Is Your Home a Potential Internet Company Hotspot?

Last week, Comcast turned 50,000 of its customers’ homes in Houston, Texas into public hotspots and they plan on doing the same to millions more by the end of the year. According to the Houston Chronicle, Comcast says the move won’t slow down the residential customer’s connection. Comcast’s website explains that the additional “xfinitywifi” network signal is completely separate from your secure home WiFi network. Also according to the website, XFINITY WiFi Home Hotspot is a way to enjoy the freedom of WiFi throughout your community and enables you to share WiFi access with visitors without sharing your password or slowing down your network. The company reportedly alerted the 50,000 users last month and has said that less than one percent of customers opted out. Clients who own their modem are automatically opted out from the program since Comcast can’t legally interfere with customer-owned modems. Something else that relates to this new plan is the proposed merger Comcast and Time Warner Cable have in the works. Comcast would potentially gain Time Warner Cable’s customers which would provide them with more homes to turn into hotspots. Perhaps the move was inspired by talks between DISH and Artemis on partnering up to invent pCell technology that would provide internet speeds 1,000 times faster than 4G by deploying a massive number of boxes called “pWaves” to smaller areas rather than relying on sporadically placed cell towers; such as customer’s homes. Read more about pCell technology here. There is sure to be more on the future of WiFi hotspots so stay tuned for updates on Comcast hotspots and other news!