Ad Board To Comcast: Stop Claiming You Have the 'Fastest Internet' (arstechnica.com) 101
The National Advertising Division (NDA) said on Monday that Comcast should stop claiming that its Xfinity service delivers the "fastest Internet in America," adding that the carrier should also discontinue some ads where it claims to offer the "fastest in-home Wi-Fi." ArsTechnica reports: For its fastest Internet claim, Comcast relied on crowdsourced data from the Ookla Speedtest application. An "award" provided by Ookla to Comcast relied only on the top 10 percent of each ISP's download results. "Although Xfinity offers a variety of speeds at a range of prices and tiers, Comcast's advertising does not limit its claims to a particular tier," the NAD's announcement said. "NAD determined that the claims at issue in both print and broadcast advertising reasonably conveyed a message of overall superiority -- that regardless of which speed tier purchased by a consumer, in a head-to-head comparison, Xfinity would deliver faster speeds." Though one methodology might be reliable for one purpose, "it may not be sufficient substantiation for advertising claims made in a different context," the NAD said. Ookla's methodology "wasn't a good fit for the purposes of substantiating Comcast's overall superior speed performance claim that 'Xfinity delivers the fastest Internet in America,'" the NAD also said.
Not a Comcast shill, but... (Score:1)
Who provides a larger number of internet connections at higher speeds than Comcast?
Sure, there are faster speeds available, but only in extremely select, limited areas. As far as consumer connections are concerned, and ones that are available nationwide (not in a few select cities, cough Google Fiber, or only in a handful of areas like Fios/U-Verse), I'd say their claim is true.
Re:Not a Comcast shill, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
To be the fastest internet in America, you have to provide the fastest internet in America. Just one counter example is enough to discredit the claim. If you are going to argue semantics where size of area served is taken into account, than add that qualifier to the claim!
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Yes, and Comcast in my area is even faster, which would be useful if their uptime was better than 60%. Sure, when the internet is UP it's fast, but considering 24/7 throughput on a business connection, they're hardly the "fastest".
Re: Not a Comcast shill, but... (Score:1)
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Who provides a larger number of internet connections at higher speeds than Comcast?
You know that's a completely different metric, right?
Sure, there are faster speeds available, but only in extremely select, limited areas.
As are the limited areas where Comcast's speed is 1Gb/s or higher. You know they probably use those ads in markets where those select few competitors are available too...
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Perhaps their ad should say, "We suck slightly less than all the other greedy sleazy competition-free ISPs."
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Now you've gone from fudging the truth to flat out lying.
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"...we suck slightly less in terms of speed..."
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Re: Not a Comcast shill, but... (Score:2)
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I have Uverse, with 45mbps down on a 55/6 pair-bonded profile. According to Speedtest, I just got 50.74 down, and 5.47up.
As of my next bill, my data cap is 1TB/month. Right now, it's either 600gb or 750gb.
U-verse seems to be fairly lenient with both the max speed and usage byte-counting.
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Er... what?
If we go by that metric, then the fastest internet is satellite or cellular. Those are available in far more places than Comcast (or cable in general) is and are usually faster than a landline with a 56k modem. (Which, despite the copper network being largely left to rot be some phone companies, is STILL more ubiquitous than cable.)
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As someone who's recently relocated frequently enough to have tried out different providers, I can say - just about anybody.
In Charlotte, I had TWC and in Atlanta, Charter. Here near DC, I have Comcast. TWC was good, Charter was great but Comcast here is a dog. Even though they claim to offer 50 or 100 Mbps, I often find the streaming or the browser slowing to a crawl. An issue that I didn't have w/ the other 2. Only good thing about Comcast - they support IPv6 - their business package does. Their h
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Everybody else is most certainly NOT limited to IPv4.
I have U-verse (45mbps down, 55/6 bonded profile), and have IPv6 with a /60 prefix.
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It depends what you're connecting to. Their network is very heavily optimized to make http requests to popular American websites, plus services like Youtube, work well.
HOWEVER... their connectivity to arbitrary hosts in foreign countries isn't nearly as impressive.
