Comcast reluctantly agrees to stop its misleading "10G Network" claims
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
https://www.reddit.com/r/Comcast_Xfinity/comments/17cdku6/li...
https://forums.xfinity.com/conversations/plan/i-was-lied-to-...
https://forums.xfinity.com/conversations/customer-service/xf...
I personally have experienced the lying on every recent interaction with the company, and like many other Americans have no viable alternative providers.
I’m in no way surprised that they are using a lying terms that is clearly intended to mislead people into thinking they are doing better for their customers than they actually are. That the companies’ culture on display.
It’s so unfortunate because I have seen glimmers of what this company be in their charity work and in the occasional stepping up to help people (though there always seems to be a big stepping up when community broadband initiatives are on the table).
I refuse to ever live somewhere Comcast-only.
I’ve had the exact same equipment scam happen. I ended up paying the first time. The second time I had a full video of me walking into the office (because at the time you had to return the equipment to the actual office, couldn’t ship it) and it took only a few months to get resolved.
I don’t think there are many places that aren’t Comcast only. I briefly lived in an area with fiber-to-the-home. It was the same general cost as Comcast, but so much better and the service was rock solid reliable.
They are a national disgrace, especially after all the money put into rural broadband initiatives and fiber optics rollouts somehow managed to produce basically… nothing. But I’m sure they weren’t involved.
And what’s happening is plain as day. Check this quote out:
> Comcast’s lack of broadband growth started last year, when the largest U.S. internet provider reported no additions in the second quarter of 2022 for the first time in the company’s history. Since then, Comcast has reported net broadband losses in three of the last five quarters.
> Comcast executives have pushed investors to focus on broadband’s rising average revenue per user (ARPU) growth, driven by price increases and upselling packages, rather than net additions. Comcast’s residential broadband ARPU rose 3.9% in the quarter.
> “As we continue to manage this balance, we expect ARPU growth to remain strong and our primary driver of broadband revenue growth with somewhat higher subscribers losses expected the fourth quarter compared to the 18,000 loss we just reported in the third quarter,” Comcast Chief Financial Officer Jason Armstrong said during the company’s earnings conference call Thursday.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/26/comcast-broadband-worries.ht...
They’re not even interested in expanding broadband footprints anymore, just getting more revenue out of existing customers. And they are completely upfront about it.
Sorry, but I haven’t had one good interaction with this company, and I don’t think I’m alone.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/comcast-is-americas-most-hated-co...
Really? There are entire states (and countries) without a Comcast presence.
> You already knew that home broadband competition is sorely lacking through much of the US, but a new report released today helps shed more light on Americans who have just one choice for high-speed Internet.
> Comcast is the only choice for 30 million Americans when it comes to broadband speeds of at least 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream, the report says. Charter Communications is the only choice for 38 million Americans. Combined, Comcast and Charter offer service in the majority of the US, with almost no overlap.
> Yet many Americans are even worse off, living in areas where DSL is the best option. AT&T, Verizon, and other telcos still provide only sub-broadband speeds over copper wires throughout huge parts of their territories. The telcos have mostly avoided upgrading their copper networks to fiber—except in areas where they face competition from cable companies.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/comca...
Also, “broadband” being 25 mbit is their lobby’s choice and definitely should not be a legitimate threshold in the modern world.
Then add that even though others operate in different regions, they generally do not compete for high speed service or are very poor at delivering it, thereby not actually presenting an alternative even though they “officially” do.
Also, be clear that these two companies, that dominate areas of the US, collude.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/comca...
https://corporate.charter.com/newsroom/comcast-charter-annou...
https://corporate.comcast.com/press/releases/comcast-charter...
> At least 49.7 million Americans only have access to broadband from one of the seven largest cable and telephone companies. In total, at least 83.3 million Americans can only access broadband through a single provider.
> Over the past two years, federal stats suggest that Charter and Comcast have an absolute monopoly over fewer households, but we think this is mostly a mirage resulting from how the FCC reports data. A significant number of the census blocks showing new competition are likely only partially served.
https://ilsr.org/report-most-americans-have-no-real-choice-i...
That’s more accurate but much of the “good data” comes from the providers themselves.
Don’t know why you’ve got such a pro-Comcast / Charter bent, but I assure you they aren’t worth defending.
> Don’t know why you’ve got such a pro-Comcast / Charter bent
Kindly go fuck yourself. Stick to facts without baseless accusations.
Of those 70 so million with fiber available about 30 million actually use it.
