Comcast touts its Xfinity Communities Wi-Fi

Comcast and Charter are two of the largest providers of Wi-Fi in the US. At last count, Comcast had about 22 million Wi-Fi hotspots, and Charter recently said that over 11 million homes were using its Advanced Wi-Fi product. In addition to providing broadband and its associated Wi-Fi to single-family residences, the cable operators also have lucrative business-to-business units. Mike Mancini, director of sales engineering for Xfinity Communities, said the company serves about 250,000 properties from multi-dwelling units (MDUs) to single-family communities, assisted living residences, hospitals, and college dormitories. Xfinity Communities has six special account managers to handle its top 40-50 largest property owners. Although Comcast has the technology to provide Wi-Fi to a whole building without wiring multiple individual units, it seems to prefer the more traditional model. Although Comcast seems to be in a prime position to help close the digital divide in urban areas by providing Wi-Fi in low-income housing, it doesn’t have any initiatives to do that through Xfinity Communities at this time.