Comcast Hit With Class Action Over Xfinity Public Wi-Fi

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Comcast Corporation was hit with a class action lawsuit alleging that the cable company has engaged in fraudulent business practices by using customer wireless routers for its national Xfinity Wi-Fi network without first obtaining authorization from customers to do so.

Plaintiffs Toyer Grear and Joycelyn Harris are Comcast Xfinity customers. Greer is the father of Harris and they live in the same house in Alameda County, California. They filed this Comcast class action lawsuit in a California federal court on Dec. 3.

Greer and Harris use the internet services provided by Comcast, also known as the Xfinity Internet Service, and they lease equipment needed for that purpose, as do other Comcast customers.

According to the Comcast Xfinity class action lawsuit, at some point Comcast realized that all “these households . . . could be used as infrastructure for a national Wi-Fi network.”

As a result, “within the past several years, Comcast began supplying it residential customers with new wireless routers, equipped to broadcast not only its customers’ home Wi-Fi network signal but also an additional Wi-Fi network signal that was available to the public.”

For this purpose, Comcast started using these routers randomly to supply the secondary public “Xfinity Wi-Fi Hotspot,” as it is called, in cities around the country. Comcast was aiming for eight million public hotspots by the end of the year, the Xfinity class action lawsuit claims.

However, Greer and Harris claim in their Comcast class action lawsuit that “Comcast does not, however, obtain the customer’s authorization prior to engaging in the use of the customer’s equipment and Internet service for public, non-household use.”

In addition, “Comcast has externalized the costs of its national Wi-Fi network onto its customers.”

They claim that the routers that were installed that are capable of providing a signal to public users “consume vastly more electricity in order to broadcast the second, public Xfinity Wi-Fi Hotspot, which cost is born by the residential customer.”

Greer and Harris allege that the router has forced them to “incur additional expenses in the form of increased electricity bills.”

The fact that their wireless router is also used for this secondary network also eats into the performance for their own Wi-Fi network at home by decreasing the internet speed, the Comcast class action lawsuit claims.

It also puts them at a great security risk, since the router in their home is used by strangers that could potentially try to hack into their personal network, they allege.

They are proposing a nationwide class for Xfinity subscribers for “all households in the United States that have subscribed to Comcast’s Xfinity Internet Service and that, as a result, have leased wireless routers that broadcast an Xfinity Wi-Fi Hotspot.”

They also want the court to certify a second subclass for California Xfinity subscribers for California households who have been subject to the same practice.

Greer and Harris allege that Comcast has violated The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. On behalf of the California class, they are also charging Comcast with violating the Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act and California’s Unfair Competition Law.

The plaintiffs are represented by Gillian L. Wage and Sara D. Avila of Milstein Adelma LLP; by Hank Bates, Allen Carney and David F. Slade of Carney Bates & Pulliam PLLC; and by M. Ryan Kasey of Ku & Mussman PA.

There is no counsel information available for Comcast at this time.

The Comcast Xfnity Wi-Fi Hotspot Class Action Lawsuit is Toyer Grear et al. v. Comcast Corp., Case No. 4:14-cv-05333, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.