10mo ago

2G, 3G, 4G, 5G mobile data made some sense as it represents generational leaps in the technology itself but then Xfinity wants to advertise "10g" internet...

Comcast says it represents a 10 Gigabit cable internet network they are building (it doesn’t exist) so they are basically changing the meaning of the g from generation to gig to act like 10g is 5 generations better (or twice as fast)…or that they have a 10 gigabit network. Neither is accurate. It’s still just cable internet that people have to use because they have no other option.

Fuck Comcast.

I read online they are abandoning the “confusing” 10g branding but I just saw a commercial for it. They think all of their customers are morons and count on folks having no other choices in a lot of cases.

Apologies to anyone outside the United States, this is just complaining about our poor internet options and deceptive advertising by greedy corporations.

110 comments

Screen manufacturers just did a similar thing with the jump from 1080p to 4k
The 1080 part of the original number referred to the number of pixels from top to bottom, 4k refers to left to right. 4k is actually only 2160 from top to bottom though (at the same aspect ratio).
So they quadrupled the number when it should have only doubled, and it was entirely a marketing thing.
- Don't even get me started on the bullshit that is calling 1440p 2k
  
  1440p can be seen as 720p * 2.
- There are 4x the pixels so.....
  I don't disagree with the change either. Having a large number makes it more difficult to compare. After 2160 it's 4320. 2k, 4k, and 8k are far easier to remember and figure out the differences.
  
  In my past life I was a video editor while 4k was still at its infancy, and my coworker was furious saying that reporters were idiots for saying that 4K was 4 times the size of HD, it was just the name. And I'm like, dude is actually 4 times more and show him a picture of the size comparison of both and he was really ashamed, but I told him it was ok because I was also thinking the same until I read an article about it.
  
  Exactly. The up tick in resolution was slow, 360 to 480 to 720 to 1080. Relatively small improvements. Then we jump to 2160/4k and the resolution goes up by 400% from the previous 1080. 4k is 4x1080 screens put together.
  
  There are 4x the pixels so.....
  Totally agree, but then
  2k, 4k, and 8k
  Is internally inconsistent!
  If 4k is four times the pixel count of 1080, then 2k means 1440 (-ish, it should be 1530) - that's fine. But then 8k must be 3050, but it is actually 4320!!!
  So it can not refer to the number of pixels (quadratic scaling). On the other hand, if we assume linear scaling and 8k is 4320 and 4k is 2160, then 2k is 1080 - but 2k is never used in that context!
  Edit: as you can see I'm very passionate about this XD
- Why marketers are allowed to label the speed of a network is just beyond me as an engineer. Call it whatever you want. "Our Purple speed". Don't care. But underthat it should be labeled with a standard 1gbps/1gbps.
  That would shut up xfinity's bullshit claims pretty quick. "Our new Plaid speed fiber" 200mbps/4mbps
  Seriously I called them years ago asking about fiber, they were real hyped, they bragged they could give me 800! 800 what I asked. Megabytes! Megabytes or Megabits? 800 Megabits, okay fine, symmetric right? Well, no one uses upload anyway. That was their literal response.
  
  symmetric right?
  I talked about this in another thread recently, but my favorites are the ones that are so lopsided that you literally can't send back ACKs fast enough to keep up with your own download speeds when using TCP.
  
  Download-only internet.
  Your water line is now connected! There are no faucets in the house.
- But at least 4k is indeed 4 times bigger than 1080p, at least in terms of pixels, so it's not all bullshit in a way
  
  I like to call 1440 "4k" as well because it's 4 times bigger than 720. Stupid fucking naming system
- And 4K isn‘t even correct in the horizontal direction. "4K" TVs have a horizontal resolution of 3840 pixels. That’s 3.8K. True 4K, as used in movie production (aka DCI 4K) is 4096x2160
  
  Technically should be called 4.096K I suppose
- The worst part is that it's actually less than 4k pixels on the top.
- 2160p is not that uncommon though. Saying 4K is just an abbreviation and it's easier to say while still letting everyone know what you're talking about. I don't actually like the term 4K though because it's a bit ambiguous because of how many different flavors of 4K there are.
- It's actually even worse. They tried to pass off 2048x1080 as a big upgrade over 1920x1080 by marketing it as "2K". It didn't work, but locked marketing into using the horizontal resolution.
  
