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

I had comcast (doesn't deserve to be properly capitalized) in my previous apartment. I had my own modem and my own router. When I cancelled service because I was moving, the phone representative told me that the earliest they could shut off my service was ~2-3 weeks away. My bill would continue till they shut it off. I laughed and told her that I want my service shut off today and that my bill would only be up until the previous hour. She said okay. Later on, comcast tried to charge me for a modem I never rented. Filed in small claims. Default judgement in my favor. They tried to get $200 from me. Instead, I got $5000 from them. Thank you comcast. And no, you can't use my power, but you can rent it for $19.99 per month. If you fail to return the kW's used, then you will be charged $199.99 per unreturned kW. Go to hell comcast.
 
When connecting to "xfinitywifi" from my car outsided my house I can download movies and say it was some weirdo parked outside my strreet?

IF: Your actions do not reflect on the subscriber whose gateway you are connecting to.
There is no more a privacy concern than enabling your own separate, isolated wifi guest network on a separate subnet.
 
jpm100 said:
3rd party Voip. Vonage being the most commonly known but there are others.
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Don't know about regular vonage, but they bought out or current provider vocalocity and it's now vonage business. Since the buyout, our service has gone to absolute shit. Crappy call quality, frequent dropped calls, random 1 way audio etc. This is over enterprise hardware and dedicated 20Mb fiber too. Oh and their tech/customer support is up there with the worst (comcast/TW might even have better CS than them....). If their residential service is anything like their 'business' service avoid it like the plague. We said F it and are currently switching to Jive, which has fantastic support and no quality issues so far.
 
Biznatch said:
Don't know about regular vonage, but they bought out or current provider vocalocity and it's now vonage business. Since the buyout, our service has gone to absolute shit. Crappy call quality, frequent dropped calls, random 1 way audio etc. This is over enterprise hardware and dedicated 20Mb fiber too. Oh and their tech/customer support is up there with the worst (comcast/TW might even have better CS than them....). If their residential service is anything like their 'business' service avoid it like the plague. We said F it and are currently switching to Jive, which has fantastic support and no quality issues so far.
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Interesting. I've used Vonage for years (~2010-2012 and again 2014- present), and have never had any line quality issues. Can't speak to their customer service, as I have never needed to call them.

Maybe they just messed up the integration of vocalocity's services into their own.
 
I used to rent just to not deal with excuses when things break.. (that is until I noticed the cost of rental was upped in December to $10 with no notice.

I was dreading swapping out the ubee rental modem for the motorola 6121.. simply because of my past experience trying to activate with Comcast. It was surprisingly easy. Plugged in modem, hooked up pc direct, got the walled garden and activated in a few minutes. I even got the same IP once I plugged my pfsense router in.

I guess it's not suprising that my smoothest experience with Comcast was when I spoke to no one.

as far as phone lines... I picked up an obihai obi200 and linked it to my google voice #.
 
I hate to defend comcast but

1. You can opt out
2. There's a firewall between the two data streams so your privacy is protected

That said this statement may be true:
Although Comcast has said it has enough bandwidth to handle the extra traffic, the suit claims Grear and Harris have suffered from “decreased, inadequate speeds on their home Wi-Fi network.”
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Because they are using more channels, the customer may be pushed on a channel that is already crowded or has a poor signal strength, resulting in poorer signal throughput. To be honest though, you are lucky to get one 2.4GHz channel that isn't being fud'ed up by a neighbor downloading Pr0n
 
sliverjazz said:
When connecting to "xfinitywifi" from my car outsided my house I can download movies and say it was some weirdo parked outside my strreet?

IF: Your actions do not reflect on the subscriber whose gateway you are connecting to.
There is no more a privacy concern than enabling your own separate, isolated wifi guest network on a separate subnet.
Click to expand...

yeah still a good way to get the FBI to but down your door at 3 AM for doing something illegal.
 
dandragonrage said:
Yep. This does make it less bad and is the main reason why I think the lawsuit will fail. But I think they SHOULD win because Comcast should not be able to use ANY - and I mean literally ANY customer resources for profit. It is completely unacceptable for them to use a single milliwatt of my power for their own gain. It is exploitation. They can do this only because they have a government-protected monopoly on the market.
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You do realize, they collect usage statistics off people like you and sell that data?
 
steakman1971 said:
Wonder what the legal ramifications of this are? Examples: pirating software, kiddie porn, fraudulent use of the internet, etc.

Screw this crap. If they gave me an option to reduce my bill or guarantee it won't affect my available bandwidth, perhaps I'd give it a consideration (not thinking about the legal questions).
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You have to log in before you get access to the wifi hotspot using your xfinity account. So you aren't anonymous using the hotspot.
 
i actually like this feature. its nice being away, be it vacation or work, and being able to find a network that you know is safe, and not have the share from my phone is a big plus. as long as its in the terms of service, and users can opt out, tell me what the problem is.
 
sliverjazz said:
When connecting to "xfinitywifi" from my car outsided my house I can download movies and say it was some weirdo parked outside my strreet?

IF: Your actions do not reflect on the subscriber whose gateway you are connecting to.
There is no more a privacy concern than enabling your own separate, isolated wifi guest network on a separate subnet.
Click to expand...

You need to use your Comcast login and password for xfinitywifi. I assume it would be logged on their end on who did what.
 
mnewxcv said:
i actually like this feature. its nice being away, be it vacation or work, and being able to find a network that you know is safe, and not have the share from my phone is a big plus. as long as its in the terms of service, and users can opt out, tell me what the problem is.
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I got rid of Comcast long ago but I agree it is nice to have that feature. I don't think they should be charging customers each month for equipment though.
 
Not sure if it's all routers, but the one they sent me (I just got it very recently) allows me to disable wifi completely in the options screen. 10.0.0.1 - admin/password is the default login.
I disabled that function just because I already have a router setup the way I like it. It isn't easy (you have to go in and turn off both the 2.4 and 5 ghz) but those lights are dark and I don't see any "xfinitywifi" hotspots around.
 
Is it shared bandwidth or segmented? Does one get to use their neighbors bandwidth when having a netflix binge, redownloading technet iso's, or steam games?
 
mnewxcv said:
i actually like this feature. its nice being away, be it vacation or work, and being able to find a network that you know is safe, and not have the share from my phone is a big plus. as long as its in the terms of service, and users can opt out, tell me what the problem is.
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It IS in the terms of service, and the modem firmware DOES allow one to disable it, but only temporarily. It reportedly comes back on on its own after a while.

What they SHOULD have done was was allowed complete flexibility.

Rather than default to on, the first time the new modem is used, asked users if they want to participate. Apply a carrot and stick to it. Any user who opts in gets free access to the shared Wifi network when they are out and about. Any user who opts out, can't use the distributed wifi network.

If they had gone this route, I don't think people would have complained.

The fact that the service defaults to on, and once disabled sneakily turns itself back on without any indication or warning is IMHO, the problem.
 
magnetik said:
Is it shared bandwidth or segmented? Does one get to use their neighbors bandwidth when having a netflix binge, redownloading technet iso's, or steam games?
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It's on a separate vlan. But you have to log in with your cable username and password, so it still can be tied back to you. It's currently is unknown if it counts against your cap.
 
Not a Comcast subscriber, but holy fuck, how is this a bad thing? Doesn't affect the user's bandwidth, doesn't affect the user's privacy or anything, and provides a free network of hotspots for subscribers. The added power argument? Give me a break. Your modem is already on. I'd love to see someone quantify the extra power used - if any, I would bet it would be completely meaningless.

Shit, I wish Fios had this.
 
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