- cross-posted to:
- technology@chat.maiion.com
- cross-posted to:
- technology@chat.maiion.com
Comcast advertising “10G” in hopes to confuse consumers to accept slower speeds::Comcast says Xfinity offers 10G home internet, but the term “10G” is hazy and potentially misleading—especially because it has no relation to 5G for cell phones.
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Oh man, this sounds like a repeat of the whole debacle with AT&T and their “5Ge” bullshit. As soon as the whole 5G hype started, AT&T decided to claim that their entire network was now “5Ge” and capable of faster speeds. When in reality the “5Ge” label simply meant that the network in that area was flagged to be upgraded to 5G sometime in the near future, there was zero increase in network bandwidth or performance, just a little “5GE” symbol on your phone. IIRC they were taken to court over it and ordered to stop using the “5Ge” label, but they figured out a way to weasel out of it and never followed thru.
Many years ago, when even smartphones were relatively rare, I learned that AT&T was offering a little USB dongle that would give your computer internet access via their cell phone network for a monthly fee. I thought it was a fantastic idea and I wanted exactly that, so I went in to buy one.
I asked the lady how much data per month was included. She said it was unlimited. I said that it’s definitely not. I just want to know what the limit is. We want back and forth a little bit, and after a while I just asked to see the written agreement, dug through it a little bit, and found the part where it said that I was limited to 5 gigabytes of internet per month. I pointed it out to her, reiterating that 5 gigs is fine, I just had wanted to know what the limit was.
She said, “Oh that’s what comes with the unlimited plan.” She argued that no human being would realistically use 5 gigabytes in a single month, so the plan was unlimited.
I gave up and just bought the thing and left, but it was such a frustrating interaction that it still comes to mind almost 20 years later when someone says “AT&T” and “bullshit” in the same sentence.
You have an unlimited amount of water in that glass, assuming you don’t drink it all.
I really wish the government would crack down on this “unlimited” bullshit. How can companies like Verizon have three separate tiers of “Unlimited data?” It’s fucking impossible to have three separate limits on a thing that is advertised as ‘no limits’
By pwning the three branches of government and, therefore, the regulatory environment.
So confidently incorrect, and so deep into false advertising territory.
Ignorance makes her confident. But one can’t be so charitable about the company’s fraud.
Reminds me of that guy who repeatedly asked Verizon to confirm their price was X cents per byte, but ultimately was charged X dollars per byte.
Found it: http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know-dollars-from-cents.html
I’m pretty sure they just decided 4G/LTE = 5G. And now have a 5G+ icon for actual 5G. I noticed that when I moved back to an att MVNO last month after decades away from them.
Also, they deploy a wifi SSID profile called att-passwport that auto connects you to some boingo branded wifi towers in select places (like Home Depot). Can’t be disabled permanently and is pretty fucking annoying. Like “may find alternatives” annoying.
I live a couple hundred yards from a tower and recently returned from a two-week vacation. I had a 4g/LTE icon before I left. Now it says 5G, but my tests show the exact same speeds as before. I think you are correct.
It can depend on the level of service you have with ATT that I have seen. If you are on pre-paid plans, or any MVNO they will cap your speed at like 2-4 Mbps on “5G” and around 5-7 Mbps on “5G+” which seems like actual 5G. They bury it deep in their details. MVNO’s say similar as well…
Click “see details” on any of these and it shows in the iframe: https://www.att.com/prepaid/plans/
Heres an example of an MVNO explaining it: https://www.cricketwireless.com/support/data-and-streaming/network-speeds-and-streaming.html
Now, if you get a post paid plan, and only on the highest tier, do you not get limitations on speed (aka QoS).
They are conflating it with “SD Standard-definition streaming” or “4K UHD streaming available”, where the latter is basically with no QoS and will get full speed and priority on the towers. All others are capped at the speeds stated above that I have seen.
I found the post paid details digging the other day but their website is a hot mess (probably dark patterned intentionally that way).
TL:DR - I am not a fan of the way any of these companies advertise service.
See also: AT&T marketing HSPA+ as 4G LTE.
More things that could never fly if there was honest, real competition in the internet provider market.
Yes, go after Comcast for their confusing marketing and shitty business practices, but nothing would fix the situation faster and better than having them have to actually compete for customers because there were a few other internet providers out there that customers could choose from.
