Time Warner Customers Get Free Wi-Fi Hotspots

Hotspots writes with a link to a BusinessWeek article discussing a new service that Time Warner Cable is offering to its customers. Flying in the face of most business decisions about Wi-Fi availability, Time Cable customers will soon be able to turn their connections into public wireless hotspots. This privilege comes as Time Warner inks a deal with the Spanish startup Fon, which is already operating a similar deal with ISPs in Europe. "For Time Warner Cable, which has 6.6 million broadband subscribers, the move could help protect the company from an exodus as free or cheap municipal wireless becomes more readily available. Fon was founded in Spain in 2005 on the premise that people shouldn't have to pay twice -- once at home, then again in a coffee shop -- for Internet access. At first, the company offered software that let members, called Foneros, turn Wi-Fi routers into shared access points, but it took hours to get up and running."

With their reliability, TWC hotspots are worthless

[VorlonFog]

They couldn't maintain a cable internet connection at my house much longer than 30 to 45 days before some contractor screwed up the line amplifiers in the neighborhood, or a squirrel gnawed through their cables. Then, after waiting twenty minutes on hold listening to sales pitches for their digital phone and security monitoring, I get told it will be two to three days before someone can come out to look at the problem. Good freakin' luck.

Re:With their reliability, TWC hotspots are worthl

[ticklemestalin]

Time Warner subscribes to holistic IT. Why risk invasive repairs when incense and herbs are so much safer?

Re:

[PHPfanboy]

Yeah, GP looks pretty damn incensed ...

Re:

[Dachannien]

Wireless access point. Apply directly to the forehead.

Re:With their reliability, TWC hotspots are worthl

[djdavetrouble]

yes, I have TWC in NYC and it SUX.
My verizon dsl was so much better,
but they won't wire my new apt.
something about the neighbor's
backyard and pitbulls were a few of
the obstacles they mentioned.

Re:

[bishiraver]

Funny - I have TWC in Queens (Astoria), and the service is excellent. I regularly get 1000kbytes/sec download speeds, and upload speeds of up to 64kbytes/sec. My service has never been interrupted. The contractor who installed the line was friendly, clean, efficient, and good at what he did (I've never crimped cables so neatly or quickly; I've also never mounted cables along the baseboards as neatly as he did). Sorry you're not happy with them...

Re:

[djdavetrouble]

Verizon : upload 85kb/sec / regular ass little phone cord...
Cable guy: upload 45kb/sec / stapled big thick black coax cable to brand new painted white wood, effectively ruining it, and cabled right across my removable radiator cover, rendering it unremovable.
At least this time he didn't pull out one of those 2 foot long drills and drill a hole straight through the wall like they usually do.
But Verizon actually gave up on their install at my new place.... so.
Don't get me wrong they are all evil megacorporat

Re:

[mwvdlee]

How can TW be responsible for some third party physically damaging cables (s)he had no right to touch? Is TW also responsible if the power company "browns out" so your computer won't work? What about if your dog chews through the UTP cable inside your house?

I understand their customer service could be better, but to say they are incapable of maintaining a cable connection when somebody else destroys it, is just silly.

Re:With their reliability, TWC hotspots are worthl

[Bloke down the pub]

How can TW be responsible for some third party physically damaging cables (s)he had no right to touch?

I distinctly remember telling them to either bury them under the ground or put them them up on poles and that, while it might sound like a compromise, just running them along the gutter wasn't a smart move.

Re:With their reliability, TWC hotspots are worthl

[A Cheese Danish]

I distinctly remember telling them to either bury them under the ground or put them them up on poles and that, while it might sound like a compromise, just running them along the gutter wasn't a smart move.

I work for TWC's customer support, and to be honest, hanging the wire under the overhang is sometimes the only option we have for securing the cable so it's not laying on your front lawn.

We have a large list of all the zones in our district, all with specific building codes and regulations that state what we can and cannot do with the cable. Some places actually ban us completely from burying any new wires or doing anything to repair them (as the construction/tearup of the ground would look unsightly), so the most that we're left to do is to try and neaten up the cable as best possible (though some city zones even forbid this. You don't want to be a customer living in those areas.)

