As far as I can tell, this is not an April Fools joke. A company in Maryland, OceanNet, apparently offered cheap WiFi service in condos by reselling Comcast residential service at 35 different locations. Comcast is not just terminating the accounts, they are suing the company/owner. His defense seems to be that coffee shops do it all the time, ergo he's in the clear. I'm curious if this will result in an actual test of how Comcast feels about free hotspots, or if it's just bluster on the operator's part (likely).
One thing that is very different from the average coffee shop WiFi, is that it sounds as if OceanNet ordered a bunch of accounts at one address, then spliced into the Comcast lines in the phone closet of each building where they were providing service. If that's true, I doubt they have a leg to stand on in defending themselves, as it probably becomes an issue of unauthorized network access, rather than just a ToS violation. I do, though, have to give the guy credit for coming up with a rather ballsy, if stupid, way to get cheap backhaul. Articles here: http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2009/03/comcast-goes-after-illegal-resale-of-its-internet-service.ars and here: http://www.mddailyrecord.com/article.cfm?id=11123&type=UTTM -- Michael Weinberg President Personal Telco Project, Inc. A 501(c)(3) Non-Profit --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ The Personal Telco Project - http://www.personaltelco.net/ Donate to PTP: http://www.personaltelco.net/donate Archives: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.wireless.portland.general/ Etiquette: http://www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/MailingListEtiquette List information: http://lists.personaltelco.net To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
