tomizone - is it a legitimate business?

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spoonboy

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Topic # 99621 23-Mar-2012 09:54

Hi, just wonder, how lawful is to do the business with tomizone?
I'm talking in particular about residents that are selling their traffic by this scheme :
http://www.tomizone.com/hotspot_owners/residential
It looks like a reselling of the service which is prohibited by some providers.

sbiddle

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Reply # 598953 23-Mar-2012 10:19

Of course Tomizone is a legitimate business.

If you're onselling your broadband connection and your ISP's Terms & Conditions prohibit this then it's nothing to do with Tomizone.

stevenewzealand

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Reply # 598965 23-Mar-2012 10:30

Your question is quite interesting in the way it was posed as a "legitimate" business. Of course Tomizone is a legitimate business with service in many countries including New Zealand.

Your real question is whether "reselling bandwidth" is a legitimate business and it's one that has been asked many times since we started business in 2006.

Let's be very clear on your question - best you may want to really ask "Is it ok to use the Tomizone service to offer internet to people where they may pay for usage".

The answer is yes.

Take any Internet Cafe or Hotel or Airport or Hostel or Backpacker who uses a Hotspot to either give away access at no cost or charge via a voucher, token, credit card or trading in a sheep. Any of those payment methods to obtain access to the Internet may cover their costs. In some cases, popular places may even profit out of it.

Tomizone simply provide a trackable authentication and billing mechanism for venues to do this (much the same way as hotspot.com or Nomadix etc). Our difference is that it is cloud based auth and billing versus buying a specific billing server that needs to be housed on the premises, configured and fed.

ISP's around the world and in New Zealand already supply all of these businesses for access and although some may have terms that overtly say "do not resell our supply", we are yet to find any of our venue owners complain. In fact, I would also suggest that if an ISP did try to exert those rights on these businesses, then they would simply change their service provider.

I trust that answers your real question.

Steve Simms
Executive Director & Co-founder
Tomizone

spoonboy

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Reply # 598967 23-Mar-2012 10:31

sbiddle: Of course Tomizone is a legitimate business.

If you're onselling your broadband connection and your ISP's Terms & Conditions prohibit this then it's nothing to do with Tomizone.

Ok, let's say I do this via Telecom. Will it violate my contract with TNZ ( I have a regular resident broadband contarct)?

stevenewzealand

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Reply # 598968 23-Mar-2012 10:32

Refer to the above commentary I just left.

spoonboy

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Reply # 598977 23-Mar-2012 10:46

Take any Internet Cafe or Hotel or Airport or Hostel or Backpacker who uses a Hotspot to either give away access

You see, this is different as they have a special kind of a contract - the business one. I think that if you let's say a hotel and come to TNZ to ask for the service you'll inform the ISP that you are actually going to use it to provide the service to the guests. Similar to Starbucks etc.
What worries me is that residents are in a different position as they have residental contracts. I've browsed through my TNZ contract and didn't notice anything about reselling. However, it could be hidden under some general statement.
As you guys ruling the business, may be you have studied some of the major provider contract terms so you can answer specifically, who is allowing this and who isn't.

stevenewzealand

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Reply # 598979 23-Mar-2012 10:51

Actually no - we simply don't have the time to maintain a service providers contract status with residential customers in the 102 countries we operate in. We tried initially then gave up because the t & c's change a lot. Furthermore as an example, many backpacker hostels are on residential contracts anyhow.
Bottom line - the blur between business and residential may not exist anymore - its the same product and the same supply.
Good luck with your decision on whatever you do. Remember too that you are ultimately liable if the ISP's hounds you for copyright infringement.

NonprayingMantis

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Reply # 599026 23-Mar-2012 11:58

even if something is techinically against the ISPs ts and Cs, if they don't actiuvely monitor or enforce, then I wouldn't worry.