I did i.t. work at a Comcast and asked about it, I kept asking what the 10g memt, they said it’s basically like a new brand. They already rebranded off Comcast to Xfinity because of all the negative connotation against them, now they’re doing it again. I’ve met so many people that didn’t know Xfinity is Comcast
They just changed their company logo/trucks from red to green too as if that’ll change people’s experiences with this shithole of a company.
Even when they use industry-standard terms, like Mbps, they don’t even advertise their upload speed (because it is piss-poor).
Can confirm.
I use Xfinity since they have a monopoly on our area and we don’t really have any other choice. It costs $70/month for 100mbps DOWNLOAD. and it’s about 8mbps upload.
American ISPs are literally the devil
I don’t know how it is for Xfinity, but I work for Spectrum and the low upload is because there is not enough room for it on coaxial cable running at 750MHz or whatever it actually is. A big majority of the bandwidth of the cable, for my company at least, is taken by television and download, which we currently run a docsis 3.0 and a docsis 3.1 segment for download. The upload is a shrimpy part of the band. I know in some areas we are upgrading to support 1.2 or 1.4 GHz, lots more room, so we’re able to increase upload in those areas. This is all rolling out now, I imagine other providers using copper will be doing similar eventually to compete with each other. Lets us run more upload plus double the docsis 3.1 segment so we can go into higher speeds for download (like 2Gbps). One consequence of this is we’re screwing older TV customers, old cable boxes and also TiVo/cable card shit are gonna stop working.
Not trying to astroturf it advertise it whatever, just sharing what they have been telling us. Upload has always been dogshit because they wanted big download numbers to advertise. I literally get free cable from work but have AT&T fiber installed at my house because I can’t handle the instability of the up pipe on coax for some of the shit I do. (Stream to twitch, run a Plex server, etc) it also makes you lag worse in games. Not the overall low speed, just the instability.
I imagine other providers using copper will be doing similar eventually to compete with each other.
Where do you live that you actually have competition? I’ve never heard of two cable providers covering the same territory. The whole industry is a racket.
Where I lived in Maryland, I had Xfinity and FiOS coverage at my house. Probably the reason prices were so reasonable.
They’re rolling out a thing where you can pay a subscription to get 50mbps upload instead, I’m not sure if that’s why it’s so embarrassingly slow
Holy moly that is horrid :/ sorry to hear it.
luckily, that was the original price. after like an hour on support the price was lowered to $55/mo for 300mbps. Not great but at least it’s better.
I went from living in the sticks paying $85 for 500/250 to fios in my new place paying $80 almost gig up and down. I’m happy too but now I wonder if I could have talked them down too. Good idea sir.
Best I can do in my 1k person town in Washington is 10mbps down and less than 1mbps up. It’s 50 bucks a month. They ran fiber lines through our farm ground to get to town this spring though so I’m hoping it’s available soon.
I wish you the same thing that happened to me… I accidentally opened the door to a doorknocker and they asked, “Would you like to save money on your internet connection?”
I told them, “No thank you, I’d actually pay more for faster internet and no cap, since I download a lot…”
They inform me that they’ve just rolled out gigabit fibre on our block. AND IT WAS LESS EXPENSIVE THAN MY 70mbps!
The only time I’ve bitten on doorknocker offer. It was the best computer decision I’ve made since going SSD-only for all games and applications. It’s gigabit up AND down.
This will happen to you. This will happen to you next week. I’m, uhhh… manifesting it as the kids would say.
fiber is a beautiful thing. Both because it’s just objectively better than cable, but also because it side skirts the FCC’s enforced broadband monopolies, so that companies can actually compete in getting it to you. Unfortunately, the fiber expansion in my area has been on an indefinite hold because it’s “awaiting HOA approval”, So everyone around me gets cheap fiber, but my neighborhood is still stuck with xfinity :/
Im with comcast but in UK, nowtv broadband and i pay £21 a month for 70mbps, no issues so far. You guy are gettin ripped off something awful
Yeah it’s the places where they have a monopoly where they get shitty.
I have them where I am but there’s other competition. So I get 1200Mbps down and up for $95 a month. But that includes the extra like $15 a month to have unlimited data which is bullshit.
You should look into starlink!
Starlink costs even more for a slower and more inconstent service
I’m at up to 250mbps down and 10mbps up for $90 usd a month. In fairness though I do see that max speed, and even a bit over it regularly.
There is a local Power company around here that started running fiber to their service area, but sadly I am not in it so I am stuck with ComCrap
I just left their service. I was at 1000 Mbps / 20 Mbps (typically around 850 Mbps / 18 Mbps due to equipment) with unlimited data for $120 a month. Such a waste.