Re:

[superflippy]

I work for TWC's customer support

You shouldn't have told me that - now I'm going to hassle you endlessly! ;)

Seriously though, what's up with the crappy pixellated images on the digital cable channels, and the blocking and tiling on the HD channels? We've had reps out to our house to look at it, we've tried every suggestion TWC made to fix it, and it still happens. Is it like that for everyone, or do I just live in an area with too little bandwidth?

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[Mister Whirly]

Consider yourself luck you don't have Comcast. I had TWC until last December when Comcast bought them out. 2 months later, after getting a letter stating all the service would remain the same and prices wouldn't change, they jacked the prices on everything up. Now my Bittorrent downloads top out at around 100 mb/sit with the average being around 45-50. At least with TWC's ($5 a month cheaper) service I would consistently hit the 300-400 range. Gee thanks Comcast for charging me more for less bandwidth! At t

Re:

[superflippy]

We're about to move to a place where Atlantic Broadband is the local monopoly instead of TWC. I guess I should be glad it isn't Comcast. I've heard too many horror stories about them!

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[nytes]

I distinctly remember telling them to either bury them under the ground or put them them up on poles...

I'm not certain that TW personnel are permitted to go all Vlad-the-impaler on your neighbors because of a property dispute.

Re:With their reliability, TWC hotspots are worthl

[Anonymous Coward]

Roadrunner works GREAT for me. I couldn't be happier.

Obviously, some people have better luck than others. I am a very happy RR customer and look forward to using these hotspots as they come online.

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[InsaneProcessor]

TW reliability has been incredable. I have had no outages or connection issues related to RR in years (my power is less reliable). Ther are no other options (AT&T still can't get DSL north of Austin). But with always on (VPN to my work proves that), why would I want any?

Re:

[SQLGuru]

I agree....while RoadRunner is pricier than the other options (even compared to Cox -- who owned the monopoly rights to my neighborhood up until about a year and a half ago), but neither Cox nor RR gave me connection fits. I tried DSL once and couldn't ever get it to work. Returned their hardware and cancelled service.

I look at AT&T for DSL every once in a while (and Grande for a bundle, too), but neither serve my area in north Austin with anything more than the lowest speed DSL (1.5Mbps). Since I wo

Re:

[AncientPC]

I'm a happy RR customer as well. I have a computer running torrents 24/7/365 without any complaints from TimeWarner or worrying about a bandwith cap (Azureus reports 1.25TB down/1.75TB up). You can't say that about a lot of the ISPs out there today.

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[Dr. Spork]

I have a similar experience. Time Warner has treated me very well. They keep increasing my bandwidth without increasing the price, and recently they got news servers with almost two weeks of article retention! Just to download the headers for that much data takes a long time. I'm scared of moving out of Central New York partly because I don't expect to get an equally competent ISP somewhere else. Verizon has recently installed fiber optics in my neighborhood, but I looked at their offer and scoffed: They wi

Re:

[M. Baranczak]

Where in Central NY are you? I'm in Ithaca, and I've had RR for a few years now, at the same address. The reliability is decent, and they haven't raised prices, but I haven't noticed this bandwidth increase that you speak of. Which to me is a bad sign. In this business, if you're not moving forward, you're falling behind.

Re:

[zhenya00]

I'm also in Ithaca on RR. I've had their service for ~5 years now at the same address. I can only recall one outage in the past 3 years (since replacing all lines to my house) that lasted less than an hour. During those 5 years my speeds have gone from ~1Mbps to a solid 8Mbps today, with ocassional bursts to 15+ Mbps. That's significant progress to me.

Re:

[the_bard17]

They just doubled the bandwidth here in the Capital District. And just to pour salt in the wound, my area just received a new promotion for new customer's... their cable/VoIP/RR service for $99 a month. New customers only, but we just moved into a new apartment, so we count as new customers. Not sure if it's in the whole Capital District, though... Verizon just came through and dropped the lines for FIOS, so I'm assuming these new deals by Time Warner is an attempt to staunch the flow of people switching o

Re:

[DocSavage64109]

I used to have reliability issues with my RR connection, but after replacing my cable modem with a new model, it has been flawless.