  That’s actually being used in the context of movie production. It’s called DCI 2K. Same with DCI 4K, which is 4096x2160 and thus actual 4K

Ars reported on this at the end of January.
Comcast reluctantly agrees to stop its misleading “10G Network” claims. Comcast said it will drop "Xfinity 10G Network" brand name after losing appeal.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/comcast-to-stop-calling-entire-network-10g-as-name-is-ruled-misleading/
- They say that but are running the ads this very night during college basketball games…
  
  Yeah, it’s still confusing. It could be that since the ruling was made less than a month ago, there are active ad campaigns that they’re just going to let run their course, rather than cancel them.
  But also, note the following from the source article:
  Comcast said it may still use 10G in ways that are less likely to confuse consumers. "Consistent with the panel's recommendation... Comcast reserves the right to use the term '10G' or 'Xfinity 10G' in a manner that does not misleadingly describe the Xfinity network itself," the company said.
  When contacted by Ars, a Comcast spokesperson said, "We disagree with the decision but are pleased that we have confirmed our continued use of 10G in advertising."
  So maybe Ars overstepped in their headline?

You are conflating Internet service speed and mobile generations. I work for an ISP. I hear this all the time. Especially since there's also "5G WiFi" which is 5 GHz band. People confuse it all, and it's understandable but still annoying.
My company offers 1 Gbps service. No one is getting confused by that yet, but our modems have 2.5 Gbps Ethernet ports now, and I had a customer that was outraged the other day because "Your modem is only 2.5 G and all my devices use 5G! You need to send me a 5G modem!!" FFS
- Sure, but they really should be describing it as 10Gb (gigabit). Even that could easily get confused with 10GB (gigabyte), which would be used for a file size.
  
  Internet providers have always done this. Its not a new thing.
  
  10GB or GiB?
  
  I think you'll find, if your look deep, that the average customer IS DUMB AS FUCKING BRICKS AND DOESN'T KNOW WHAT FROM WHAT, BIG NUMBER GOOD

Pretty sure they're getting sued on 10g.
But 5g is bullshit too.
The telecoms agreed what threshold of improvement warranted a "new g" but they sell more funa when the number goes up.
So they started making up sub versions of 4g and then all agreed to have 5g before meeting the threshold for it.
- Yep, this is exactly it. When 3g was going away and 4g was starting up, T-Mobile pulled the same thing trying to brand their UMTS stuff as 4g when it's clearly a 3g protocol. You can always rely on the marketers to lie until the end of time.

It was hilariously reading the presser on NBCComcrap talking about how 10G DOCSIS development is progressing and they could almost hit 10Gbps in labs on the downlink but uplink would only be a few hundred megabits tops. Like, none of those numbers are worth selling a marketing brand of "10G". Real fiber Internet can hit it, my provider offers 10Gbps/10Gbps. That could be called "10G" - if we continued to conflate speed with generations like Comcrap tried to do.
I really wish the FCC would step up and slap all these companies perpetuating these weird lie terms the last half a decade.
- Haha yes it would be nice if the FCC wasn’t beholden to these companies based on their lobbyists flooding money into Washington…

I am so, so, SO glad I'm now in a home with access to fiber Internet. Real, 2 gigabit symmetric fiber.
The cable company keeps sending me glossy ads in the mail - several per week - trying to get me to go back to 1/4 the bandwidth at the same price. Uhhhh... no.
- Same here. Before fiber came to my suburb I could only choose AT&T or Comcast. AT&T’s fastest plan was 50mbps and never pulled more than 30. They’ve had permits here to put up Verizon 5G towers for 5 years but haven’t built a single one because of the tin foil hat brigade. I would love to switch to Verizon because I’d save a shitload on bundling it with my cell phones. Verizon has LTE but that would be like going back to the DSL.
  
