A few days ago, I wrote about how I might begin saving $10 on my cable internet service from Comcast. I was approached by a neighbor who noticed my wireless network was available (but protected by password) and offered to pay me a portion of my cable bill if we could access it.
I responded that we should test the connection for a few days to make sure it is stable—his apartment is not immediately adjacent to mine—and then discuss the deal.
Ethical, legal, and contractual issues aside, he wasn’t getting a strong enough signal most of the time. I will not be saving $10 (or $20 if I were to be successful negotiating) on my cable bill this time around. Just to be sure, I changed the password.
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11:40 am (reply)
Sorry to hear that…could have been a pretty good deal for you. Not sure how badly you wanted to do this…but you could look into getting a newer, higher power router or just one of those signal booster atennas.
11:56 am (reply)
My current wireless router has some options for signal boosting, but I’m not too remoreseful about it not working out.
1:35 pm (reply)
Or your neighbor could build his own wireless antenna.
http://www.turnpoint.net/wireless/cantennahowto.html
There are companies that make wireless signal boosters too.
11:31 pm (reply)
I shaved off almost $40 from my comcast bill. Internet plus TV. All I did was call and say I was going to switch to a Quest bundle package and they immediately offered to give me a discount for 6 months. My bill went from $120 to $80 with a 5 minute phone call.
I will have to Reevaluate the situation again in 6 months.
8:54 pm (reply)
I cut off my cable internet thinking I will switch to DSL, but was getting very strong open wireless connection from one of my neighbor. Actually two of them. The signals are good enough to work from home, watch streaming video, blog etc. So I was thinking if I can continue like this. Then I found its not legal. Think about it, if a neighbor does some illegal activity on internet, you can get in trouble.So there are legal issues around it. However, there is one startup which is working to use this concept for mobile phones. I think there is a potential for business here.