Also, some time in the last few months, they have massively upgraded their news servers here in Kansas City. Not only do they have 2 weeks of retention, but I can download from the newsgroups at around 7.5mb/s

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[llefler]

I have to replace my modem every 1-2 years. As far as KC is concerned, the service is great as long as you never have to deal with their tech support. They still do the 'tell me something so I can deny support' thing. My last dealing with them, tech support on Sunday listened until he heard that my router wasn't supplied by RR. As it turns out, all he needed to do was log into my modem and he would have seen that it was logging errors. Or listen when I told him the modem was supplying a private IP to my rou

Re:

[Unleashed2k]

Time Warner (Now Bright House Networks in Tampa, Florida Area) is awsome. I have the Digital Combo. Road Runner 15/m down, 2/m up. Digital Cable, and Digital Phone. The guy wired the house in a timely manner and he did everything right. I havn't had any problems since ive been with them. I was a regular tw customer (just regular internet) before, but just had to upgrade!

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[WorseThanNormal]

Same here. I've had RR since it was first introduced in Houston and have had only 2 instances of outage. And since I work with many small - medium businesses on the IT side, I can say Time Warner has done well in that arena as well. The only problem I ever seem to have, is finding the numbers to call for support. I don't have them memorized like I do for SBC DSL.

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[LuxMaker]

Reliability is inversely proportional to competition. As competition increases, reliability decreases. Why would this be so? It is not in the competition's vested interest for you to have a reliable connection from their competitor.

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[badfish99]

Competition drives price down, so suppliers reduce reliability (and quality and customer service etc) to compensate for the lower prices. Potential customers cannot easily measure quality, but can readily see who has the lowest price, so they usually make their decisions on price alone. This favours the suppliers with the lowest price but the worst reliability.

Econ digression (and ranting about fscktastic)

[abb3w]

Potential customers cannot easily measure quality, but can readily see who has the lowest price, so they usually make their decisions on price alone.

Naive potential customers can't. However, the general consensus in this area that the Cable is cheaper for the same speed levels, but the downtime over the last five years has averaged about ten times higher, including regular multi-day outages. This is easily discovered with even the slightest effort at research. The local university Mac support mailing li

Re:

[try_anything]

According to the book Peopleware, engineers left to themselves provide higher quality than customers are willing to pay for. When competition comes, managers crack down and force engineers to cut quality down to just above the point that drives customers away.

(Peopleware says that in software, this is ultimately more expensive than letting developers work to their on standards of quality. That doesn't apply in this situation, though.)

Re:With their reliability, TWC hotspots are worthl

[thrillseeker]

Reliability is inversely proportional to competition. As competition increases, reliability decreases.

Your astute economic analysis explains why after 70 years that Toyota, the horrendously unreliable competition to ultra-reliable GM, is now the world's top selling car manufacturer ...

oh wait ...

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[Bloke down the pub]

As competition increases, reliability decreases. Why would this be so? It is not in the competition's vested interest for you to have a reliable connection from their competitor

How is one company able to influence the reliability of another's products and infrastructure? Sabotage? [WYACA] Perhaps Mercedes have an army of highly trained gremlins dropping sugar into the fuel tank of any BMW they see.

Re:

[LuxMaker]

With the car analogy, one has to look far back to see the truth. The old model Fords were an order of magnitude more reliable than vehicles today. Granted they lacked many of the features and safety they do today. Why is this true? The first vehicles were made to last longer, vehicles today have maybe a tenth of the lifespan. Also, you can not dismiss sabotage so readily. It can and does happen.

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[Planesdragon]

The first vehicles were made to last longer, vehicles today have maybe a tenth of the lifespan

You know of a time when cars were designed to run for one million miles or fifty years, whichever came first?

The first cars, mass-produced or not, broke down ALL THE TIME. If they seemed to last longer, it's because (1) people didn't drive nearly as much as they do today, and (2) they were constantly maintaining them.

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[Dragonslicer]

The first vehicles were made to last longer, vehicles today have maybe a tenth of the lifespan

If that were true, and considering that my car is now 7 years old, my mother's car is 10 years old, and my sister-in-law's car is 14 years old, shouldn't those first vehicles still be on the road today? After all, they do have a lifespan of 100-150 years.

Re:

[Mister Whirly]

Yeah, and I still drive my '88 Camaro. If only I had been around to buy the '08 Camaro - I could still be driving it today!