Four years ago, I switched from Comcast (50mbps down) to U-verse (24mbps down, 3mbps up) and ran a bunch of connectivity benchmarks the day before I cancelled Comcast. I was in Miami, and the servers I connected to were in cities like Taipei, Darw
Re:So nobody has the fastest internet? (Score:5, Funny)
Choosing the wrong ISP probably won't cause birth defects in your unborn children or permanently destroy your bowel [drugwatch.com]
If you think that you've never had to deal with Comcast.
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The last thing I want is every ISP commercial followed by 25 seconds of a guy reciting disclaimers like we are at with pharmaceutical ads. Fucking lawyers.
Right. We should all just trust what our corporate betters tell us. After the all, they're richer and smarter than us, so they must know better than anyone, especially dirty government regulators, what's best for us. Advertising shouldn't have to truthful, just truthy. Right?
Fucking dim-witted Rand fan boys.
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Right, nobody is fastest everywhere. "In Dallas" (Score:2)
That's right, no consumer provider truly has the fastest service everywhere. To claim they do is a lie. Perhaps they could tell the truth by running this ad in Dallas:
"The fastest home internet service available throughout Dallas."
Maybe it would be true to say "Cable internet is twice as fast as DSL, on average."
Or "the most reliable service of any nationwide provider".
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That's right, no consumer provider truly has the fastest service everywhere. To claim they do is a lie. Perhaps they could tell the truth by running this ad in Dallas:
"The fastest home internet service available throughout Dallas."
Maybe it would be true to say "Cable internet is twice as fast as DSL, on average."
Or "the most reliable service of any nationwide provider".
See, this is where the over-wording in announcements comes into play. Your method is great, but let me add a bit more to be completely accurate:
The fastest home internet service available throughout Dallas, but only on the XXtremeXX Plan(tm), and with less equipment, obstructions, bends, or shoddy fixes between the fiber transmission device and the home receiver port; service is only fastest based on closest speed testing servers with the fewest routing hops, and only at certain times of the night when usa
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The last thing I want is every ISP commercial followed by 25 seconds of a guy reciting disclaimers like we are at with pharmaceutical ads. Fucking lawyers.
How about every ISP commercial avoids saying "the fastest in-home Wi-Fi" unless the facts justify such a claim without 25 seconds of disclaimers? Don't say anything that requires disclaimers, and you can avoid the disclaimers. If you need fine print, perhaps you're making a claim in order to fool people into making incorrect assumptions if they don't read the fine print, rather than to actually inform people.
Re:So nobody has the fastest internet? (Score:4, Funny)
False advertising... (Score:2)
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I've been laughing at, and shaking my head at, those commercials since they first aired. "We have the fastest wi-fiI!" Well, that's true, but since wi-fi is slower than DSL even with only a single user connected, EVERYONE has the fastest wi-fi.
You know that, I know that, but Joe Average doesn't. That's the nature of advertising in the US at least; sell to the uninformed. Plenty of fools in the world, no need to target anyone with an average or above IQ or amount of technical knowledge.
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You know that, I know that, but Joe Average doesn't.
And Joe Average doesn't understand why the "fastest wifi" isn't so fast inside a coffee shop.
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I pay for 25 and get 90. Comcast internet is great.
Happy Words (Score:5, Funny)
To avoid getting sued, they should use subjective words instead, like "Comcast Internet is the most synergetic!"
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It's Comcastic!
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Is that like "caustic"?
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To avoid getting sued, they should use subjective words instead, like "Comcast Internet is the most synergetic!"
.."the most scalable!"
Actually what happens -- meaningless words (Score:2)
To avoid getting sued, they should use subjective words instead, like "Comcast Internet is the most synergetic!"
Although couched in jest, this is actually one major thing that has happened as a result of requirements for truth in advertising. A hundred years ago advertisements in your local paper might give you details and information about the product. But information content has gone way down in response, because you can't be sued over a claim you don't make. So now our ads have much less information and much more meaningless double-talk and content-less appeals to emotion.
Truth in advertising is important, but to
Comcast in Quincy (Score:5, Informative)
Comcast in Quincy MA (just outside Boston) is charging their customers for fast internet, but according to my buddies over there, the speed is just faster than a modem.
The entire town has essentially called Comcast to complain, and they've done nothing to fix it, and this has been going on for over a month.
And the best part? Apparently, there's no alternative for internet access. And you're within sight of a major metropolitan area.
