Amid an aggressive expansion of its Wi-Fi network that aims to have around 8 million hotspots deployed in the U.S. by the end of 2014, Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) is selling its subscribers on the hospitality angle.
By letting the conglomerate push out an additional, public SSID with their home gateway, Comcast is providing its residential consumers with a means of being hospitable to their guests without giving away their Wi-Fi WEP key.
"Xfinity Wi-Fi will now be available via your existing wireless gateway," reads a bullet-pointed memo sent to Comcast broadband customers.
"The xfinitywifi signal is completely separate from your home Wi-Fi network," it adds. "There will be no impact to the broadband connection to your home, and minimal impact to your home Wi-Fi network."
UPDATE: Comcast representative issued us the following statement Thursday: "When we do introduce the feature in a market, we are transparent with our customers about it and we send them letters and emails well in advance to notify them that the feature is going to be turned on. We provide information about it, we provide links to online FAQs and we provide instructions for how they can disable the second SSID if they do not wish to have it. So far, fewer than one percent of customers who have the feature have disabled it."
Comcast had around 4.6 million hotspots deployed in the U.S. as of September.
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