Colleges and universities often provide residential networks (resnets) for their students. There are companies that do that, such as Apogee Networks, plus value added services such as patching, installing, and configuring secure and virus-free software. Last-mile ISPs could do that too. They could go farther: they could detect, clean, and insure home machines.

Now they may not want to do this because they might incur legal liability. But that’s what insurance is for. And they might not want to do it because it’s not their core competence. But they could offer such services through a third party. Why don’t they?

-jsq