  Spectrum's "deal" for my location was 500/10 mbps for $90/month "introductory price". I asked what the price would be at the end of the introductory period, and they refused to tell me.
  Meanwhile, Frontier gives me 2/2 gbps for $100/month, no price changes.
  I have no interest in TV, I don't even pay for streaming, so at the end of the day Internet performance is all I care about.
  
  What you need is to get your neighborhood on board. If you can generate interest they it suddenly becomes more cost effective for a company to install fiber.
- Our subdivision was built in about 2004. They didn't put dark fiber in the ground, for some reason. It took about fifteen years for a private company to come in and lay fiber. I had Comcast/Xfinity at the time (I think it was 250Mb, and definitely asynchronous), who had already started sending out their promotions for gigabit internet service, so I called them up to see if I could get that. "That's only available if you get internet and TV and phone."
  Oh, so you can give me just gigabit internet, but you won't give me just gigabit internet.
  It was another year before the fiber service was lit, I was the first person to get it in my neighborhood, and it is absolutely fantastic.

ITU defined 4G in 2008 as wireless connectivity with speed of 100 megabits per second for mobile users and 1 gigabit per second for stationary users.
LTE never achieved such speeds. It did not stop mobile operators from calling their service 4G.
ITU since then revised their definition to lower the required network speed.
5G was supposed to have network speeds of 10 gigabits per second. ITU however wisened up and are just defining it as 'fifth-generation wireless', because the mobile operators will butcher the definition anyway.
- Well there you have it. If ITU hasn't defined 10G, then ISP's can call it whatever they want. It's not regulated.
- LTE Long term evolution, I think 5g is still LTE. 5g builds on the tech of 4g.
  
  Yup. 5G is LTE with more frequency bands.
  Just slap one more antenna into your phone, that's how we're increasing network speed.
- Interesting

Because of all the bullshit with subsidies etc. intended for improving broadband infrastructure being abused, my dream is:
All the poles & lines (and access rights to them) are nationalized and then opened up for individual ISPs to service. Current ISP exclusivity contracts/agreements should be dissolved. Let them actually compete for customers with price, features and customer service.
The government should also offer tax-funded baseline connectivity to everyone since it's effectively impossible to live in modern society without internet access. The provided speeds must be sufficient for a typical bloated framework-script-heavy site, all (meta)data/packets should be considered constitutionally protected private info not able to be monitored/scraped/sold.
Use building out and supporting the above as a useful jobs program instead of more military adjacent stuff.
- You have my vote if you run for office.
  I’ve heard in other countries they have a CHOICE of electricity providers. Boggles my mind. CHOOSE who you buy electricity from? Like more than 1?
  
  In Atlanta I had a choice of natural gas companies, even though it would have been cheaper if there were simply one single regulated monopoly.
  Competing utilities are just a way to give out cash to rent-seeking middlemen.
  
  This is the case in the UK. Rare example of where privatisation of a utility went well. Don't ask about the water
  
  Pennsylvania has choice of electricity provider. You pay a line maintenance fee to the line owner of a few cents per kWh, then you have a choice of dozens of providers for the electricity itself.
- In my city there is so much completion in the internet space that the prices have dropped significantly. It is also in very high demand as my city is growing extremely fast.
  I'm not sure if it will last but the demand made it cost effective for the internet companies to install fiber everywhere. They literally have trucks and people deploying new fiber lines 5 days a week.

They should be forced to have a standard like a food label. Should show average speed and uptime for past 12 months
- Crazy idea...
  Phone OS developers often fight with carriers about the network labels that get displayed on a phone's status bar. Carriers often demand a certain name and label to be shown.
  Apple does some shitty stuff, but they have often been able to strong-arm carriers into industry-wide customer experience improvements, because they have a monopoly on iOS and have fast OS update adoption. Apple should just push a software update that always shows bandwidth instead of "4G," "LTE," "5G." Then they should update their maps app to show crowd sourced bandwidth speeds across a carriers's network.
  Air their dirty laundry and watch them squirm.
  
