XFINITY from Comcast vs. Google Fiber | Hacker News Reader

XFINITY from Comcast vs. Google Fiber

xfinity.com

34 pointschrisacky18 comments

There was a photo[1] that made the front page of reddit today[2] showing that this is not limited to their online marketing. Apparently they are distributing similar material, in print, to potential Google Fiber customers.

This is pretty low. I get grumpy when I see technology companies attempting to take advantage of the knowledge, or lack thereof, of their consumers. I think about my grandparents and how their Comcast installer tried to tell them they needed to pay extra if they attached an HD cable from their television to their cable box when they were already paying for HD cable service.

Sickening and I would love to see regulations to prevent this kind of misleading, even if not false, advertising.

[1] - https://i.imgur.com/FrdGhgr.jpg

[2] - https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/44x78h/nice_try_comca...

It's almost funny, Comhem (Sweden's Comcast, except they don't actually have the monopoly they seem to think they do) has also been pushing the "Fastest wifi" angle really hard lately, whatever that actually means.

Meanwhile, my grandparents just upgraded to a "250Mbps" connection with them which actually seems to be about 5Mbps... Wired...

This is just a long-tail SEO play, nothing particular to Google Fiber. See also http://www.xfinity.com/compare/comcast-xfinity-vs-att-u-vers..., http://www.xfinity.com/compare/, etc. I'm guessing people googling "xfinity vs <competition>" is a phrase they'd like to bring in more traffic for.

Well that's interesting. As a Comcast customer, I have been seeing about ~40M down for a few years. Just did a run on SpeedTest.net and I'm now at ~175M down.

Good to see Google Fiber's goal of spurring competition in this sector actually working.

How much are they charging you for the 40Mb connection?

If you paste this link in to Facebook as if you're going to share it, the page title in the summary box ends up reading "Service Interruption" with no other text. I can't think of anything more appropriate.

Can confirm... That is the funniest thing ever...

> Fastest in-home Wi-Fi speed [etc]

You mean that the crappy Comcast-supplied access point has a better maximum speed than the presumably similarly crappy Google Fiber-supplied access point?

Sheesh. Just buy your own AP. A top-of-the-line model is <$100.

The part where they give themselves a win for customer service has me laughing so hard I might die.

Too bad they don't have "X Dollars per Mbps" - because that's what really matters.

Google fiber is what, $70 for 1000Mbps? The fastest XFinity package in Chicago (that I can see) is $79.99 with commitment for 75Mbps.

I don't think it makes a ton of sense to price it that way. I'm paying 60 for 80up/80down from Firs, and it's not 1/10th the value that Google fiber is.

I can't think of a common application that would work better with 1000 than 80. The only time I sit around waiting for downloads to finish is xbox downloads. And that's because MS severs aren't even saturating my connection.

I guess my usenet binaries will download faster but it already happens real fast.

I'd probably pay an extra 20 dollars for the novelty value. But a lot of working class folks wouldn't.

I agree it shouldn't be priced in that way, but it should be compared in that way. Leaving relative prices out of the equation is unfair / biased. Of course xfinity has more services, but it's cost per increment of speed is dramatically higher.

A lot of people also got a flyer in the mail, e.g.: http://i.imgur.com/ZzqYCYV.jpg (from r/googlefiber)

Seems like mostly "by the way, we still own all the TV." If they really wanted to inspire confidence in me they would at least put a checkbox for both with 'unlimited data'.

Ironic that I now get a "Service Interruption" page: http://imgur.com/AJmxdw2

This page could be summed up by "proprietary content Comcast holds licensing for" and "who cares about the internet part that does the fast internet?".

The styling is even bad lol

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