Today Comcast expands its IPO Comcast Home Hotspot feature with Houston, Texas. For those who aren’t paying attention, Comcast is turning homes and small businesses into WiFi hotspots. The technology in Arris Touchstone Telephony Wireless Gateway Modems allows Comcast to turn your home into a public WiFi hotspot, and this feature can be turned on or off. If on (this is the default), devices looking for hotspot can connect to your cable modem. Hang a sign to sell coffee or lemonade and start a business yourself. Houston is the latest exit target for this. While it seems like a great idea to increase the number of WiFi hotspots available to users, there are some concerns raised by users about the program.
Comcast started rolling this out in Chicago, where I live. back in march. When I read the news about the Chicago launch, I checked and made sure I had enough in my account along with the equipment in my house. This highlights one of the initial user concerns.
On By Default
The feature is on by default. If you don’t want your home to be a public WiFi hotspot, you’ll have to manually turn it off or “disable” it. Initially when Comcast was testing this Master Access Point feature, users had to call Comcast customer service to turn the feature off. Users can now do this themselves from their Comcast account page. Instructions for doing this are at the end of this post.
Does Home Hotspot Affect Existing WiFi Networks?
Another concern users have is whether or not sharing a WiFi connection from their modem/router will affect the performance of their home network. Comcast statuses the modem’s hotspot creates a second network that should not affect your home network, which you have set up via a separate router. The hotspot appears with the name xfinitywifi.
It is probably too early for Comcast to share definitive conclusions about whether there is an impact on adjacent networks. But in my testing, I’ve noticed that if I turn the feature off, I have less erratic or random WiFi connectivity issues in my home. Again, these are unscientific tests. Bottom line: with the feature turned off, I had fewer problems with multiple devices (especially at the limit of my WiFi network coverage) than I did with the feature turned on.
Another issue that worries users is that they find that their device will choose to connect to the xfinitywifi network before connecting to their home network. This issue occurs because most devices will automatically connect to the last network they successfully connected to. And this is where it gets a little tricky.
To connect to any xfinitywifi network, you’ll need to enter your Comcast credentials if you have a Comcast account or are logged in as a guest for a trial. The limited free trial allows a user to surf the web on an xfinitywifi network for two 60 minute sessions per month. You have two waits of 24 hours between the end of one session and the start of the next. Or you can choose to purchase an Xfinity WiFi Access card, with rates starting at $2.95 per hour and rising to $19.95 per month.
So, if you have used an xfinitywifi network at home or elsewhere and have turned on the xfinitywifi network at your home, you may find that your devices connect to this public network by default.
You will also discover that when you log into the xfinitywifi network and travel in an area where the program is active, you will periodically connect to that network. For example, if you have Apps or services that perform WiFi-only functions, you may find that these functions occur in places that might otherwise be detected as random locations.
After signing in to test the service when it launched in Chicago in March, I noticed that my smartphones and tablets would connect to an xfinitywifi network and start uploading photos to Dropbox (I only allow this while the device is running). connected to WiFi) while traveling in the city.
How to Turn Off Xfinity WiFi Master Hotspot Feature
If you want to turn the feature off, you need to go to your Comcast Account page. After logging in, click on
Next you need to find the title. Click Manage
Next, you will see a popup with options to enable or disable the Master Access Point feature.
How to Prevent Connecting to xfinitywifi by Default
If you’ve signed in to an xfinitywifi hotspot at home or elsewhere and have chosen to have the Home Hotspot feature turned on in your home and you don’t want your devices to log in by default, you can go to your Network Settings. On Windows or OS X and edit the order of networks your devices will connect to.
Request a link To change the priority of Windows 8 and 8.1 devices.
Request a link To change the priority of Mac OS X devices.
Unfortunately, on our mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, there is no easy way to move a particular WiFi network up or down the priority list. You can select the “Forget a Network” option where you were previously signed in, but you will need to enter login information if you want to connect again.
The purpose of the Master Hotspot feature is obviously to make it easy for users to connect over Wifi on the go. This is a good thing. Comcast states that one of its selling points is to allow guests in your home to sign in (or create one) with their account. This prevents you from providing your network password. It’s too early to tell whether Comcast’s conversion of your home or small business into a WiFi hotspot is a good solution for Comcast subscribers. Fortunately, you can choose to participate or not.
There are other questions that need to be answered in the future in such efforts. For example, I live in a five-story building that only allows Comcast as our broadband and cable provider. Network density was already quite heavy before this feature was rolled out. But now with so many units broadcasting xfinitywifi hotspots in our building, this density has increased. Before I “forgot” the xfinitywifi network on my smartphones, walking down the corridors to wait for the elevator was so clogged that I would have to turn WiFi off to complete the connection. Those living in a single family home will of course have different outcomes.