I wish I could, but they are the only high speed around me unless I go with LTE, which can be spotty and is more expensive for slower speeds.
I will say I think I’m till in an intro price. But I’m at $60 for 800 down and I think 20 up
Yeah, I was paying 120 for that
Holy shit lol If mine goes up to that I’ll be canceling and making a new account under my SOs name lol. I have my own modem so it would be really simple to switch over lol
I had someone come to me and ask why they were struggling to upload videos to YouTube despite having a slew of expensive gaming and recording equipment. I had to tell them their only option was to hope that Comcast actually honors their advertised up speed for their business lines and to pay for that.
Xfinity’s 10G network is technically slower than 5G. Peak theoretical throughput on an uncongested 5G network offers up to 20Gbps download and 10Gbps upload. Xfinity caps out at 10Gbps down and up.
In what world are people getting that kind of speed on 5G? In like a lab with perfect conditions and non-consumer equipment? Is this article written by T-Mobile home internet or something? I’ll take Comcast 10G over 5G wireless any day and I hate Comcast.
I automatically assumed 10G was short for 10Gb/s, so I guess I found nothing confusing about the name? They literally are advertising the speed in the name, I think that’s great compared to when they called shit “Blast” and other weird names.
Their network isn’t 10Gbps either. I just had them send me a message last week saying our internet will be out for a day because they’re upgrading their 10G network. Guess what the max speed available is? 1.2Gbps. I was severely disappointed as I desperately need better upload speeds.
It wasn’t until a lot of googling later that I realized their “10G” means nothing and is just a marketing term a la AT&Ts “5Ge” they added to people’s phones to make them think they were getting faster speeds. They state they have future plans to upgrade which means I could get it in a year or 50 years from now.
I detest defending Comcast, but are you positive it was 1.2 Gbps and not 1.2 GBps? Because 1.2GBps is about 10 Gbps
It’s 1.2 Gbps.
I have the same plan. “Speeds up to 1.2Gbps (but you’ll never see more than 800Mbps)!”
Yes I am positive. ISPs never list their speeds in bytes. Pretend to be a new customer signing up for service to see what they really offer if you want confirmation.
The author of this article is a grade A dumbass, or it’s a paid smear piece. Honestly I can’t tell.
If he’s comparing theoreticals, why not include the theoretical 44000Gbps of a fiber optic connection? If the author is somehow reading this: 44000 is more than 20!
In what world are people getting that kind of speed on 5G? In like a lab with perfect conditions and non-consumer equipment?
It’s right in your quote: “Peak theoretical throughput on an uncongested 5G network”
It’s the theoretical limit of the technology, not real-world numbers.
Theoretical limit is actually 70 Gbps which is even more laughable.
Honestly this article is for the less tech savvy, which I doubt much, if any, of the current Lemmy user base qualify as. It’s not a horrible one as far as that goes.
The network is capable of 10Gbps, but are those speeds being offered? That bit might be a bit disingenuous, if you called the network by its max capable speeds, confusing people on lower tiers? I don’t know. Easier to talk about fibre to the home and its impact on ubiquity and reliability without getting into the names that imply speeds, to my tastes. Hear you on the rest and the name’s meaning too.
Yeah if Comcast wants to refer to their asymmetrical 1.2Gbps connection using its theoretical maximum, why can’t others compare it to other network’s theoretical maximums?
It’s all that Millimeter Wave 5G garbage that drops coverage like a fart in the wind, hardly ever works, requires more expensive phone plans, and requires a special radio on your phone in addition to the normal 5g one.
That hasn’t been my experience with it at all. I quite enjoy the >500Mbps and 19 ms ping, and reliability is fine now.
well obviously it means 10gbit, like some other places advertise 1gbit as 1g
They have had a 100Gbps network for years now. No one is getting 10Gbps to the house
Holy shit, if people thought 5G causes cancer what will they think of 10G?
Double cancer!
Are you sure it isn’t exponential? If 5G gives you 1 cancer then clearly 10G gives you 5 cancers!
I’ll give up 5g and a middle toe if I could just have 3g back. I live in the middle of no where and 3g worked great, we got rid of that and now phone loves to say it has 5g while fucking off and not loading anything.
