{"id":572416,"date":"2024-11-27T09:01:29","date_gmt":"2024-11-27T07:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=572416"},"modified":"2024-11-27T09:01:35","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T07:01:35","slug":"sharing-your-wi-fi-connection-with-a-neighbour-could-be-illegal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wireless\/572416-sharing-your-wi-fi-connection-with-a-neighbour-could-be-illegal.html","title":{"rendered":"Sharing your Wi-Fi connection with a neighbour could be illegal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South African households should be aware of legal issues and terms of service violations for sharing access to their home Wi-Fi network with neighbours, particularly when charging for that privilege.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) connectivity rapidly expanding over the past few years, more households have access to high-speed uncapped connections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though FTTH offers very good value for money compared to alternative broadband technologies, its pricing may still put it out of reach for lower-to-middle-income households.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This can be particularly relevant in cases where an expensive fibre network operator (FNO) is the only one providing connectivity in an area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

High prices are particularly prevalent when an estate or complex has an exclusivity agreement with a specific Internet service provider (ISP).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Desperate for reliable connectivity, such households may be willing to pay a smaller fee to share the subscription cost by sharing the password to their Wi-Fi connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MyBroadband asked Wireless Access Providers Association (Wapa) Paul Colmer about this practice and whether it was legal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wapa represents numerous wireless Internet service providers (Wisps), which use Wi-Fi spectrum to provide connectivity in areas without fixed broadband.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transmitting a Wi-Fi connection into a public space requires an Electronic Communications Service (ECS) or Electronic Communications Network Service (ECNS) licence from ICASA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, if your home is next door to a public space, the low power levels of your router and the fact that you are not deliberately trying to transmit into that public space should exempt your from requiring a licence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things can get a bit more complex when transmitting over the boundaries of two adjacent private properties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The key point here is not going into public space, but rather crossing it to connect someone,” Colmer said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A property wall divides properties by law, but the nature of Wi-Fi is that it bleeds onto other properties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The effect is compounded in blocks of simplex housing, where your Wi-Fi can be \u2018seen\u2019 by the units above, below and to either side of your unit,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colmer said that “buddy-buddy” agreements with no money changing hands may not be an issue. However, charging for a shared service requires the subscription holder to have an ECS licence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, Colmer said that users would also be breaking their Internet service provider’s terms and conditions by aggregating their connections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enforcement rare \u2014 with some exceptions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Paul Colmer, WAPA executive committee member<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

However, Colmer said enforcing the regulations was virtually impossible, and action is rarely taken against users except for more serious violations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MyBroadband has regularly written articles about data-hungry users consuming multiple terabytes of data in a month, indicating that they could share their connections with multiple neighbours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Due to FTTH’s capacity, many ISPs are spending fewer resources on monitoring unusual activity and appear less fazed by the sharing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colmer explained that the biggest problem was unscrupulous wisps using home connections for network backhaul. This is alluring because the prices of a home line and aggregated ISP service differ substantially.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The providing ISP has some trap codes in their network operations centres (NOCs) to try and detect this situation,” Colmer said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“However, most are closed down by other legal wisps complaining to representative bodies like Wapa and asking us to have them switched off.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This is considered blatant Wi-Fi sharing, where many do not have licenses, and the instances of which I report to Icasa for investigation.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Colmer said that some of these rogue Wisps would merely switch to another ISP if their account was shut down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colmer likened the practice to people sharing access to their DStv account and charging others to use one of their five streams for a fee. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The practice was crippling DStv, and they have since scaled down the offering [of concurrent streams],” Colmer said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colmer added that the regulations were less clear-cut regarding edge cases, such as a neighbour asking to connect to your Wi-Fi if their Internet is down in exchange for small gifts like food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added that most reasonable people should not see a problem sharing their Internet for morally justifiable reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This includes giving access to an elderly neighbour because she’s on a pension and needs it to call family and friends for emergencies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africans should be aware of legal issues and service violations for sharing access to their home Wi-Fi network with neighbours. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":498749,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[21661,33927,39904,749,18270,75976],"class_list":["post-572416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wireless","tag-free-wi-fi","tag-paul-colmer","tag-public-wi-fi","tag-wi-fi","tag-wireless-access-providers-association-wapa","tag-wireless-internet-service-providers-wisp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572416"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572416"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":572508,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572416\/revisions\/572508"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}