• Don't panic, but that public Wi-Fi comes from ... inside your house


    When Comcast asked Ronaldo Boschulte to swap out his malfunctioning broadband modem and Wi-Fi router with an all-new model late last year, he didn't know the Internet device was a high-tech Trojan horse of sorts.

    Comcast fessed up a bit later in an email to the Maple Grove man.

    The new Xfinity-branded modem and Wi-Fi router also works as a public Wi-Fi hotspot.

    This means any Comcast subscribers within range can gain access to the Internet, via the router, simply by tapping in their Xfinity credentials.

    “I didn't know it had a hotspot” feature, the accountant said. “That was pretty much a surprise.”

    Boschulte has plenty of company in this regard — and not all are thrilled about it. Some Xfinity subscribers, when made aware of this public-hotspot feature embedded in their home routers, have reacted with a mixture of apprehension and suspicion. Others say they like it.

    Comcast residential customers by the hundreds of thousands across the country now have the new Xfinity routers with this public-hotspot feature, which makes their homes rough equivalents of coffee shops and other public venues that have long offered free Wi-Fi.

    Modems that Comcast sets up for its small-business clientele also are capable of broadcasting two separate Wi-Fi signals — one for private use by the company staffers and visitors and another for public use by any Xfinity subscriber who happens to be nearby.

    Nearly 200 Twin Cities businesses with such public Xfinity Wi-Fi are listed in a “hotspot finder” directory at hotspots.wifi.comcast.com. Comcast, based in Philadelphia, is the No. 1 cable and Internet service provider in the Twin Cities.

    Xfinity neighborhood and small-business hotspots, when lumped together, are approaching the 1 million mark, Comcast executives said during an earnings call last week. That is up from about half a million over the past year.

    And the Internet and cable-television behemoth makes no secret of its plan to raise that figure as it aspires to be a major U.S. Wi-Fi provider — with the assistance of customers and their residential and business facilities.

    Such customers aren't required to broadcast such public Wi-Fi signals, the company stresses, and they can easily turn it off.

    But Comcast hopes they won't.

    STITCHED TOGETHER

    Comcast's grand plan to stitch together vast urban webs of overlapping and interlocking Wi-Fi networks is a major branding exercise, for one thing. Every such public hotspot has the same moniker — “xfinitywifi” — that is readily detectable by any Internet-capable laptop computer or mobile device via their Wi-Fi control panels. Xfinity also makes available apps for this purpose.

    Comcast users log on to any such network with their Xfinity usernames and passwords.

    Comcast hopes this might spur those who aren't Xfinity subscribers to consider signing up. To seal the deal, it offers a couple of complimentary Wi-Fi sessions, and then gives them the option of buying day passes to continue testing the service.

    In addition, Comcast is positioning its rapidly expanding Wi-Fi footprint as a kind of public utility for its customers.

    When they're away from their own Wi-Fi networks, they have any number of others available as they move about their urban areas. If one Comcast subscriber is visiting the residence of another Xfinity user, he or she can simply log on to the home's public wireless signal and not trouble the homeowner with any requests for private Wi-Fi access. This is useful because it does not incur cellular-data charges.

    Comcast's broad scatterings of neighborhood and small-business Wi-Fi networks can function as a single network — when someone logs on to one such network, they're automatically logged on to all of them, wherever they go.

    TRUST CONCERNS

    For all its potential practicality, the public-hotspot feature built into residential Xfinity routers isn't being met with universal acclaim.

    Some people have privacy and security concerns, even though Comcast insists the public and private Wi-Fi networks are entirely separate and shielded from each other. Others worry that the public network will affect the private network's performance. Comcast says this isn't so.

    No amount of reassurance has stopped some from turning the public-hotspot feature off. That is what Anthony Domanico, a St. Paul-based technology journalist, did, partly because of performance concerns.

    Ditto for Ehren Stemme, an information-technology worker who lives in St. Paul. He said he has data-privacy concerns, partly because his spouse works in the health industry and needs to be extra careful about data security.

    Stemme also laments having little control over the public-hotspot feature, other than being able to turn it on and off.

    And Stemme has trust issues. Of Comcast, he said he doesn't “trust their (customer-service) team to provide accurate info.”

    But Boschulte, the Maple Grove accountant, came to understand and appreciate the public Wi-Fi feature after getting over his initial surprise.

    “I am fine with it,” Boschulte said. “I think it is a great idea how to expand their service. I think it is a great way to make the Internet and Wi-Fi available to a large audience.”

    PUBLIC VENUES

    Xfinity public hotspots could someday proliferate to the point where tablet-toting customers could forgo pricey cellular-data plans and rely solely on Wi-Fi, Boschulte believes.

    “You get access to the world without paying the extra bills for mobile and data plans,” he noted.