  Good idea on theory but it would have to constantly be doing speed tests in the background and those eat up a ton of bandwidth. All the phone knows is what kind of network it's connected to and what kind of signal strength it has

This smells a bit like the old Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades.
- Pretty funny the blades on disposables actually did top out at 5. The Onion wins the prediction game again.
  (I know there's a 6 blade brand out there but I think it's the only one, whereas all the big companies make 5. So glad I got out of the disposables and traded them for safety razors anyway-- dunno why it took me so long)
  
  Probably fear of cutting yourself with that single blade.
  That's what took me so long.
  BTW, anyone here who face shaves regularly, switch to a safety razor. This is a threat.

Honestly, this is the same shit the telcoms have been doing for decades. They also did it with the previous generations.
When telcoms started promoting “3G” it was a mix between networks with proper broadband speeds, and edge networks that were more like 2.5G. 4G was an even bigger dumpster fire with a very wide array of “fourth generation” specs that ranged from glorified 3G to actual next generation speeds. And 5G is a repeat of this marketing bullshit trend.
You can really see the effects of this if you get to rural coverage areas. Your phone might say it’s on 5G or 4G, and you might be experiencing shit speeds even if you have decent reception. You might be on a part of the network that the marketing department considers 4 or 5G, but doesn’t mean it’s actually fast.
IMHO, we need consumer protection laws that prevent companies from using brand names or generational buzz words to trick customers. Network speeds should be advertised in bits per second, or standardized BPS chunks.
- Cell carriers in the US releasing 3G+ technologies branded as 4Gs should have gotten the FTC on a crackdown, but regulatory capture and it is all just marketing fluff. The sales flacks selling it can't even answer questions like "what kinds of bandwidth can I expect to see? Do I get a minimum QoS?"
  
  “You’re minimum speed in your area is 5G with Unlimited Stream Blast+”
- Also, why was 4G called LTE but not 3G or 5G?
  
  It's all mostly a marketing speak.
  LTE is a proper name for the latest flavour of a wireless connectivity steandard. It simply means 'long-term evolution', because naming it after the actual underlying algorithms would be 'orthogonal frequency-division with multiple access' was too long even for nerds who created that standard, and also it uses simpler frequency-division with multiple access for transmitting data from your phone to the cell tower, so the actual proper name would be 'OFDMA uplink FDMA downlink'.
  And 5G is still mostly LTE, just with extra radio channels and an optional millimeter frequency support.
  There were similarly several 3G technologies - HSDPA, HSPA+, DC-HSDPA, DC-HSDPA w/MIMO, each offering a better speed, but that would be confusing, so the operators just named everything as 3G.
  
  It depends on the carrier. I'm on AT&T's network, and they have parts of the network that they labeled "4G" and parts that they labeled "LTE."
  The simplest answer is to Google what your carrier considers LTE, 3G, and 4G speeds. Some carriers consider LTE to be their "4G," some carriers have networks labeled 4G and LTE, some carriers consider LTE to be 3G+, some consider 4G to be 3G+ ... it's all a big mess, it depends on what the marketing team decided to label the network hardware, and every carrier has different definitions for the same terms.

Xfinity is Comcast. It’s incredible they were able to rebrand themselves.

I was genuinely convinced they offered 10gig service in some markets. Doesn't surprise me that its all marketing nonsense.
Just a tip for anyone who wants to know, if you have Comcast business internet they'll tell you you have to use their modem but, you can swap it out with a 3rd patty modem and use the live chat service to get it activated. Then you can send back their modem for free at a ups store. Every salesperson will tell you its not possible but it absolutely is.
- If the end user was getting 10 gig I wouldn't even be all that mad about it.