I’m going to assume that 4g works decently enough where you are at this point. Much the same thing happened during the 4g rollout - it was too sparse, the phone spent too many resources hunting for a 4g signal when 3g was right there. You end up with a less stable connection because it’s constantly bouncing back and forth.
I think if you look up how to disable 5g on whatever phone you have (which is possible on any phone) and stick to 4g for now you’ll find the performance is as good as ever - if not better, with some of the load from other users being pushed to 5g.
I worked for “a major phone company” when 4g was rolling out. It’s unfortunate during this period, but I don’t know how you prevent it. 5g will objectively be better for 99.9% of users at some point - it might not be now, but everyone has to sell a 5g phone to “future proof” and have another selling feature. I wish the companies would educate people a little more on the rollout but then you’re basically telling them “this thing we’re selling you isn’t really ready yet”. And I mean, if you live in a major city, it’s working just fine… but not everybody does.
This is what I do when I’m at busy events and the service is degraded.
Just keep cutting off levels until I get to one that works well.
The 5G cancer thing is laughable, C-band and Ka-band have been in use for years. I have been around them (plus X/Ku/L/S bands) for decades I’m still here. I have been exposed accidentally over 1000x times the FCC limits for more than a short time in the 90’s and am still here. Non ionizing radiation isnt that bad.
You know (other than the accidental breaches) is the worst leaking device onsite. The microwave oven.
Whenever I hear people freaking out about 5g I just point at the angry fucker in the sky and ask how much radiation they think that releases and how dangerous they think it is. I have gotten a surprisingly diverse amount of answers. From “Thats why I want to live underground” to “But its natural” I wanted to punch the second one.
The sun is a giant radioactive ball of hydrogen that blasts the Earth every day. We have “Sun Outages” 2x a year on every antenna. Power levels that are amazing to measured on a spectrum analyzer, and some tower miles away is gonna kill me. Put in the inverse square law, LOS, atmospheric and structural attenuation and I bet I can barely detect it. No chance its going to anywhere the FCC limit of 10 mW/cm
Oh and they can go underground, enjoy the radon gas emissions. Way worse than non-ionizing radiation.
I didn’t need that last part bro I’m just tryna eat a burrito
The 5G cancer paranoia isn’t even based on any specific frequency that they think is causing cancer, because they think 5G itself is a frequency. They’re just opposed to anything new and so they search for arguments that justify their feelings. I guarantee this whole thing will pop up again when we get around to 6G, even if the frequencies are all exactly the same as 5G. It’s just the way idiots are
I never thought of it that way, how people really have no understanding of RF. Thank you for the new perspective, hopefully I can use that info to talk people off the ledge.
I mean. Our microwave is one of those cheap countertop versions in our walk in pantry. I always leave the pantry if I run it. And tell my kids the same.
Probably paranoia but their head is like, perfect height for the door on that thing.
I can’t remember their frequency range. I’ll have to pull out the spectrum analyzer and feed horns to see what range its in tomorrow at work.
Yeah. I KNOW they blast out on 2.4 and 5.9 GHz. Especially 2.4, but a ton of stuff does that.
I just dont necessarily trust the sheilding on a $50 microwave and just prefer to take a few steps back. But again, probably just paranoia.
I know I have a 5.9GHz horn, might have to make a lower freq one to test out the 2.4GHz range. Or go poor boy and run the end of a cable (N type is my goto) around the seals.
I do know its in cell phone range because we used to put out phones in the microwave when we were oncall and did want to go in. Poor mans Faraday cage.
And I wouldnt trust the seal, I have run a Narda of ours and its hands down the leakiest device/waveguide junction/etc around next to standing in the beam path.
Fuck it, why not 100G?
Hey don’t skip ahead. We haven’t gotten to that part of the movie yet.
GWay 2000
Mine is 11.
Actually mine is .007, because I live 120 miles away from silicon valley, which may as well be a 3rd world country the way we let service “providers” only cater to markets they choose.
I don’t think it’s intent is to confuse people with 5G. It’s that they finally have actual competition.
https://epb.com/fi-speed-internet/10-gig/
EPB in Chattanooga announced the rollout of 10 Gbps service. Within a time span best measured in weeks I start seeing Billboards and Ads for Comcast’s own 10G network.
This is exactly how Comcast’s 1 Gig rolled out for my area. EPB announced 1 Gbps to residential and whaddya know? Comcast now offers 800 Mpbs followed later by 1000 and 1200.
I can’t wait for the new Comcast I like your cut-g network
Where’s the 6 and 7Gs? How much is one G?