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I would read the following document: http://www.mass.gov/ocabr/docs/dtc/catv/license/quincycomcast606.pdf It describes the terms and conditions that Comcast must operate under. If I were your buddies I would notify the Cable Advisory Committee at Quincy Town Hall in writing.
yawn (Score:2)
Comcast versus ATT (Score:1)
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the areas in where you can get that 2GB fiber from comcast is limited
same concast that made a big deal about espn goal (Score:2)
same concast that made a big deal about espn goal line say we have it and directv does not. BUT there ad was in HD but the channel was not in HD on comcast systems.
There old clams about having the most HD Choices
Nice fast service from Comcast (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, their service is great! I have 105Mb cable internet, which allows me to hit my monthly 1TB data cap in just over 22 hours!
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(1 TB) / (105 (mb / s)) = 2.64550265 hours
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National Advertising Division (NDA) (Score:2)
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The article uses NAD, so my money is on Slashdot editors being brain dead.
Fastest in home wifi (Score:1)
They claim they have the fastest in home wifi which in it's self is a retarded statement. They aren't claiming to have the fastest internet speeds, or fastest downstream speeds, they claim to have the fastest wifi. So that just means the data rate the AP is connected to your device. So the transfer rate between the AP and device is the only thing measured in that instance. Which I can have the fastest in home wifi if I'm right next to my api, and my wifi card is properly configured and all things works
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Or in other words, perfect for 80% (if not higher) of the population that would hear "fastest wifi" and think "faster internet" regardless of any technical details.
It's all about the nodes (Score:2)
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Is there a good resource on how the typical Comcast municipal network is actually structured?
My vague understanding based on looking around is that some series of houses (a few blocks, more or less, for a typical single family house urban neighborhood) are all tied to a node via coax, and the node is tied to the rest of the Comcast network via fiber optics.
Is that how it actually looks? Are the nodes tied directly to some central office? Do they send cable TV video via fiber optics, or is video handled th
Comcast + Monster = fastest Wi-Fi!!! (Score:3)
I added a Monster coaxial cable to my Comcast Wi-Fi receiver and now I have the fastest Wi-Fi! The internet really comes alive!
Take that Google Fiber!
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Monster? Please. . . use a Diamond HDMI cable! [amazon.com] Not only will you have the fastest in home wifi, your wifi will be ultra HD 4K 3D at 240Hz with the more Gee-Bees! Also available in white and gold.
they only claim to have the fastest wi-fi (Score:1)
They claim they have the fastest wifi, which means that they provide 802.11ac wifi devices, which are the "fastest". They're not claiming anything about the CONNECTION itself, just the wifi.
Deceptive advertising, sure. Incorrect, technically no.
Claims like this insult our intelligence.... (Score:2)
Doesn't matter if it's Comcast, Verizon or any of the other carriers out there. I hate when they market nonsense like "the fastest wi-fi". That is impossible to ascertain, for starters.... It's not like they have a new 802.11 series standard in use exclusively! Their gear uses the same wi-fi protocols as everyone else, and so far, even 802.11ac tends not to maintain the full throughput of what you pay for with a faster broadband tier. There's no reason to believe it outperforms good quality 3rd. party wi-
Neflix posts average ISP speeds (Score:3)
These speeds are for prime time delivery of Netflix's data for July comes in 6th at 3.47 Mbps whereas Verizon, number one, is at 3.61 Mbps. Not much difference. Some caveats here: there can be variations for data travel over intermediate connections, it's prime time. Then again, Netflix produces something like 37% of network traffic during prime time so maybe the numbers are useful.
One problem with Ookla results is that for their speed tests the data between your modem and your ISP's servers likely never leave the ISP's network. That's very unlikely to be the case for general Internet usage.
None of the tests are hugely useful (Score:2)
Netflix isn't useful because it is so low bandwidth. Sure if you are using ADSL maybe it is relevant but for most fast connections even if the connection is working for shit Netflix will still be fine. A Netflix stream is literally about 2% of my Internet speed for an HD stream.
Ookla can be useful but requires some work on the part of the end user. As you say, you need to test off your ISP. Mine does by default (my ISP, Cox, has a Speedtest server but for internal use only). Realistically, you should test t
These ads piss me off (Score:1)
Seems reasonable to me (Score:1)