The FCC map is not reliable at all. You only see that fiber is not available when you search the address on the ISP website and it returns with the option for DSL. Even in the region I live now, the FCC map says fiber available in most of the city, but in reality, it’s only the newer housing developments. 90% are older homes in developments from a couple decades ago, and they only have coaxial.
The common factor in fiber availability is a housing development built after 2005 or even 2010, or built so long ago that the utilities are overhead and maybe they could string up fiber for a sufficiently low price.
Any home in any development built 1970 to 2010 with underground utilities that did not already have fiber will most likely not have fiber.
Also, any apartment building from before ~2010 will not have Ethernet wired to the apartment, only coaxial wires, and the apartment building owner is not going to wire it up for fiber, even if fiber is run to the building itself.
I would personally never buy a house with comcast only and would likely not without fiber (I currently live in a Uverse/Shitcast ghetto which essentially leaves me with only one option). I sympathize with the shittiness of US broadband but I see no reason to stretch the facts, they suck regardless. And we do not represent the normal customer. In reality wireless options and even comcast are options to people if they compete on price, and fiber does have to compete with those in the real world.
I don’t know why they would lie either, maybe they are using FCC maps since that is the best data they can afford. And given the low rates of new construction, I still doubt the figures, given the economics of a business installing fiber in older neighborhoods with underground utilities.
I would love to be wrong though, as I also nix living in any place only served by coaxial internet.
> In reality wireless options and even comcast are options to people if they compete on price, and fiber does have to compete with those in the real world.
Yes, which is why installing fiber has to be a taxpayer funded effort by the government, because it will never make financial sense for a business to spend all that money to install the infrastructure and have Comcast just lower their prices to below the fiber business’s installation costs.
I took photos of the gear in the UPS store. We worked for a few months with them to try to get it cancelled after that, eventually they said we didn't ship back all the gear, there were 2 wifi boxes we didn't return. We never had Comcast WiFi. We made a couple more back-and-forths saying this, and eventually they relented, but during this time I think we were charged $600-900 bucks (2-3 months of service) that we couldn't use (because we returned the modem) but they wouldn't cancel because we still allegedly had the WiFi gear.
I would love to hear more in details on this. I feel like I am going to have to do something like this but not sure where to begin the research.
I am writing in response to the FCC file received in our office on December 2, 2014 regarding your request for the disconnection of your Comcast Business Service. I apologize for the inconvenience and frustration this has caused.
I have forwarded your concerns to the Business Services Group and you should be contacted by a representative concerning this issue. If you have any further questions, please contact me at ----------, ext. ------- and I will be happy to forward any questions or concerns you have to the correct group. Thank you for your time.
Comcast Support's response? This must be because I am not on their higher priced plan. You can get faster speeds and longer range if you upgrade! The guy on the phone refused to believe that something could be wrong with this particular router.
Ended up going to a local store where the person said it happens a lot, and gave me the "upgraded" router instead.
It seems like they must massively oversubscribe their network then just drop packets based on your tier, with a honeymoon period for new customers so they don't immediately cancel.
Of course the upload continues to be terrible
I use my own modem and router now but this was the case when I "rented" from them as well.
It makes you wonder how many people are limping along with half-broken internet just because they don't know how to debug this and force their way through Comcast's support wall and there not being a competitor they can threaten to switch to.
I'm not a gamer but stream YouTube and other streamers 6 to 8 hours day. T-Mobile's 5G home internet worked great for me.
I'm frankly only ever willing to be upsold when I'm very satisfied with something and would like even more satisfaction in my life.
My roommate and I had spotty internet at various times of day. We measured it and it was way below what our plan claimed. The previous tenants had no such issue. Comcast refused to believe the problem was on their end and claimed my router was too old. This went on until I bought a new router just to prove a point (new router did nothing).
They finally send a repair guy out. He’s there for 5 minutes before diagnosing the problem: the cables were water logged to hell and back. He fixed it in 20 minutes and was gone.
Where I live now, Comcast has competition from Verizon and RCN. Starting a few blocks away, it’s only them. Shockingly, neighbors on the no-competition side report the same kind of routine casual fraud but it never happens here.
that was brave.
I totally assumed the end of this story is "they charged the 20k and put me on hold indefinitely".
So, why on earth was their network called "10G" if near zero percent of Comcast customers are even aware of that service, let alone actually have that service?
Further muddying the water with the 5G cellular technology and implying 10G is even better, deliberately riding that hype train.
