Posted on 12/10/2014 6:54:05 PM PST by george76
Comcast's attempt to expand WiFi hotspots around the country has been met with a class action lawsuit in San Francisco by customers who claim the cable giant is trying to use their wireless routers to let others access the Internet.
According to the Courthouse News Service, the lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court by lead plaintiff Toyer Grear and it charges that Comcast gave unsuspecting customers across the country routers that would broadcast secondary signals allowing others to connect with the Internet without the customer's approval.
...
The suit claims Comcast hoped to piggyback off its customers so it could build its public hotspots and pass along "the costs of its national Wi-Fi network onto its customers."
The lawsuit also claims the Comcast public Wi-Fi effort has hurt its paying customers with slower service – because of the additional users on their private signals – while increasing electricity costs by 30 to 40 percent.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
I’d like to see how they figured that someone else hooking up to a router would increase the electrical use by 40%.
Other than that, I wonder if these people actually own the routers, or if these are leased from Comcast.
I’m with the other crappy service Verizon, so this doesn’t impact me.
I have no complaints about Comcast because the service which they have provided to me is excellent.
However, that is why I have never and still do not trust WiFi. This house is hard-wired, the WiFi in the router is disabled and the system is going to remain like that. There is no external entity that is using my internet access.
These are leased modem/router combos from Comcast. The public wifi isn’t running of your actual connection, but a secondary lan running on the same device. It’s essentially creating a guest network that’s segmented away from your own.
The suit won’t go anywhere because Comcast isn’t doing anything wrong or against their EULA.
I have mixed feelings about Comcast. We live in an outlying area and it was almost unbelievable to me when AT&T originally laid cable to us. I had called just a month or two before the crews showed up with backhoes etc. They said that it would never be worthwhile for them to provide services in our area. We had been using DirecTV for years, but their internet service used the telephone line for uploading and we live in the middle of a bunch of tall trees which required trimming every year. Comcast took over from AT&T within a couple years
The services that Comcast provides to us are nothing short of miraculous. We actually do have a couple alternatives. We have the option of using DSL through Century Link. Even though they have done a lot of work on their system... in our area Comcast’s internet is still over twice as fast. these days. If we were to put up a directional outside antenna and hook it to a repeater in our house we could actually get a Sprint 4G LTE signal in our house which would not be as fast as DSL but still reasonable.
In the past I have had to re-negotiate with Comcast every six months, but last year and this year they have given me deals that are good for a year with no contracts.
The trick is being very friendly and knowing what alternatives are available in your area. Then you call Comcast customer service and tell them you are going to cancel. Then you tell them which alternative you are going to go with. I usually tell them that I am going to switch to Century Link and DirecTV and let them know which advertised deal I am going with. We then have a short discussion about why Comcast is better, but I tell them we don’t need the extra speed and tell them that we were happy with DirecTV when we had it before. Then the “retention” person offers me a deal that matches approximately what I told them I am going with.
The process takes around half an hour. If I get someone who I won’t work with me on the phone... I tell them I will think about it some more. Then I call back and talk to someone else and in the past I have always got a deal that is as good or better than whatever they are currently offering “new” customers.
I’ve been getting 90Mbps lately as opposed to 20 only a year ago.
Comcast be very good to me....
That’s my understanding too. As is usually the case, technical illiteracy gives support for nutjobs who will abuse the legal system just to be told to read the TOCs and contracts they agreed to.
My sister has comcast and she emailed today to report that her Samsung Galaxy S4 and her other phone no longer can pickup the wifi from the Medialink router she has. She can get online with the wired connection. She has already reset the router but has the same issue.
The phones see all the other wifi signals in the area. May be it is the router, maybe comcast. She has an old linksys that has wifi> I emailed her to try that. I also told her how to contact comcast and have them turn off their wifi.
When we had a leased Arris modem/router from Comcast it was putting out the separate Xfinity signal. The 40% increase in power usage might be realistic in some circumstances. I would guess that the unit probably averages 6 watts of load just sitting and 10 watts when it is being used. This means that if it were under additional load for 24 hours and you are paying 10 cents a kilowatt hour that it would cost you approximately a penny extra per day.
The game here as in most “class action lawsuits” is that this penny a day equals $3.65 a year... you multiply that by the approximately 15 million people leasing modems from Comcast in the US for the last two years and you have approximately 110 million dollars. If the lawyers can reach a settlement with Comcast they would hope to keep a substantial portion of this amount for themselves. The rest of us would get a 50 cent check from Comcast if we are willing to fill out 10 pages of forms that prove we are eligible to join the class.
Class action lawsuits have been a scam for decades and are in need of further reform. But I wouldn’t hold my breath since most politicians are lawyers. And all of them would like to be able to cash in on something like this.
ping
Exactly
Thank you for posting this. Within the last week I had a modem/router combo installed and noticed that I had an extra signal. I got in touch with Comcast and opted out of that capability.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.