The Comisión del Mercado de las Telecomunicaciones (CMT) Council pronounced a sentence in 2010 in favour of a community of neighbours which wanted to share their Wi-Fi network. Still, the law enforcement depends on the case.
24 june 2016
The law covers hotels, cafeterias and shopping centres offering free or paid Wi-Fi to their clients. These establishments are not considered telecommunications operators, so there is no inconvenience in allowing any user to access their network. Meanwhile, what happens with the communities of neighbours? Is sharing Wi-Fi legal?
In September 2010, the CMT Council pronounced a sentence in favour of an owner’s community which wanted to share the expenses of Internet access and they asked if they had to register as CMT’s Operators. In this case, the sentence was favourable for the community of neighbours due to the following reasons:
- It was a private Wi-Fi network, so it was not open to the general public;
- There was no profit motive and neighbours assumed the expenses;
- An operator was in charge of offering the service.
At that time, CMT made clear that this was a specific case with its own peculiarities: no profit motive, private network and operation of the network by an operator. Finally, the resolution concluded that “the existence of different settings in which some of the quoted characteristics may exist, or even, in the case that all of them would exist in a broader users field or mass application, each of the cases must be analysed by this Commission”.
Regarding the installation, in the case of community networks, the wireless connection will be redistributed from the origin, with a PLC connected by Ethernet to the rest of the clients though a PLCS system plugged to the electrical grid and with additional Wi-Fi access points. As many PLCS and boosters as needed will be installed in order to ensure fast and stable connection.
At that time, CMT made clear that this was a specific case with its own peculiarities
Troubles sharing Wi-Fi
Nevertheless, the choice of sharing Wi-Fi among neighbours in a building might lead to negative consequences. The first one is obvious, the lack of security. The fact of being connected to a network used by other users might lead to an invasion of privacy. CMT recommends to always configure a password and the encrypted connection to not be WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy).
Another problem regarding contracting a Wi-Fi network for a community could be the low speed, given that the maximum contracted speed is functional for a community that is bigger than usual. Optical fibre will always help improve service. A good way to determine the available speed for each home is to divide the number of megabytes contracted among the neighbours using the service.