For actual customers, the 100Mbps and 200Mbps upload speed plans are the only "next gen" network upgrade available. It's still not symmetrical, not really what people want, and not priced accordingly. In my area, FTTH providers are rolling out 1Gbps symmetrical for as low as $70 a month - making Comcast's "next gen" network a joke in terms of price and performance.
It was a gimmick from the start, and it's surprising it flew this long.
> The Comcast "Gigabit Pro" fiber connection that provides 10Gbps speeds costs $299.95 a month plus a $19.95 modem lease fee. It also requires a $500 installation charge and a $500 activation charge.
For reference, I’m paying €25/mo for 10Gbit symmetric. Modem “lease” and installation included. To be fair, I get ~8Gbit/s in practice, but that’s well worth it.
I’m banned from upgrading beyond gigabit because my wife knows that I’d have to run fiber through the house so it’s all beyond my ability anyway. I’m jealous.
They don't happen to offer colocation do they :p.
I’ve found good deals with Netcup (EU) and Colohouse (US) although the latter is not fun to deal with their “support” aka sales “team”.
Can you post where you live so I can move there.
Outside possibility of Romania, because they basically skipped over an entire generation (DSL) of telecom so there were no incumbents to cause trouble.
Netherlands is unlikely, cheapest is ~80e/month for 10gbit and 45e/month for gigabit
> because they basically skipped over an entire generation (DSL) of telecom so there were no incumbents to cause trouble.
Oh we had that (romtelecom) and people werent willing to use it, they used cheaper local ISPs that just ran copper wires everywhere.
Now a company (RDS) bought up most of those and kept upgrading and keeping prices low and basically are eating the competition. They're basically so far ahead you have construction companies that ask them to put fiber in new builds so its ready when apartments are being sold.
It's mostly competition that drove this from a very competitive company, the rest kind of suck and would go comcast route if they could afford it.
You folks have awesome internet because you force the local loop to be unbundled. Every country should do this. However, almost none do (except yours, and a few counties within the US state of Washington). Nobody with bundled local loops will get pricing+performance like this; please don't raise peoples' expectations.
Instead, point them to the root cause (local loop bundling), because nothing else is going to help them. You'll just make them jealous and distract them from the one change that can actually improve their situation.
Calling your provider and saying "€25/mo for 10Gbit symmetric!!!!" is not going to change anything.
No, Spain using Digi, which is a Romanian company. 10Gbit is only available in cities where Digi has their own fiber/equipment. When you’re in an area where the fiber is shared it’s 1Gbit max for same price.
> You folks have awesome internet because you force the local loop to be unbundled.
I don’t know what this means (although I can maybe guess). Can you explain it for sake of clarity?
> Nobody with bundled local loops will get pricing+performance like this; please don't raise peoples' expectations.
10Gbit sure, it’s not available everywhere. However, symmetric gigabit fiber is standard in many countries in Europe and elsewhere. Typically with 5+ major providers and local ISPs to choose from.
I lived in the US for a long time. I had to suffer the sub-par quality of cable, arbitrary price hikes and random downtime from shitty cable tech. You should absolutely raise your expectations. Complacency will do nothing but entrench the abysmal situation.
Basically it means that whoever owns the "last mile" can't sell it only directly to the customer as part of a larger (bundled) product like "internet access." They have to sell access to that last mile of fiber or copper "unbundled" from anything else (such as "internet access"), and they have to offer it to other ISPs. This is how it has been for ~25 years in NL, and people there understand how important it is.
By forcing the monopoly (local loop) to be a separate company from everything else it makes it totally obvious when there are ridiculous shenanighans. Like, if local-loop company X has only one ISP customer Y, that's an obvious red flag. Also since they are separate companies regulators can subpoena the contracts, communications, and payments which flow between the two companies.
It's essentially the internet version of what the US did to voice telephony after we broke up our telephone monopoly back in the 1970s: no single company was allowed to do both local loop and long distance.
Currently the Netherlands has this for local-loop fiber, and a few counties in the US State of Washington have it due to the odd fact that their local-loop fiber is owned by the electric utility (not the phone or cable companies). It is an awesome system.
Here's the Dutch cases:
- copper (2000): https://www.acm.nl/en/publications/publication/9225/KPN-is-r...
- fiber (2015): https://www.acm.nl/en/publications/publication/15093/KPN-mus...
General background info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbundled_access
> and they have to offer it to other ISP
Key point yes. That’s how it is or at least seems to be in many countries.
Societies MUST decouple infrastructure, platforms etc from service providers. Doesn’t matter if private or public. If you don’t, you always end up with shit.
