Comcast expanding the 'Neighborhood Wi-Fi Hotspot Initiative'
Posted by: Jon on 06/10/2013 08:47 AM
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If you are a customer of Comcast or Xfinity you could unwittingly (you must opt-out of the service) be the WiFi hotspot of your neighborhood under the new home-based, neighborhood hot-spot initiative - whether you want to or not. In a nutshell, if you have the newest version of Comcast's WiFi "Gateway' you will be broadcasting 2 signals; your private one, and the one that any other Comcast subscriber can use.
This signal is completely different from the signal that subscribers have in their home. This means that if customers subscribe to a 50Mbps broadband service, they will have full access to that speed and capacity, without any interference or degradation in service from the public Wi-Fi portion. “Our broadband customers will continue to get the service that they are paying for,” Tom Nagel, senior vice president of business development, said in an interview. “That was extremely important to us in designing this product.”
Uproxx thinks the idea is actually a pretty good one, in its own way. If you’re a Comcast subscriber, you can just ping the area and use public Internet wherever you are, as part of the Comcast neighborhood node program.
PC Mag notes that it is available to subscribers at no additional cost, the new hotspots will give friends, relatives, and others in the area easy access to Wi-Fi. Visiting Xfinity Internet subscribers will be able to sign in and connect to the network using their own username and password. Those who are not a Comcast subscriber will be able to access the network as a guest.
The cable and internet company, which has nearly 20 million broadband customers, started a trial of the new neighborhood hotspot initiative last year in parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Northern Virginia, and the Greater Washington, D.C. metro area. At this point, more than 100,000 customers already have access to these Wi-Fi hotspots being offered by other Xfinity Internet subscribers.
This signal is completely different from the signal that subscribers have in their home. This means that if customers subscribe to a 50Mbps broadband service, they will have full access to that speed and capacity, without any interference or degradation in service from the public Wi-Fi portion. “Our broadband customers will continue to get the service that they are paying for,” Tom Nagel, senior vice president of business development, said in an interview. “That was extremely important to us in designing this product.”
Uproxx thinks the idea is actually a pretty good one, in its own way. If you’re a Comcast subscriber, you can just ping the area and use public Internet wherever you are, as part of the Comcast neighborhood node program.
PC Mag notes that it is available to subscribers at no additional cost, the new hotspots will give friends, relatives, and others in the area easy access to Wi-Fi. Visiting Xfinity Internet subscribers will be able to sign in and connect to the network using their own username and password. Those who are not a Comcast subscriber will be able to access the network as a guest.
The cable and internet company, which has nearly 20 million broadband customers, started a trial of the new neighborhood hotspot initiative last year in parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Northern Virginia, and the Greater Washington, D.C. metro area. At this point, more than 100,000 customers already have access to these Wi-Fi hotspots being offered by other Xfinity Internet subscribers.
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