Quote:It's potentially creepy and annoying. But the upside is Internet everywhere.

It's been one year since Comcast (CMCSA) started its monster project to blanket residential and commercial areas with continuous Wi-Fi coverage. Imagine waves of wireless Internet emitting from every home, business and public waiting area.

Comcast has been swapping out customers' old routers with new ones capable of doubling as public hotspots. So far, the company has turned 3 million home devices into public ones. By year's end it plans to activate that feature on the other 5 million already installed.

Anyone with an Xfinity account can register their devices (laptop, tablet, phone) and the public network will always keep them registered -- at a friend's home, coffee shop or bus stop. No more asking for your cousin's Wi-Fi network password.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/16/technolo...i-hotspot/

Updated map of the Comcast Xfinity wifi map............

http://hotspots.wifi.comcast.com/

Let's all cut the cord. Instead of meeting on this message board, let's just all meet in real life and talk college sports.

(10-17-2014 03:32 AM)_C2_ Wrote:  Let's all cut the cord. Instead of meeting on this message board, let's just all meet in real life and talk college sports.

That would be too funny! Some of the mouthier posters might actually decide it is not in their self interest to antagonize others so much. There would be no 10% or 25% warning for being a *******. I think the penalty might actually get painful for some of them. Hey! I'm all in for this idea!

(10-17-2014 01:36 AM)Kittonhead Wrote:  

Quote:It's potentially creepy and annoying. But the upside is Internet everywhere.

It's been one year since Comcast (CMCSA) started its monster project to blanket residential and commercial areas with continuous Wi-Fi coverage. Imagine waves of wireless Internet emitting from every home, business and public waiting area.

Comcast has been swapping out customers' old routers with new ones capable of doubling as public hotspots. So far, the company has turned 3 million home devices into public ones. By year's end it plans to activate that feature on the other 5 million already installed.

Anyone with an Xfinity account can register their devices (laptop, tablet, phone) and the public network will always keep them registered -- at a friend's home, coffee shop or bus stop. No more asking for your cousin's Wi-Fi network password.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/16/technolo...i-hotspot/

Updated map of the Comcast Xfinity wifi map............

http://hotspots.wifi.comcast.com/

This must be the freed up spectrum the FCC created by not allowing the TV spectrum of UHF channels 52 to 83 and VHF 2 to 6. The FCC with age of digital TV compressed the TV spectrum to open the freed up space for auction for the Broadband American project.

Except someone is paying a monthly cable/internet or internet bill to Comcast for the honor of sharing their router with someone else paying for it, not sure how the cord is getting cut, seems like just more efficient use of the cord.

(10-17-2014 08:31 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  Except someone is paying a monthly cable/internet or internet bill to Comcast for the honor of sharing their router with someone else paying for it, not sure how the cord is getting cut, seems like just more efficient use of the cord.

I noticed that too. I would be troubled if my private Wi-Fi, that I pay for, doubled as a public hotspot. Especially since that puts my computer in danger.

You can turn off the wi-fi capabilities of the Comcast Modem. That's what I did.

(10-17-2014 08:31 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  Except someone is paying a monthly cable/internet or internet bill to Comcast for the honor of sharing their router with someone else paying for it, not sure how the cord is getting cut, seems like just more efficient use of the cord.

The cord people are referring to is the cable cord. They are still paying for an internet provider and subscriptions on top of that.

People are looking at their cable/internet bill as one cost and their cellphone/tablet bill as another. If your home internet is wifi do you need to have a cellular service? Just tap into the wifi to get email on the road and eliminate the annoying cell phone call.

OR

Eliminate Cable/Internet and move to getting all of your internet from you cellphone provider. You eliminate the cable modem charges but also give up the unlimited data. By the time you add a device from your cellphone provider to handle broadband the total costs start to equal what you would pay for just having DSL at home.

When I tell these store reps that I would like to eliminate my cellphone service they are shocked as it's taboo but I have home phone service which I use when wanting to pick up a call. I text a lot but even texts can be set up for my home phone which I can log into and respond to. You aren't going to get the same kind of response time on the texts but often response times on texts aren't important.

You are going backward technologically wise

(10-17-2014 11:10 AM)adcorbett Wrote:  You are going backward technologically wise

You can set up google voice on your wifi device to handle texts. What then do you need the cellphone service for?

(10-17-2014 11:25 AM)Kittonhead Wrote:  

(10-17-2014 11:10 AM)adcorbett Wrote:  You are going backward technologically wise

You can set up google voice on your wifi device to handle texts. What then do you need the cellphone service for?

For when you leave your house?

I think people will sue by having wi-fi from their neighbors. Some people don't want to be exposed. Some people don't want to be apart of an experiment.

(10-17-2014 03:11 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  

(10-17-2014 11:25 AM)Kittonhead Wrote:  

(10-17-2014 11:10 AM)adcorbett Wrote:  You are going backward technologically wise

You can set up google voice on your wifi device to handle texts. What then do you need the cellphone service for?

For when you leave your house?

You get texts.

I get 3,000 texts a month and use 70 minutes of talking time on my cellphone.

But that is using cell phone service. I thought you said you no longer had a need for it? Sounds like you do.

For the record, I "use" no more than 100 minutes per month, because between mobile to mobile minutes, nights and weekends, and rollover, I never come close to using all of minutes. I still have my 400 minute plan from 2001, that AT&T tries to talk me into upgrading out of every couple of months.

(10-17-2014 03:50 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  But that is using cell phone service. I thought you said you no longer had a need for it? Sounds like you do.

For the record, I "use" no more than 100 minutes per month, because between mobile to mobile minutes, nights and weekends, and rollover, I never come close to using all of minutes. I still have my 400 minute plan from 2001, that AT&T tries to talk me into upgrading out of every couple of months.

No.

You don't need to have cellphone service for texts if you set up a google voice number. Those texts will come into google voice and then you can respond to them through the google voice app.

You said you use 70 mins per month. That's what I was talking about

(10-17-2014 08:50 AM)VA49er Wrote:  You can turn off the wi-fi capabilities of the Comcast Modem. That's what I did.

You can also setup password protection to secure it, and keep the wi-fi capabilities for yourself.

I get the idea that the "hot spot" part is separate from the household wifi. Like a double function I guess. Since most installers all but insist you put a password on wifi now.

No, this is not cord cutting. This is creepy privacy invasion that most customers aren't aware of. Eventually, this will result in a lawsuit for illegal activity through a guest network.

All of these cutting cord threads and you know what?

I switched to AT&T U-Verse last month and they still hadn't come to bury the line. Behind our house were it connects got run over by a mower today.

I'm blaming all these threads for cutting our cords.