I can not understand how they can get away with charging 200+ for 10G. That is nuts.
But we have providers selling bullshit here too. One such provider claims 5G wireless is the equivalent of fiber. Sells 1gbit but actuall throughput is bellow 300mbit even with the best tower. Theoretical max is 2gbit but their equipment can't even do 1. Misleading customers to believe 5G wireless can ever beat fiber is just wrong.
well, truth said, you can pay that and more here if you want a good SLA and bandwidth guarantees. But for residential use it's not needed.
Rest of the network is 10G.
I would be in favor of a bit more truth in advertising such that they have to provide a service (not "up to") at, say, 80%+ of their service addresses before being allowed to advertise it. Or, for that matter, they can only advertise the slower of up/down or maybe the average of both if they wish to site a single number rather than both up/down.
Obviously the measure could be improved, particularly by making it an "and" instead of an "only" (e.g. "Most all service areas with up to 25 mbps, select service areas with up to 5 gbps. Check your location for details") but, for all the song and dance, I'm not sure such a thing really makes much meaningful impact to the consumer in the end (unless, again, it's so restrictive to have negative impacts instead) as regardless you're going to have to check your actual address and see if you're in the remaining x% that doesn't get that speed anyways.
I'm a big fan of just flat requiring "up/down for up to x GB/TB per month" in the advertisement though. Worst impact of that is the viewer just doesn't care.
In Capitalism, eventually capital owns everything.
It's not very interesting; tautologies tend not to be.
The problem is that companies are treated as the "corporate person," which is complete nonsense. This isn't about pro/anti-business. It's just that companies aren't people, don't have rights, and good business regulation looks nothing like good human regulation. The Constitution, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, etc. are great document for rights of humans.
They don't apply well to things which aren't humans.
That's not even to say other constructs don't or shouldn't have rights. They're just not the same rights.
> The Comcast "Gigabit Pro" fiber connection that provides 10Gbps speeds costs $299.95 a month plus a $19.95 modem lease fee. It also requires a $500 installation charge and a $500 activation charge
I'm not sure that the pricing for that service actually pays for their installation and equipment costs, so I don't think you'd get much of a discount if you only ran it at 1Gbps symmetric. I did know someone who got the service and didn't bother to make the rest of his equipment work at 10G, so was only using a 1G port. And it works fine, but still costs $320/month + any other taxes and the $1000 install.
I think they also discounted the install and activation to be $500 total.
I split it among around 8 housemates which included the upstairs unit of our house, so it ended up being very affordable and there was always extra bandwidth to go around. The main benefit I enjoyed being greater than 35Mbit upload speed.
This part is funny to me because I've tried to sign up for their FttH and they declined despite it being in the area, and the same thing happened to others I know. I'm not sure how they came to that percentage but I don't believe it.
You probably didn't give them all the info unless you were ready to pay for it. And all the other people that get disqualified didn't count.
this sounds like PR doublespeak weasel words for burst vs sustained.
Not-fond memories of getting through to Crapcast support to resolve outage (e.g. cable laid in 90s failed) and then being pitched a "a great deal just for you" of "upgrading" to get catv sh*t package, as I waited.
Damn though, Crapcast did get to IPv6 fast and that specifically was solid in my previous house.
Then they need to kick the little old grandma's still watching traditional cable off their network and set them up on a new Xumo streaming box instead. Then they drop the old video channels and use their frequencies to provide faster service on the same old copper wires.
DOCSIS4.0 does use higher frequencies though and this requires a lot of additional work to upgrade the infra to support this.
I think what Comcast is calling '10G' is the fact you can now order a totally new FTTH run which doesn't use coax instead.
Tbh it's a confused strategy. If you're going to offer XGS-PON to everyone, why bother with DOCSIS4.0? It doesn't really make sense to run fibre runs just to one customer, you could probably do a whole street in not much more time.
I do understand the legacy channel allocations were designed for almost entirely download - but 2Gbps? That can't be...
Because they cannot actually offer it, it is all marketing bullshit.
Always assume coaxial upload bandwidth is slim to none. They probably just advertise a burst speed you get for 5 seconds. If it is not symmetrical, it is not real in my mind.
Because they are heavily oversubscribed and don’t want to invest in fiber infrastructure to increase capacity.
Maybe they don't think you should have to follow the industry to know what a company's advertising means?
It pissed me off to no end to hear the monopolist advertise their "10G network" ("with speeds starting at 200Mbps")
It was CLEARLY meant to mislead.