Re:

[EveryNickIsTaken]

Welcome to the world of wired communications. Judging by your comment, it sounds like you've never had a dialup or DSL connection. While typical dialup problems were noise on the line, the world of DSL is (was) a fun one. I provisioned DSL circuits for a regional (Maine through virginia / East coast) ISP back in the late 90's. We would often spend months trying to get Covad/Northpoint/NAS to get Verizon to install circuits, only to learn that either the loop was too long, or that the line was poor quali

Re:

[suitepotato]

Welcome to the world of wired communications. Judging by your comment, it sounds like you've never had a dialup or DSL connection. While typical dialup problems were noise on the line, the world of DSL is (was) a fun one. I provisioned DSL circuits for a regional (Maine through virginia / East coast) ISP back in the late 90's. We would often spend months trying to get Covad/Northpoint/NAS to get Verizon to install circuits, only to learn that either the loop was too long, or that the line was poor quality a

Re:With their reliability, TWC hotspots are worthl

[Maxo-Texas]

Service is good in Houston.

I don't use warner cable (Dish) because the "digital" cable signal was digital crap. The signals were much better five years ago than today. I don't think they are watching their satellites any more. You get something that is a bad signal on a 27" TV and yet other stations are crystal clear. To me that says they are taking a bad signal, digitizing it and sending that out.

However... my cable connection is fine and runs about $54 a month.

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[LilGuy]

I worked at the TWC in Houston a few years back and they were doing this THEN. I don't understand why the sudden announcement...

Maybe it was for business class customers only.. but I don't think that was the case.

Re:With their reliability, TWC hotspots are worthl

[xemit]

Nothing like having your digital phone,internet,cable going dead all just about every month for hours on end. If you go to http://help.rr.com/ [rr.com] it's almost certain there's some kind of network problem happening at the moment or during the past couple of days. I remember when I first got Internet service from them. I felt kind of bad though, because right after the broadband was installed an entire street lost their cable connections.

Re:With their reliability, TWC hotspots are worthl

[pak9rabid]

I've had awesome luck with TW cable everywhere I've been. DSL on the other hand...never again.

Re:

[Mister Whirly]

I second that. I had Qwest DSL for about 5 years in 2 different locations. First was okay because I was literally about 500 feet from a switching station. DSL went out twice in 2 1/2 years - once due to a storm, once for unknown reasons. Moved to second location and was too far away from switching station to get anything but the bare minimum speeds. About a year and a half into service at new location, one day DSL stopped working. Called Qwest who said they had a disconnect request for my DSL. Kind of stra

Re:With their reliability, TWC hotspots are worthl

[Spoke]

You know, I've had Time Warner RoadRunner for just about 10 years now and aside from a few issues related to a flaky cable modem during the first couple years, it's really been flawless!

I've really had no issues with RoadRunner that I can remember for the last 5 years.

Of course, from what I've heard Time Warner / RoadRunner San Diego is one of the best.

Re:With their reliability, TWC hotspots are worthl

[cmarks03]

I had Adelphia in Cleveland, Ohio, and it was okay (not great, but respectable). For a while after Time Warner took over (while my cable modem still had a DNS name from adelphia.net), the internet connection was okay. The night my DNS name changed to rr.com (or whatever it was), it came to a screeching halt. I got rid of them real fast. The lady I was talking to when I called to disconnect asked if I had a technician come out to look at it, and I calmly and politely explained that until the switch from

let the phishing begin!

[gEvil (beta)]

She said ISPs should embrace Fon because the routers, which require that "aliens" enter a valid credit card number before getting online, put a sharp stop to the leeching.

Moves like this really don't seem to help the public in terms of security education, IMHO...

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[TheJasper]

Security education, maybe not. Overall security...probably. If John Q. with his unsecured wireless internet at home decides he wants to do that new-fangled Fon thingy, then he gets a whole new setup. Now not just anyone can use his connection anymore, it's secured. Seems like a big advantage, since you really can't force education on an unsuspecting public.

Re:

[LoverOfJoy]

Just enter your credit card number and expiration date and you can use my wireless...trust me, it's that new-fangled Fon thingy...it's for your security. :)

But...???

[mwvdlee]

What about yesterday's news that "Open WAP = Probable Cause?"?

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/23/14 31211 [slashdot.org]

Re:

[Not_Wiggins]

What about yesterday's news that "Open WAP = Probable Cause?"?