Comcast can't even do symmetric speeds. I'm not sure what locations have thier best speeds but in my area, where they compete with the much more affordable but not as large coverage area offerings of fiber. The idea that they could offer even a signle gigabit level service to the majority of their customers is laughable.
I bet it did lead to a lot of confusion especially when you called up for 10GIGABITS and got offered plans in the Megabits with usage limits and overage fees and all kinds of complicated shit. I called in to cancel my service a few months back when i moved to an area with fiber again, they said "we offer gigabit too you know" and i was like , nah you kinda don't actually, but even if you did its like 3 times as expensive for just the download speeds.
- Comcast offers 2gigabit in the town I work in. So yea, they kinda do offer it in certain areas. You are correct though, very limited upload speeds.

Wireless "G" labeling has always mostly been marketing wank anyway.
The actual technology has used more pragmatic (if less marketing friendly) terminology.
- Absolutely. 3G, 4G, 5G - they’re all a mess. Each G is a wild mix of specs with wildly varying speeds. And many parts of a next generation network are a glorified version of the previous generation network with no large generational speed bumps.
  Government organizations like the FCC should force telecoms to advertise speeds as bits per second.
  
  It's tricky though, do they advertise their maximum speed in all areas? Or the minimum speed? Or the average speed?
  If you have 50 megabit service in New York City with multiple millions of people can you then offer 3G speeds to the rest of the state and still advertise it is 5G?
  I get 45 in town, is it a birthday party the other day and I could barely get 1.
- It’s all about the benjamins. Ain’t nothing but a G thing.

Fuck Comcast. Even when it was clear what they were referring to, they made it seem like they were offering 10gigabit fiber service. Nope, same old service offerings. There’s some plausibility: some of us have had gigabit fiber for years and if ComCast wants to reset its reputation. One way is to jump ahead rolling out the next generation of technology. Nope. @Next generation of technology” is apparently upgrading their infrastructure to be able to achieve what they’ve sold for years
Is 200/20M asymmetric, over provisioned up the wazoo, shared across the neighborhood m, high latency, any better now that it’s relabeled?
- I've personally had ok experiences with them. There service is fast and well priced. There support can be a little annoying at times but they get the job done for the most part.
  Compare that to AT&T which is expensive and awful to deal with. There support is the worst support I've ever talked to. I had to deal with them for work and they kept transferring me repeatedly and I even managed to get on the line with a computer trying to sell me an alert button in case I fell.

Imagine not calling your 10 Gig network Mr Gigs.
- Are you from the Onion?
  
  I'm sorry sir, I only possess moderately passable IT skills.
- That name again is Mr. Gigs

United States of Advertising

Fraud is legal if you're doing it to consumers
- If you finance the campaigns of the folks who make the laws anything can be made legal

In Canada we have (had?) a telecom company come up with Fibe Internet, to mimic Fibre Internet.

This is confusing, but the mobile gens are for cell data.
Wifi has 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands.
Internet service can be offered with Gbps speeds. 10Gbps can be called 10gig or 10g. That's also crazy fast for what's standard right now.
- Verizon and TMobile have been advertising 5g home internet with a discount to their mobile customers, I think that is where Comcast is aiming these ads. To get people to conflate it. Most folks watching these ads don’t know what a gigabit is they are just thinking oh wow maybe Comcast is better.
  For the people who do know what a gigabit is, Comcast is saying they are “building a 10 gig network” which means fucking nothing. I’m building a 1,000 story house. There are going to be 998 new stories on my house soon, you see! You’ll see.

Of course they did. They know the average person would see xfinity saying they have 10G and assume their service is 5x better than every other service.
Ads from large companies rely on people being braindead and not complaining when the product they get is a scam or false advertising. At least, that's how I see it.
- 10g fights the 5g that's turning everyone into gay frogs. You won't need the 5g blockers anymore.

Meanwhile my fiber provider actually offers 5 gig symmetrical for $150 a month. I don't have the network gear to do over a gig, but they offer it and it's a hell of a lot cheaper and better than Comcast.

The next one can be called "Series X...G"

I would be surprised if ITU lets them get away with that. 🤔

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