    In addition to neighborhood and small-business Wi-Fi, there is a third prong to Comcast's public wireless strategy — extra-powerful Wi-Fi transmitters set up in major public venues, like transit stations, shopping malls and sports stadiums.

    For instance, Comcast has been anointed the official Wi-Fi provider for the San Francisco 49ers and that team's new Levi's Stadium, now under construction in Santa Clara, Calif. The partnership was announced this month.

    No Twin Cities public venues are blasting out this extra-powerful wireless access, which is able to accommodate many more simultaneous connections than typical Wi-Fi networks. But such public wireless networks are likely to start appearing in the metro area by later this year, the company has said.

    Comcast also has seized on the coming Winter Olympics to promote its Wi-Fi capabilities. For the duration of the event, it said, its nonresidential hotspots will be available to everyone, not just its subscribers. Comcast owns NBC, which will be televising the games.

    This, it hopes, will earn it the loyalty of legions after the Winter Olympics have faded into history.

    COMPETITION

    Comcast isn't the only company promoting the concept of Wi-Fi sharing, though it is perhaps the most ambitious and successful in the United States to date.

    A variety of other technology companies are promoting similar wireless-sharing, via public Wi-Fi hotspots and other approaches, but are hampered somewhat at the moment because of smaller U.S. footprints.

    Spain-based Fon (fon.com) is one such company. Hugely popular in European cities, such as Madrid and Paris, it distributes compact residential Wi-Fi routers that serve as public wireless hotspots, much as the Comcast variants do.

    Fon's newest router, or “Fonera,” is available for $49 on the Fon home page or on Amazon.com.

    Fon has tried to cultivate a U.S. following with limited success. It is making another run by partnering with major U.S. wireless carrier AT&T and its tens of thousands of hotspots in this country.

    Source: http://www.dailydemocrat.com/busines...c-wi-fi-comes?
    Comments 9 Comments
    1. megabyteme's Avatar
      megabyteme -
      I can see this as being a plus for customers. I would really like to know what the true security experts think about the safety of having this switched on...
    1. TheFoX's Avatar
      TheFoX -
      My BT router has this feature, which cannot be turned off. Mind you, since I am in the middle of nowhere, no one can use it except myself, since if anyone is close enough to be able to use it, they would be trespassing.

      On a plus side, I could download a film using the hotspot instead of my main line, then claim someone else had downloaded the film should someone point the finger at me.

      Mind you, they should ask your permission before giving away your bandwidth which you are paying for.
    1. Rart's Avatar
      Rart -
      MBM this can certainly be a useful feature if done right.

      The problem is that it's often done without customers being aware of it (just because it's possibly inside some footnote on a massive contract doesn't make it any less slimy), and it saps their bandwidth and electricity for a service you really didn't necessarily want.

      In addition, all someone has to do is set up a router called "xfinitywifi" to get unwitting people to enter their comcast password (and potentially other accounts since people use the same passwords) and there you go, easy identity theft.

      There's a lot of problems with imo. I think it should certainly be opt in. Perhaps with some sort of a benefit if you do to motivate you to opt in.
    1. nwik's Avatar
      nwik -
      In Europe this already exists for some years.
      I'm from portugal and one of the major ISPs actually publicizes this as a major plus.
      You can access internet in any hotspot around the world using your credentials.
      You can see that it's also coming to EUA here:
      http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-...fonera-launch/
    1. megabyteme's Avatar
      megabyteme -
      Quote Originally Posted by Rart View Post
      In addition, all someone has to do is set up a router called "xfinitywifi" to get unwitting people to enter their comcast password (and potentially other accounts since people use the same passwords) and there you go, easy identity theft.
      Ouch. How can a user on-the-go confirm an authentic access point?
    1. duke0102's Avatar
      duke0102 -
      Quote Originally Posted by TheFoX View Post
      My BT router has this feature, which cannot be turned off.
      If you phone the BTOpenzone helpdesk they should be able to turn the feature off for you, it used to be a website you apply to to get it turned off.
      Very annoying having to 'apply' to turn something off that benefits only BT and not myself but never mind hey.
    1. killah1's Avatar
      killah1 -
      Is anyone sure if it counts against your bandwidth or if is throttled so as to not affect your own usage on the side you pay for?
    1. trogdor's Avatar
      trogdor -
      And they keep on growing. Free wifi everywhere and hackers delight.
    1. j3mm4n3's Avatar
      j3mm4n3 -
      Quote Originally Posted by megabyteme View Post
      Quote Originally Posted by Rart View Post
      In addition, all someone has to do is set up a router called "xfinitywifi" to get unwitting people to enter their comcast password (and potentially other accounts since people use the same passwords) and there you go, easy identity theft.
      Ouch. How can a user on-the-go confirm an authentic access point?
      was thinking the same thing