If you troll child porn chatrooms and have DVD's loaded with kiddie porn, then is probably isn't for you. 8)

Re:But...???

[larkost]

They are not proposing an open connection, but rather a closed one where everyone who is a Time Warner customer would have a login that would work on every participating hotspot. Logins and sessions would be tracked, so they would always know what login was associated with what IP for a given time. This takes care of the legal problems (unless people share their passwords), but does open up some privacy ones as this would allow Time Warner to have a mountain of data about when people are on the internet (not necessarily where they go, but when and where they connected).

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[Nukenbar]

does open up some privacy ones as this would allow Time Warner to have a mountain of data about when people are on the internet (not necessarily where they go, but when and where they connected).

How is this any different from the data that they could be collecting on their customers right now?

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[pipatron]

Dammit, and I was going to use this for warezing down some Time Warner movies!

Re:

[Askmum]

That does not apply in this case. The way FON is set up in Europe is that everyone who wants to use the AP has to be registered with FON and has to enter his username and password in the startpage that the browser shows when connecting to a FON router. That way it is not an open AP.

Why would a home broadband customer

[spamking]

want to turn their connection into a free wireless hot-spot?

You pay for a 1-4 MB connection and have the potential to share it with 20-30 of your closest friends or what? Wouldn't be worth it in my opinion unless you're a business or something and just want to attract customers.

Re:Why would a home broadband customer

[RealSurreal]

Two reasons. One, you get free access to all other Fon wireless APs around the world. Two, you can instead opt to receive part of the revenue your hotspot generates and forego the free access elsewhere.

That's the theory. In practice, I don't see hotspots in any locations I might want to get access from (because they're nearly all residential and I use wifi hotspots on business) and, for the same reason, I can't see a residential hotspot generating much revenue.

Re:Why would a home broadband customer

[Andy Dodd]

The article isn't too clear on this, but if you go to Fon's site at http://www.fon.com/ [fon.com], you'll see that Fon defines three user types:

Aliens - Non-FON users who pay for access at FON access points belonging to either of the following groups.
Linuses - FON users who do not receive any monetary compensation (other than a majorly discounted router), but get free access to any FON access point owned by a Linus or Bill
Bills - FON users who get 50% of the proceeds from aliens using their access point. They don't get free access to other FON APs owned by Bills or Linuses.

So if you live in the middle of nowhere, it makes lots of sense to become a Linus. Your AP will almost never be used by others (and if it is, you can restrict their bandwidth to a reasonably large degree), but you get free access to any other FON APs when you're on the road.

Re:Why would a home broadband customer

[sacrilicious]

Linuses

... should be "Lini". :)

Re:

[RealSurreal]

I think it's GNU/Lini actually.

Re:

[RobertLTux]

well if you are a Linus then you are just into sharing if you are a Bill then you get a 50% cut of the take on any day passes sold from your spot
(and of course if you link out to some other pay site then....)

Why a home broadband customer would ...

[maggard]

Why would a home broadband customer want to turn their connection into a free wireless hot-spot?

1. Acessability. In return for sharing one's service one gets access to other's hotspots.
2. Neighborliness. Let the neighbor who brought home a laptop from work fire it up and check their email.
3. The sheer geekiness of this (this is /.)

I've got two net connections to my house, 6MB down/.5MB up & 20MB down/2MB up, so a typical 802.11g connection or two isn't gonna be much of a hit. The net traffic most hotspots

Re:

[Cowclops]

However previously I lived next to a large pubic park, Please tell me more about this "pubic" park. Are the trees all thick and curly?

Huge implications

[jarich]

Two things spring to mind... first, RR will leap forward to be the most popular ISP everywhere this is offered.

Second, no-one can sue you if they can't prove you were downloading the movie... if you've got a public WiFi, it could've been anyone, right?

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[netscan]

I would suppose that you would be able to claim the same protections that ISPs if you are found not to be responsible for the illegal activity, it still would not protect you from an actual visit from the 5-0. Anything they find in your home/PC would still be fair game

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[jimstapleton]

Given where I live, and many of the people I know around here with the same oppioin, the only way RR is gonna be number 1 here is if they pay people to have RR.

And those people will then get WoW, SBC/Ameritech or dialup connections and use those for better performance/reliability...

