Stay Connected
Atlanta Black Star/Editor's Picks
Editor's PicksTechnology

Cable Providers Expand Free Wi-Fi

Posted byBy ABS Contributor | Published on: CommentsComments (0)

If you buy Internet access through your cable provider, your subscription is about to get much more mobile.

Five of the nation’s largest cable providers, including Comcast (CMCSA), Time Warner Cable (TWC, Fortune 500), Cablevision (CVC, Fortune 500), Bright House and Cox, announced on Monday that they will allow customers of any of the other four services to use their free Wi-Fi hotspots when traveling outside their home network area.

So, for example, when a Cox subscriber in Cleveland travels to Philadelphia, they can use a Comcast Wi-Fi hotspot for free.

Over the next few months, the five companies will open up their 50,000 Wi-Fi hotspots across the country to competitors’ customers. In out-of-network areas, users will be able to log on to hotspots labeled “CableWifi.”

It’s not launched yet, but the companies are working on technology that will store users’ credentials so their customers can be automatically logged in.

The cable providers’ partnership is similar to how cell phone carriers allow their customers to roam on other networks when traveling. That’s intentional: The cable companies say they are looking to compete with mobile carriers’ new 4G networks that make broadband-like speeds available everywhere.

Read the rest of this story on CNN

Democracy needs journalism it can trust.

This election season, the stakes are higher than usual — and so is the pressure on newsrooms to soften their coverage, stay quiet, or just disappear. Independent reporting, the kind that answers to readers instead of advertisers or political pressure, matters more in a moment like this, not less.

For over 14 years, Atlanta Black Star has stayed independent and reader-funded. We have no corporate owner and no shareholders telling us what to cover or how to cover it. That independence is also our biggest vulnerability: nothing protects it except readers choosing to fund it directly.

Newspaper ad revenue has fallen more than 80% since 2005, and local newsrooms are closing at a rate of roughly two a week nationwide. When outlets go under in a moment like this, it's rarely the independent, reader-funded ones that get to stick around.

We know a request for support isn't why you came here. But without readers choosing to fund this work directly, the depth of reporting we can do at home and abroad shrinks along with everyone else's. If you're not in a position to give, that doesn't change how much we value you as a reader.

If you are able to, a recurring contribution does more for us than a single one-time gift, because it lets us plan the next investigation instead of just the next invoice. It takes about 30 seconds, no long form, no account. Thank you for continuing to support independent journalism and freedom of the press.

Give once Give monthly Support another way

Related Stories

Back to top