Leave your wi-fi open

An article in a recent issue of Wired made a good case for leaving your home wireless network open for those around you to use, stressing that the risk involved in doing so is actually pretty minimal.

Not only does the article argue that leaving your network open will give you a good feeling inside, because “altruistic behavior stimulates the same primitive reward center as sex and food,” but it also suggests that a shift towards more open networks is in everyone’s self-interest. After all, “the more people leave their networks open, the better your odds of finding a hookup when you need one.”

The catch, of course, is that you’re probably not allowed to leave your network open. “Unless your ISP is one of a handful that officially don’t care,” the article states, “knowingly letting a neighbor share your connection likely violates your terms of service.” But this is where the piece gets interesting, and where the notion that enabling some people to connect for free jacks up the costs for the rest of us is handily debunked. “That would be the case in a competitive market,” the article explains, “rather than one ruled by a monopoly or duopoly… that charges more, for crappier service, than almost anywhere else in the industrialized world.” Indeed, the piece goes on to argue that in this sense, for “a business with high fixed costs and low variable costs,” it doesn’t really matter how many people pay as long as enough people do.

Naturally, Wired is an American magazine, so it pays to look at those claims in a Canadian context. Although I can’t speak for the terms of service of Canadian ISPs when it comes to open networks, I can point to a recent study conducted by Oxford University, which found that Canada also has some of the poorest service in the developed world. Sure, we beat the United States, but not by much.

This study reinforces the findings of a report released by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, which found that Canada’s broadband speeds are both slower and more expensive than the average. And that’s actually pretty bad news, at least in the sense that broadband investment is a key factor in a country’s economic, social and cultural development.

To be fair, another recent study commissioned by the ISPs found that Canadians are getting great broadband service. But since the ISPs paid for those findings, I think we ought to take them with a grain of salt. After all, the fact that most of those companies are now backing this outright lie doesn’t do a whole lot for their credibility.

All right, I went off on a bit of a thing there. But if you’ve got a wireless network at home, then you might want to think about leaving it open. Feel free to look into the risks, of course, before you make your decision. It might just be a great way to help out your fellow man and/or stick it to the corporate fat cats.

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