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[mgblst]

SO, who the fuck is RR? Or are we all supposed to know this already. Maybe in your ward!

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[RobertLTux]

Inside the Time Warner group RR is Road Runner (yes btw that Road Runner) this would be the name for timewarner cable internet service
the reverse dns for a Road Runner customer should look like cpe-#ip address#.#region#.res.rr.com
this breaks down to
cpe= Customer Premises Equipment
ip address = what do you think?? you do belong on Slashdot right??
region = "which" timewarner
res =residential service
rr.com = primary domain

(oh btw triad ips seem to be more or less static)

"Free" wifi hotsputs, huh

[racyrefinedraj]

So wait,

I pay Time Warner for bandwidth. Then I use Fonera's software so that I can give my bandwidth away to others. They pay Fonera a couple bucks for a day of access, and Fonera splits this price with Time Warner.

Anything I'm missing here?

Seems like you'd be better off investing in some quality Florida swampland

Re:

[mattswell]

Exactly what I was thinking. What benefit does the customer get for basically donating a piece of his or her bandwidth back to the ISP?

Re:"Free" wifi hotsputs, huh

[Inexile2002]

Yes, you are missing something.

You maintain a hotspot (with two SSIDs, one with a 10 digit WEP key, the other open) and let people access your hotspot over the open SSID. In turn, you either get half the revenue generated on your hotspot, or you get free access to any other hotspot operated by FON. If you live in a high density area (near a Starbucks, big apartment etc) you can subsidize your hotspot, if you don't you get free wifi roaming. If you're not interested in either, don't get the router. It's not like Time Warner is going to force you to sign up.

They charge $2 a day for access and don't have density in the US yet (they're bigger in Europe and Asia) but they seem to be growing. Personally, I've run across one FON hotspot when I actually needed one, and found two more when I didn't really need access or had a wired connection, but there's a Starbucks near my house (in Toronto) where the Chinese restaurant next door runs a FON access point. I've never been (don't like Starbucks coffee) but my friends use the FON signal all the time.

Ultimately, what this means is that Time Warner is allowing (encouraging?) people to maintain open access points, and will update their terms of service to reflect this.

Re:

[parvenu74]

Does TimeWarner indemnify themselves in case you get prosecuted for crimes committed on your open access point that they encouraged/paid you to open up? Considering the recent legal precedent on this question, who in their right mind would leave an access point open, even if they could be paid for doing so?

It'd be cool if they gave you two IPs

[grahamsz]

That way they could have one for the AP and one for your traffic. Since the AP is almost certainly natted, they could even have the AP give out addresses on a 10.x subnet and perform NAT at the router for the neighborhood. That way it wouldn't be possible to tell whether a particular packet came from my Access Point or my neighbors.

Re:

[evil_Tak]

You maintain a hotspot (with two SSIDs, one with a 10 digit WEP key, the other open)

So...basically both open.

Re:

[Jaqenn]

So wait,

I pay Time Warner for bandwidth. Then I use Fonera's software so that I can give my bandwidth away to others. They pay Fonera a couple bucks for a day of access, and Fonera splits this price with Time Warner.

Anything I'm missing here?

My understanding is something like this: Aliens pay Fonera $X per day of access. Fonera used to take a Y% cut of the money, and give the rest to you for the use of your bandwidth. After this deal, Fonera will take a Y% cut, Time Warner will take another Z% cut, and you get the rest for the use of your bandwidth.

That's a lot off the top, but if it's not worth it then don't sign up. I expect they will adjust their payouts until they get enough interest.

The big change here is that Time Warner is get

Wifi in cafes

[edgr]

In the article it states that you currently have to pay to get onto the wifi hotspots in Starbucks. I find this odd. Here in Australia, if a cafe has wifi, it is pretty much always free. They figure that it is pretty unlikely you'll use more bandwidth than the cost of your coffee would pay for, anyway.

Re:

[FlyingSquidStudios]

Not true here in the U.S., especially not at many Starbucks which use T-Mobile to charge unrealistic prices ($10 for a 24-hour pass?!). Thankfully, there are sites like wififreespot.com which help you find the places that don't charge. I am always amazed when businesses that have people waiting around for ages (laundromats, hair salons, etc.) don't offer free wifi to attract customers, but it's so rare. Maybe this will change things...