Same thing happened with CDROM speeds back in the day. At one point 1X, 2X, 3X and so on were based on an actual throughput number, but then soon the Marketing brain trust realized you could put whatever number you want before the "X" and then the number became pretty meaningless.
Same for "bars" on your cell phone service signal. What is the difference between "one bar" and "two bars" on the display? Who the hell knows, it's a meaningless unit invented by carrier company Marketing.
I think some laypeople see the marketing materials companies put out comparing one speed and price tier to another. In other words, a fair number of people who have actively price-shopped internet speed ("should I buy the 'fast' tier that says 100 somethings, or the 'boost' tier that's 200, twice as much, for 50% more money?") would think 10G means 10 times as much as 1G which, it's not a huge leap to think that a fair number of people are aware means 1000 of the Ms.
"I called up T-mobile home internet, and they can give us the 5G for $50"
"Looks like Xfinity has the 10G for $79.95"
The vast majority of people buying internet service are non-technical, misunderstandings about the details are common, and Comcast picked a name that is perfect for confusing with all of their competitors. People don't always know what these measurements really mean, but they know that a bigger one should mean faster internet.
I hate to advocate for Comcast of all companies, but I'm actually on their side for once. They definitely should've had their employees explain what it meant to people if they seemed unsure, which I have serious doubts about, and saying they have a "10G network" when availability for 10G is very limited is rather dubious, but calling 10Gbps internet "10G" is fine with me.
If we're gonna go after ISPs for shady shit, why not go after Spectrum for not listing their upload speed anywhere, not even for their business plans? Comcast at least lets you see what you're actually buying before paying, but with Spectrum you just have to try it out or do some google-fu to find a PDF listing the upload speed for some* of their business plans, and then just hope that ths speeds are the same on the nearly-equivalent consumer plans.
Granted that's just a handoff so I'm pretty sure you're just on your own when it comes to picking something that can route at 10G. I just went with a decisio opnsense appliance and called it a day.
Where this XKCD comic is about experts overestimating the knowledge of average people, I'm attempting to estimate how much the average person should even care, in this case.
While we are at it can we stop confusing "Wifi" and "internet" in marketing? Somehow consumers seem to have forgotten that the 2 are distinct (likely thanks to most people probably don't use specific routers and instead they are the same). I want to scream anytime I see a post like "My wifi is down, is anyone else having issues?" on a local group and its like, I am almost sure you mean Internet is down but the distinction is very important.
It’s not on their regular website. You have contact them directly to have someone come out to survey and see if you are eligible for a fiber run.
1. go to https://www.xfinity.com/10g
2. scroll down to the main section titled 'Xfinity 10G Network'
3. click 'shop now'
I never see anything about a 10 gigabit plan, anywhere. It's classic bait and switch.
Otherwise you will need to wait for their DOCSIS 4.0 "X-Class" speed tiers that are slowly rolling out[4][5].
Initial deployments are limited to 2Gbps, but they are symmetrical speeds. DOCSIS 3.1 technically supported 10Gbps down already. So we need to wait and see if the infra upgrades enable higher 10Gbps download tiers[6][7].
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Comcast_Xfinity/search?q=x10&restri...
[2]: https://www.dslreports.com/forum/comcastdirect
[3]: https://todayamerican.medium.com/the-definitive-guide-on-how...
[4]: https://i.imgur.com/qt0Enqj.png
[5]: https://www.xfinity.com/learn/internet-service/xclass
[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS
[7]: https://corporate.comcast.com/press/releases/comcast-multi-g...
> In order for the location to pre-qualify for Gigabit Pro Service, it must meet the qualifying distance factor. The location cannot be more than 1,760 ft. from the fiber splice case. Second, the cost cannot be more than $8,800 to build; this is determined based on whether the fiber is run underground or aerially. At some locations, the customer can be within the distance but cost is greater than the limit.
> Please see the results for the submitted ticket.
> Name: XXX Address: YYY Ticket #: ZZZ Distance: 1,928 ft, from fiber splice case Cost for fiber install: $14,327.00.
Coincidentally that's just about the total value of the 2 year contract plus fees.
($299.95 + $19.95) * 24 + 500 + 500 = 8677.6
That's an expensive two years of internet service.
https://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know...
Edit: errant “so so”
My current mindset is that campaigning for legislation to override e.g. Citizens United is the only hope of reversing this trend. Does anyone have other suggestions on other ways forward to stem the escalation of US corporations' abuse of the rest of us?
Consumer Affairs, etc. do good work, but we need a more 1:1 relationship.