By Serhad Doken, Adeia; Dhananjay Lal, Adeia
Broadband service providers lose significant revenue each year when subscribers share wireless passwords.
One user subscribes to the internet service, paying for a certain bandwidth tier, and provides their Wi-Fi password to neighbors. The subscriber and the neighbors develop an informal relationship to share the internet bill. This is more prevalent in dense urban areas – since Wi-Fi has limited range, several apartments in a multi-dwelling unit (MDU) or vacation properties can share Wi-Fi through informal arrangements between tenants. The use of previous generation Wi-Fi repeaters and improved Wi-Fi Mesh technology offered by Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 helps extend Wi-Fi range, increasing risk of revenue loss for internet service providers. There are plenty of online fora and articles that discuss this [4] [5]. Most, if not all, broadband providers’ documented internet use policy prohibits the sharing of internet accounts and broadband bandwidth via Wi-Fi. ISPs and cable operators may consider enforcing prohibition of Wi-Fi password sharing in the future (similar to how stealing cable is illegal and has been strictly enforced).
Moreover, detecting if someone is on your Wi-Fi network is important for consumers to not only know but act on for prevention since they will be exposed to numerous cybersecurity attacks. This paper will focus on multiple technical methods for Service Providers to detect if their customers are engaging in such broadband sharing by leveraging novel techniques involving RF, AI & ML and it will teach Service Providers how to mitigate, discourage and prevent such activity.