Re:

[PhoenixOr]

Thankfully, there are sites like wififreespot.com which help you find the places that don't charge.

I find it rather frustrating when I need internet access to find an internet access point.... I end up having to call a friend that is in front of his/her computer to look up for me where an access point is... although, that is kinda matrixy: "Operator, find me an exit!"

Re:

[zoward]

There are some restaurants and/or cafes in the US that offer free WiFi. Two that spring immediately to mind are Panera [panera.com] and the McDonalds I occasionally frequent with my 3-year-old (not all MickeyD's offer free WiFi, but the number that do has risen signficantly). Many smaller cafe's also offer free WiFi. Starbuck's is a notable exception; this is part of the reason I don't frequent Starbucks. Many of those smaller cafes with free WiFi also serve superior coffee :-)

Re:

[spyrochaete]

I've noticed a few Starbucks in Toronto charging $8/month for wifi that can be used in any Starbucks restaurant. Wifi is pretty widespread in Toronto so you can usually access Starbucks' neighbour's signal from inside the cafe. $8 is a good fee for municipal wifi, though in Toronto that pretty much sums up the Starbucks penetration.

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[Molochi]

Free wifi in bars, coffeeshops, and resturants is very common in Atlanta suburbs. Not so much in auto repair shops and laundry-mats. Starbucks is an exception. They paired up with T-Mobile years ago to provide "hotspots" in all of their shops. T-Mobile wouldn't exhale unless they could charge someone for the breeze they had created. Cariboo Coffee (the other major coffee chain in ATL) and Panera do it for free tho...

Re:

[Dragonslicer]

I worked for a little while for a company that runs wireless access points at places like coffee shops, motels, and car dealerships. I'd guess about half of them were free, the other half were around $3 per hour, $6 per day, or $10-$12 per month (I think one or two expensive hotels charged $20 per month). They pretty much treated me like crap, though, so I wouldn't mind seeing them get completely run out of business by services like Time Warner's.

La Fonera Routers

[Universal Indicator]

La Fonera routers are great: They sent me mine for free, and then I reflashed it with DD-WRT. It's a real piece of crap, but I can't complain about getting a free router :-)

Re:

[lmnfrs]

You haven't seen any instructions? Where the heck did you look [google.com]?

Twice? I pay three times.

[Nukenbar]

I already have to play $29 /month for internet on my phone (T-Mobile). On my last month's statement I used 25 megabytes. If that isn't the biggest rip-off, I don't know what is.

To be fair, I think that gives me access to T-Mobile hotspots, but I have no need for those.

TW not first, see Speakeasy

[eefsee]

http://www.speakeasy.net/ [speakeasy.net] has allowed this for a long time. Their terms of use actually encourage sharing, and long before FON showed up, Speakeasy facilitated such sharing by finding ways for customers to earn revenue for it. One of the few surviving independent ISPs out there, I think Speakeasy deserves a lot of kudos for their policies. Of course, now that they are Best Buy we'll see how long it all lasts.

FON is interesting for it's dual network access point. I'm running one right now (in Austria) and it does a fine job. It does seem to suffer a bit when both public and private networks are in use, though. It also "phones home" for regular updates that are outside my control. A few weeks ago one such update killed our ability to pick up Google Mail via SSL/POP. The fixed the bug within a couple weeks, but it is still odd to be running my network with an access point so totally out of my control.

Speakeasy no longer

[gerf]

They were recently bought by Best Buy, to the chagrin of many.

AT&T has had this for ages

[Nexus7]

AT&T (nee SBC, nee Ameritech) DSL customers in Chicago (probably all IL) get access to all their wi-fi hotspots for a token $1 a month. You get pretty good tech support too, they'll patiently walk you through the login page, rest your password, etc. at 9 PM for $1 a month. Death Star maybe, but they do their homework.

Whoops, the part about having to pay twice

[Nexus7]

The response above is to the argument made by TWC that customers should have to pay for their service twice, once at home, and once at the coffee shop. AT&T customers pay only once anyway (well, apart from the token $1).

And?

[djones101]

Every evening, I go home and start up my work laptop, and can easily see 5 or 6 "free hotspots" that customers of Bright House offer.

New to the U.S., current business model for Europe

[anticypher]

This may be a new thing in the U.S., but it has been part of the multiplay packages going in all over Europe.

