In June of last year Comcast announced that the company was launching a new, Fon-like effort that involved new router firmware that turns your gateway into a publicly-accessible hotspot. More specifically, updated routers would now offer two signals: one being yours, and the other being a "xfinitywifi" SSID signal providing free Wi-Fi to other Comcast users in your general area.
Fortunately, users are supposed to be able to disable this functionality if they don't want to share their bandwidth with strangers, but Comcast says this functionality is enabled by default. The public usage also thankfully doesn't count against your Comcast usage cap (if you have one in your market), and Comcast will push more bandwidth your direction to compensate for additional strain on your line.
Unfortunately, I've seen more than a few customers complain that the ability to opt out of the functionality doesn't always work.
This thread in our forums is a good example, with users noting Comcast hasn't been particularly helpful:
quote:
...My ability to turn WiFi off via the "Users & Preferences" page (does) not exist. Calling the 800 number and going to internet support gave me someone who only suggested trying to disable & re-enable bridge mode (which didn't eliminate 'xfinitywifi'). He then suggested I (get this!) read up on the Comcast customer forums on their website as "there are constantly updates to the firmware in our modems and this is probably just an update that has an issue at the moment."
In other words, the routers are being updated frequently and that appears to be resetting opt out preferences, something less technically savvy users probably aren't going to notice. Of course there's an easy solution here: go buy your own modem and router/gateway, and save yourself both the headache of not being able to control your own devices -- and Comcast's
soaring monthly hardware rental fees, which net Comcast $300 million in additional revenue
per quarter.