this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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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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[–] [email protected] 174 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Even when they use industry-standard terms, like Mbps, they don't even advertise their upload speed (because it is piss-poor).

[–] [email protected] 122 points 1 year ago (12 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Holy moly that is horrid :/ sorry to hear it.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Here in Alaska you can have a cell line, 500mbps, and unlimited data for $125.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 135 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago

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!

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

It’s 1.2 Gbps.

I have the same plan. “Speeds up to 1.2Gbps (but you’ll never see more than 800Mbps)!”

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You have an unlimited amount of water in that glass, assuming you don't drink it all.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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'

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Holy shit, if people thought 5G causes cancer what will they think of 10G?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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"

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Cable companies are garbage but this is a rare unneeded self own on Comcast’s part. They’re cashing in on the 5G hype even though their offerings are better. 5G is barely faster than LTE outside of UWB in the US which is extremely limited in coverage.

They’re rolling out multi gig when even my fiber FIOS connection is limited to just under 1Gbps DL. Cable companies like Comcast are even increasing their piss poor upload speeds. There is no need to try to confuse people with this 10G marketing nonsense.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

well obviously it means 10gbit, like some other places advertise 1gbit as 1g

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

They have had a 100Gbps network for years now. No one is getting 10Gbps to the house

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I am so thankful to have fiber. I am paying $50 a month for 300 mbps up and down. It's nice.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I live in a small city with municipal fiber. 1 Gbps symmetrical is glorious and I would happily pay more than the $70 they're charging.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (8 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I didn't need that last part bro I'm just tryna eat a burrito

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Hey don't skip ahead. We haven't gotten to that part of the movie yet.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Should possibly also touch on the issue of 5G not really being 5G. Same as 4G not really being 4G:

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/not-all-5g-is-the-same-all-the-flavors-and-names-explained/

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I can't wait for the new Comcast I like your cut-g network

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

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