demand works, or do they think they can bend those rules to their will?
Same question with physics. And these people think they should run our country and use their idiocy to rule us.
Free = release the hounds (Score:2)
Fucking idiot politicians. I hate comcast as much, or more than the next ./ reader, but this is fucking stupid.
Ask them if the service at their favorite coffee shop would slow down if the coffee were suddenly free to those that couldn't pay for it. That MIGHT be simple enough for them to understand.
I'm shocked! (Score:2)
"Comcast has been praised "
I never thought I'd read this combination of words in my lifetime.
Everyone's missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Comcast has said that paid access pass users would have no impact on residential users' performance, that it was a completely separate network. If that were true they couldn't now claim that opening up the residential APs would cause congestion. So which is it?