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

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 607 points –
Don't be fooled: Comcast's ‘10G’ doesn't mean what you think it does
pcworld.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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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

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 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

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

500mbps up? Or just down

500 down, maybe 50 up but I’d have to go check.

Edit: $110/mo for 500 down / 20 up, 600gb monthly cap before throttling.

Their only unlimited data plan is actually $185/mo. 2.5gbps download, 75 mbps upload.

That's awful. For a long time they were the only ones offering over 100m in my area, I hated the asymmetrical speeds but at least the service was reliable. Jumped ship as soon as fiber came to the area.

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.

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

We have isp competition that they show roll upgrades on (we don’t get the fastest stuff but a few years later it starts trickling in) but at least we’re not that bad off, I have 900down for 70

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.

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.