The cable and Internet company Comcast has begun turning thousands of homes in Chicago, IL into Wi-Fi hotspots with its present service equipment.
Comcast has recently started the neighborhood hot spots initiative, which is aimed at making Wi-Fi signals available in areas next to homes installed with the equipment, according to Gotta Be Mobile.
The initiative will send a separate Wi-Fi signal from Comcast-issued home equipment, which will let anyone within range get online, Chicago Tribune reported. Comcast said on Tuesday the end result is for entire neighborhoods and city blocks to be full of hotspots.
Comcast officials said the Comcast subscriber's privacy and speed shouldn't be affected because the subscriber's signal will be kept separate from the publicly available signal, according to Chicago Tribune. Tom Nagel, who is in charge of Xfinity Wi-Fi initiative for Comcast, spoke about the signals in regards to the concern customers have about privacy.
"They'll look like two separate networks and they'll act like two separate networks," Nagel said. "Any use on the public side doesn't impact the private side."
Comcast has already found many outdoor hotspots in the Chicago area, Gotta Be Mobile reported. Over 9,000 businesses have agreed to provide some of their signal as a hotspot. The company will use a dual-mode modem to provide the hotspots. The equipment will serve Wi-Fi signals at homes and in public.
The use of Wi-Fi has increased over the years due to the growing use of mobile devices and increasing cost of mobile access, which lead to the growing demand for inexpensive, or free, Wi-Fi access, according to Chicago Tribune. Craig Moffett, senior analyst at MoffettNathanson, talked about the growing demand for the service.
"The real sea change in Wi-Fi came when the wireless operators started charging for data consumption around four years ago," Moffett said. "Suddenly, there was a huge economic incentive to rely on Wi-Fi whenever it was available, and you started to see the consumption of Wi-Fi go through the roof."
In order to gain access to the "neighborhood signal", a Comcast user must log on and put in their Comcast information, Gotta Be Mobile reported. A subscriber will then be able to travel through any hotspot without having to sign into any new hotspot he/she accesses. A non-Comcast subscriber can log on for two free hours per month, and after that time they can pay to log on at a rate of $2.95 per hour or $19.95 per week.