If it was in there, it would mainly be to stop people reselling to creat arbitrage (for example, somebody in an apartment block signs up to a residential unlimted or high cap plan, then re-sells to other people in the same block.) that knd of reselling might bring the ISP down on them to enfirce the Ts andCs, but simply selling the odd session over timozon is unlikely to atract attention.

spoonboy

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Reply # 599052 23-Mar-2012 12:45

NonprayingMantis: even if something is techinically against the ISPs ts and Cs, if they don't actiuvely monitor or enforce, then I wouldn't worry.

If it was in there, it would mainly be to stop people reselling to creat arbitrage (for example, somebody in an apartment block signs up to a residential unlimted or high cap plan, then re-sells to other people in the same block.) that knd of reselling might bring the ISP down on them to enfirce the Ts andCs, but simply selling the odd session over timozon is unlikely to atract attention.

Well, you see, when you secretly resell your internet traffic to a neighbour in the same apartment building then it would be quite difficult for your ISP to find this out.
While on a tomizone you have all the addresses on the google map. As well, it confirms that your are actually reselling the service and not just built a LAN with your neighbour to play games etc.
While the tomezone's position is quite clear it would be really interesting to listen the ISPs on the forum, what do they actually think about this.

raytaylor

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Reply # 599658 25-Mar-2012 03:21

I specifically don't allow it on my network and that's because of a technical limitation in areas where I don't have tdma enabled.

Comcast sued this man for reselling consumer grade dsl connections at various hotspots he setup
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Comcast-Sues-Maryland-WISP-for-Bandwidth-Theft-101616

Tomizone partnered with orcon a few years ago. I believe tomizone functionality was included in some routers they were issuing to customers. An orcon customer could earn data credit by sharing his connection with other orcon/tomizone users and then spend that credit when they went on holiday by using another orcon customers tomizone hotspot to equal out the balance.

Sharing your internet needs to be properly managed now that the p2p copyright laws are in place.

Ray Taylor
Taylor Broadband (rural hawkes bay)
www.ruralkiwi.com

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spoonboy

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Reply # 599676 25-Mar-2012 09:44

raytaylor: I specifically don't allow it on my network and that's because of a technical limitation in areas where I don't have tdma enabled.

Comcast sued this man for reselling consumer grade dsl connections at various hotspots he setup
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Comcast-Sues-Maryland-WISP-for-Bandwidth-Theft-101616

The case is from 2009. So, how the story ended?

freitasm

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Reply # 599683 25-Mar-2012 10:13

I think for small "distributors" the biggest problem is not the ISP, but the possibility someone runs a P2P app, download some music or movie and the hotspot owner get slapped with the warning, then later might get a fine or be disconnected.

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spoonboy

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Reply # 599762 25-Mar-2012 15:12

Hm, I think it's not applicable to the tomizone's business. Because the IP address they find will be a tomizone's IP not the ISP one. I don't know if their addresses are even from NZ.
Why you guys are so worry about this? Has anyone got any notices ever?

freitasm

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Reply # 599766 25-Mar-2012 15:15

I am not worried, never got a notice and have no reason to get one. I am giving advice. You are the one who should be worried...

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sbiddle

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Reply # 599820 25-Mar-2012 18:57

spoonboy: Hm, I think it's not applicable to the tomizone's business. Because the IP address they find will be a tomizone's IP not the ISP one. I don't know if their addresses are even from NZ.
Why you guys are so worry about this? Has anyone got any notices ever?

I don't actuallty understand what you're tring to say there.

If you are inferring that Tomizone will be liable for S92 notices because it used "their IP" you're clearly misunderstanding how the setup works.

spoonboy

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Reply # 599831 25-Mar-2012 19:52

Well, I haven't tried the tomizone firmware but as far as I understand they are forwarding all the traffic via their site (VPN or something). I.e. if someone distributes a file via P2P then the tomezone's IP will be compromised not the actual user's one. I.e. it would be the same as if you do your P2P via VPN.