Imagine how crazy it would be if ISPs just… actually… upgrades infrastructure with their billions in profits+government subsidies/handouts? Like, damn, imagine. US might actually have internet on par with the countries it considers shitholes
… That’s exactly what’s happening here?
They are offering 10gbps residential speeds. That’s the highest consumer hardware is capable of. And even then, you would need a $100 network card to make use of it.
And even then, this is faster than sata3 ssds. You’d need an nvme ssd if you want to download a file at that speed.
Futhermore, unless you have a personal server somewhere, or paying a huge premium, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone serving you anything at 10gbps. Your best bet would be steam or an expensive plan from a file hosting service.
If everybody followed that logic in the 90s we’d still be on dialup. The root of the point though is “we” gave them billions of dollars like 20 years ago which they immediately did the absolute bare-ass minimum to claim “well, we did do that one thing over there in 2005…” and the rest of the money just kinda went poof along with all those profits stolen from the workers. Not reinvested into infrastructure, just shat out their asses to “investors” and executive officers.
We should’ve all had symmetrical (which is another thing Comcast sucks at) 1gig up/down a decade ago at least.
I’ve personally had gigabit fiber for years now, but that’s only because I specifically shopped for houses with multiple ISPs available and gigabit ready to go. That shouldn’t be necessary. Everyone should have it available with some very few exceptions for very rural people.
This very specific article is silly though if it’s any consolation to the reaming I’m giving Comcast. Yeah they should make this stuff more obvious I guess, but it seems like such a niche boomer grandma thing to fall for. I’d prefer an article ripping into the specific corruptions of officers and big investors at the telecomms and their regulators. Name and shame and provide addresses too. These people don’t deserve any semblance of peace
This is the new DOCSIS4.0 network. I really don’t understand how it is as contentious as everyone makes it out to be. It’s a new standard allowing for faster speeds.
Because it’s not 10G. Not in Gigs or Generations. Docsis 3.1 is 10G/2G. They’re not handing out those speeds. It doesn’t matter that they have 10G/6G capable hardware when they’re still selling people 800/300 at best.
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It’s contentious because it is intentionally confusing and doesn’t need to be.
They can just call it DOCSIS 4.0 and tell their actual speeds. It’s not like they need to hide it. Comcast and other cable providers are finally getting multi gig speeds and their piss poor upload speeds are being raised. Meanwhile fiber providers like Verizon FIOS have yet to roll out consumer multgig outside of NYC and still don’t have IPV6 available everywhere.
How is it intentionally confusing?
Providers have been using G for speeds for a long time. Just because the media became obsessed with 5G for some reason, which uses G for Gen, doesn’t mean the other use of G became intentionally confusing.
They can just call it DOCSIS 4.0
And nobody, including myself will know what it means without searching. The actual speed is 10G. As in 10gbps.
I’ve beenbkinda tracking this 10g branding for a while. The link speed isn’t actually 10g and they say it’s the 10th generation of their service.
G never meant speed, you have Gb, gb, gb/s(which is gigabit/second) and GB/s (gigabyte/second). This in itself was marketing nonsense made by network providers to put bigger numbers by using a measurement
And FWIW, docsis has been around for a long time and is basically meaningless for normal end users. It’s the protocol that your modem/router uses to connect to the CSPs network. You only need to know what it is if something goes wrong or you’re studying networking
What are the “actual speeds?” They’re selling 10gbps circuits so I don’t really see a problem with this.
This article talks about low upload speeds on existing infra and completely ignores the fact that the limitations they spell out are a factor of extremely limited upload spectra on traditional DOCSIS networks. This is a problem with the technical standard, not the carriers (which have their own problems)
The funniest part is that the DOCSIS4.0 spec is addressing this limitation yet here we are.
Is node over subscription a problem? Absolutely. But I don’t think the root of that problem is the marketing department.
I would not put much stock in this article because they are either uninformed on what they’re reporting on, or intentionally telling half truths. There are enough reasons to hate cable companies, we don’t need to invent new ones.
It’s just clickbait for under-informed people looking for another “cable co bad” article. Granted, they really should say 10Gig, but I genuinely don’t see how Joe Consumer would see that ad and go “oh wow! That’s twice as fast as my phone!!!1!!1”
I agree. It would be one thing if they advertised symmetric speeds, but they aren’t. The FCC will also have cable companies labeling internet plans with these soon. This seems like a nonissue.
