In the coming calendar week , Comcastis rolling out a new featurethat turns residential customers ’ new Xfinity Wi - Fi routers into public hot spot . The rollout starts in Houston on Tuesday , and the company says it ’ll be in jillion of homes across the country by the end of the year . That ’s a big hotspot !
It ’s wanton to have mixed feelings about this idea . On the one hand , it ’s wildly convenient . What Comcast is essentially doing is creating the country ’s largest public Wi - Fi meshwork by but enabling people to apportion their connections . Of naturally , it ’s not entirely public . You have to be an Xfinity customer to be able to log on to the fresh super hotspot , but as long as you pay off your neb , there ’s a decent chance you ’ll never have trouble about Wi - Fi again .
Then there are the inevitable caveats . The first affair that come to nous is public presentation - colligate . Specifically , if a bunch of strangers are tapping into your home joining , wo n’t that slow down you Game of Thrones downloads ? Comcast says it wo n’t . Only five multitude will be capable to log onto a unmarried dwelling house connection at once , and the meshwork is designed to handle the load . That , of course , stay to be seen .
There ’s also the creepy scene . Comcast ’s messaging about the unexampled program is very friends - and - sept oriented . “ or else of coming over to your house and enounce , ‘ Hey , what ’s your Wi - Fi word ? ’ your friends can just connect to the Xfinity Wi - Fi hot spot , ” Amalia O’Sullivan , Comcast ’s vice president of Xfinity Internet Product , recite theHouston Chronicle . The mesh but pop up as “ xfinitywifi , ” and again , any Xfinity client can join . However , you have to have a new Xfinity router for your rest home web to work as a public hot spot .
But do you really require to partake a connection with someone you do n’t know doing whatever they do on the internet through your connexion ? What if they ’re downloading Game of Thrones illegally ? What if they ’re really into child porn ? What if they ’re hacking into the Pentagon ? The leaning goes on . ( Update below )
Comcast is automatically enrolling all Xfinity customers in the new programme . If you ’re an Xfinity customer and do n’t want your router to become a public Wi - Fi hotspot , you may opt out by calling Xfinity or going to the preference section on the history page of Comcast ’s website . And if you do n’t desire to be a part of Comcast’scontinual creep into a nationwide monopolyon internet Robert William Service , well , good luck find another option .
All that say , easier access to the internet is a effective matter . So if Comcast manage to obviate all those pitfalls , this could be a potentially great service for customer . We ’ll have to wait and see how it really works . [ Houston Chronicle ]
update 3:20 : Comcast followed flop up with an result to the enquiry about security measures that this new military service raises . “ In ordering to use the xfinitywifi SSID in a home , the soul has to authenticate their machine or log on to that hotspot so any of that data usage and activity is the responsibility of that last user , not the home proprietor ’s , ” Comcast ’s Charlie Douglas told Gizmodo . It ’s unclear if this process will also volunteer protection against datum breaches .
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