Comcast advertising “10G” in hopes to confuse consumers to accept slower speeds

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'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 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.

Most people don't even understand mbps. People get the most expensive plans when it won't even make a difference for what they do, they just believe it will work better.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

See also: AT&T marketing HSPA+ as 4G LTE.

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.

Double cancer!

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.

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.

Agreed. My area already has 100mpbs and 200mpbs uploads too.

They’re scared shitless of wireless / 5G/LTE providers offering service. I’ve never seen so many scare ads about how three old ladies watching YouTube will yank your home wifi or that you’ll have to cut down every tree so you can see the cell tower to get service.

The only places they were installing faster service is where they have competition from fiber and with viable wireless competitors they’re running scared.

I honestly think it was in response to EPB. I noticed EPB advertising 10 Gig and then weeks later noticed Comcast advertising 10G.

Checking EPB's site they claim to be the first 10 Gig residential provider in the U.S. and I don't doubt it. It's on their back alone Chattanooga got deemed Gig city. Which I might add suddenly meant that Comcast began offering near (and later actual and higher) 1 Gbps speeds not on business accounts.

Yeah it's total marketing nonsense, always have to be informed as a customer and not fall into that trap. Always chose fiber if available, if you have to suck it up with cable, check the actual speed you're getting.

WiFi hotstpot through your phone provider can be a solution, however many providers have a cap on hotspot data in fine print even with unlimited data plans. Check that.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Marketers kind of backed themselves into a corner when they named 4G LTE. It was supposed to be an intermediate step between 3G and 4G, but when they rolled out actual 4G, people thought going from "4G LTE" to "4G" sounded like a downgrade, so they called 4G proper "5G" at around the same time actual 5G was rolling out, creating a massive clusterfuck.

4G not being 4G was different though, because 4G had absurd speed requirements that it had to hit before it could be classified as true 4G. That's why everyone had to use "lte", even though they were using the 4G standard, they didn't have fast enough service. Thankfully, 5G dropped those silly requirements, so other than AT&T's 5Ge debacle, all of the phones saying they're 5G are actually 5G. It is important to know that there's different types of 5G that are good for different situations, low band 5G is great for rural areas because it has better range than 4G and high band 5G is great for cities because it has better speed than 4G, but it's all still 5G

... 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.

It's twice as fast as the government tracking provided by 5G!

(...or whatever it is the nut jobs say about 5G...)

Where is that? I get 300 down and 10 up for ~50