BOSTON--The nation's biggest cable operators are banding together to offer free Wi-Fi access to their broadband customers in more than 50,000 hotspots around the country.

 

On Monday, Bright House Networks, Cablevision, Comcast, Cox Communications, and Time Warner Cable announced on the first day of the Cable Show here that they'd enable each other's broadband customers to access their metro Wi-Fi hot spots. The companies are calling the new network "CableWiFi," so that subscribers will be able to find the hot spots when they're roaming outside their own cable territory.