ISPs who lease or just install a CPE box will have multiple WiFi SSIDs running. One for the client, the other advertising their network. So whenever a client roams and finds an access point with the name of their provider, they can use their login credentials and get their own internet connection. This second connection is completely separate from the client's connection, there is no shared IP address or bandwidth.

I think there is a big gap in knowledge of how modern broadband works between those in the U.S. and those in Europe or the Far East. I'm seeing this more and more on american oriented sites like slashdot, "ignorance" is too strong a word, but certainly "lack of understanding" comes close. Internet technologies are pulling way ahead outside of the U.S., where the last mile has seen great advances in both business models and creative uses of technology. When the bandwidth of the last mile (between a head-end and the customer premises) gets sufficient to put multiple channels down the line, the client can get much, much more than just an internet connection. With fibre installations going in, the bandwidth can support multiple HD video channels, multiple internet connections, multiple voice channels, private VPN options, roaming, etc. A client can just choose which bandwidth package they want, e.g. Symmetric or Asymmetric, 10 Mbps or 100 Mbps or more. A handful of TV channels, or more than you could ever watch. VoIP calling plans, that are so cheap that calling most of Europe or North America is free for the first few thousand minutes.

So one of the providers in the U.S. had an executive who took a vacation in Europe, saw the amazing new multiplay boxes, and decided it was a good idea to beat their few oligarchic non-rivals to the punch. I'm glad it's News for Nerds in the U.S., things are looking up over there.

the AC

this post needs some emoticons for slight amounts of sarcasm, some humour, and kind of a tsk-tsk sideways look indicating a mix of sympathy and pity, good luck finding /. moderations for that

FONonymous P2P and Common carrier

[Ilex]

For Bittorent and other p2p users living in big metro areas this would provide a good level of cover from the MAFIAA. So long as they use a separate public IP for their FON then they'll be covered as a common carrier. If they can maintain at least one other user on their FON network then the mafiaa won't be able to tell which user was the one that did the illegal uploading.

When they serve their court order for the FON log the best they can get is a list of users who were connected at that time. I bet they w

I like FON

[DogDude]

I don't know why any kind of additional agreements would be needed... people should be able to do what they like with their Net connections, but that's kind of irrelevant. I like the FON setup. It still needs a lot of work to make it more professional looking in the US, but the principle behind it is good. I've paid to use several different FON hotspots because I don't have Net usage at home (If I had Net at home, I could share it, and use all other FON hotspots for free). If I get a home Net connection

Free routers

[coleopterana]

Gizmodo covered a day where FON offered everyone a free Fonera (little wireless router/point thing) for signing up and naturally they were totally swamped, but I got one and it works ok, though it doesn't really help me or anyone else to keep it running in my home in the middle of nowhere. I have, though, used the little map to check out where people are running theirs around Atlanta, for instance, and the coverage at the time (I think this was last fall) looked pretty decent. It's a neat concept but the

is this different from lilypadusa?

[teh_chrizzle]

project lilypad [lilypadusa.org] is a time warner thing in cincinnati... is lilypadusa like a prototype or something? i have heard about FON mostly in europe... they don't seem to have much density in the USA.

speaking of free access points for members, before lilypad in cincinnati, the local phone company cincinnati bell [cincinnatibell.com] offers access to hotspots free for it's customers. the cinbell solution seems to be mostly gas stations and family restaurants.

Time Warner not the first...

[SeanDS]

Time Warner isn't exactly the first ISP to offer such a service. Over in Britain, BT have been offering free 'WiFi minutes' to subscribers to one of their services called the 'Home Hub', which includes broadband, phone and wireless services. BT probably wasn't the first either.

It would be interesting to see Fon hook up

[Master of Transhuman]

with the Public WiFi Project. [publicwifiproject.org]

The latter offers modified routers to small businesses like restaurants and cafes that would like to offer free WiFi to attract foot traffic. It's paid for by advertising which appears in a banner above the actual Web page as you surf. The advertising is entirely local businesses to local users.

Their concept is that the Net should be like TV - free with advertising - but non-intrusive advertising.

They're only in a few smaller cities at this point, but the business model is inter

And you charge for it?

[guruevi]

Bah! My neighbour has had this service through TWC for years, and I don't have to pay.