[HN Gopher] Comcast reluctantly agrees to stop its misleading "1...
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Comcast reluctantly agrees to stop its misleading "10G Network"
claims
Author : thunderbong
Score : 35 points
Date : 2024-01-31 21:10 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| aliasxneo wrote:
| Interesting, I never once made that distinction, always assumed
| it meant 10gbps. Was this actually confusing people or just
| companies fighting in court?
| kube-system wrote:
| I thought it did too. I went to their website to check out the
| specs, the fastest 'Xfinity 10G' plan available to me in a
| major city was 2Gbps/0.2Gbps
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| I've wondered if what we need in society are nonprofits that
| advocate exclusively against certain evil and nefarious
| corporations. Imagine what an org could do with a few million and
| a mission to combat Comcast and expose their behavior. One
| organization whose mission is to expose Amazon's bad behavior. A
| PR check on monopolies.
|
| Consumer Affairs, etc. do good work, but we need a more 1:1
| relationship.
| vault_ wrote:
| I didn't realize they were actually selling a 10 Gbps service
| tier as part of this branding. It's never been available in my
| market, so I assumed that they were advertising the uplink
| capability of the thing my modem was connected to! Happy to see
| this go, but I'm still shocked to learn that the name was _less_
| misleading than I had thought.
| kccqzy wrote:
| The article says it provides 10Gbps of service to 98% of
| customers upon request, which would be powered by fiber-to-the-
| home. I don't need 10Gbps, but I do want symmetric upload and
| download speeds. Does anyone know if it's possible to ask them
| to run fiber and have only an upload speed increase?
| toast0 wrote:
| I think you're asking for something like their 10G service,
| but at a lower cost and speed?
|
| > The Comcast "Gigabit Pro" fiber connection that provides
| 10Gbps speeds costs $299.95 a month plus a $19.95 modem lease
| fee. It also requires a $500 installation charge and a $500
| activation charge
|
| I'm not sure that the pricing for that service actually pays
| for their installation and equipment costs, so I don't think
| you'd get much of a discount if you only ran it at 1Gbps
| symmetric. I did know someone who got the service and didn't
| bother to make the rest of his equipment work at 10G, so was
| only using a 1G port. And it works fine, but still costs
| $320/month + any other taxes and the $1000 install.
| vanchor3 wrote:
| > The article says it provides 10Gbps of service to 98% of
| customers upon request
|
| This part is funny to me because I've tried to sign up for
| their FttH and they declined despite it being in the area,
| and the same thing happened to others I know. I'm not sure
| how they came to that percentage but I don't believe it.
| starttoaster wrote:
| I thought it was pretty well understood, to anybody paying
| attention at least, that there have been no official 6, 7, 8, or
| even 9G mobile networks yet, so of course 10G was a slightly
| quicker name for 10Gbps networking. It's maybe not an industry
| standard, but colloquially many datacenters will call a 10Gbps-
| capable network switch a "10G switch." This seems like an
| extension of that colloquialism to general consumers. But I guess
| I won't argue, necessarily, about being less vague in our choices
| of words for things. I just generally don't think accusations of
| "misleading" is completely fair, in this instance. Comcast has
| been misleading customers in other ways, but in this case, I
| think individual ignorance is doing a bit of the heavy lifting
| for the misleading here.
| rconti wrote:
| | to anybody paying attention at least
|
| Maybe they don't think you should have to follow the industry
| to know what a company's advertising means?
|
| It pissed me off to no end to hear the monopolist advertise
| their "10G network" ("with speeds starting at 200Mbps")
|
| It was CLEARLY meant to mislead.
| starttoaster wrote:
| If you don't know what a 10G network in a given context could
| be, are you likely to understand the difference between what
| a 5g and a supposed 10g mobile network would be? Are you a
| candidate for a person that is likely to care about the
| difference between 200Mbps and 1Gbps? Perhaps it's naive, but
| I've heard the words "rack that 10G switch" so many times
| that it's hard for me to say that Comcast intended on being
| misleading.
| recursive wrote:
| My sister in law insists that 5Ghz wifi is the same thing
| as a 5G cell network. Comcast shouldn't use misleading
| terminology. The fact that people don't know what 5g means
| isn't really a defense. I couldn't tell you the difference
| between 4g and 5g, but adding "10g" alongside them makes it
| worse, not better.
| binkHN wrote:
| The fact is the 10G offering is only available in a very small
| number of very specific locations.
| starttoaster wrote:
| Does their device at least support 10Gbps internal networks,
| I assume? In that way it's still not misleading, in my
| opinion. Of course the uplink only receives and transmits
| whatever you pay for (or in that case, what they allow you to
| pay for based on what is available.)
| binkHN wrote:
| Their "latest Xfinity Gateway" has a 2.5G Ethernet port:
| https://www.xfinity.com/learn/internet-service/modems-and-
| ro... ; you need something else to do 10G.
| xbar wrote:
| They are moving straight to 12G?
| account-5 wrote:
| I am always baffled at how US businesses can pretty much do and
| get away with anything they want, with little to no concequences.
| I'm not saying where I live is perfect but every time there's a
| scandal here I only need to look to the US to see we don't have
| it that bad.
| deepfriedchokes wrote:
| Regulatory capture:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
|
| In Capitalism, eventually capital owns everything.
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