Comcast says it represents a 10 Gigabit cable internet network they are building (it doesn’t exist) so they are basically changing the meaning of the g from generation to gig to act like 10g is 5 generations better (or twice as fast)…or that they have a 10 gigabit network. Neither is accurate. It’s still just cable internet that people have to use because they have no other option.
Fuck Comcast.
I read online they are abandoning the “confusing” 10g branding but I just saw a commercial for it. They think all of their customers are morons and count on folks having no other choices in a lot of cases.
Apologies to anyone outside the United States, this is just complaining about our poor internet options and deceptive advertising by greedy corporations.
This is confusing, but the mobile gens are for cell data.
Wifi has 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands.
Internet service can be offered with Gbps speeds. 10Gbps can be called 10gig or 10g. That’s also crazy fast for what’s standard right now.
Verizon and TMobile have been advertising 5g home internet with a discount to their mobile customers, I think that is where Comcast is aiming these ads. To get people to conflate it. Most folks watching these ads don’t know what a gigabit is they are just thinking oh wow maybe Comcast is better.
For the people who do know what a gigabit is, Comcast is saying they are “building a 10 gig network” which means fucking nothing. I’m building a 1,000 story house. There are going to be 998 new stories on my house soon, you see! You’ll see.
Screen manufacturers just did a similar thing with the jump from 1080p to 4k
The 1080 part of the original number referred to the number of pixels from top to bottom, 4k refers to left to right. 4k is actually only 2160 from top to bottom though (at the same aspect ratio).
So they quadrupled the number when it should have only doubled, and it was entirely a marketing thing.
2160p is not that uncommon though. Saying 4K is just an abbreviation and it’s easier to say while still letting everyone know what you’re talking about. I don’t actually like the term 4K though because it’s a bit ambiguous because of how many different flavors of 4K there are.
The worst part is that it’s actually less than 4k pixels on the top.
Don’t even get me started on the bullshit that is calling 1440p 2k
1440p can be seen as 720p * 2.
There are 4x the pixels so…
I don’t disagree with the change either. Having a large number makes it more difficult to compare. After 2160 it’s 4320. 2k, 4k, and 8k are far easier to remember and figure out the differences.
In my past life I was a video editor while 4k was still at its infancy, and my coworker was furious saying that reporters were idiots for saying that 4K was 4 times the size of HD, it was just the name. And I’m like, dude is actually 4 times more and show him a picture of the size comparison of both and he was really ashamed, but I told him it was ok because I was also thinking the same until I read an article about it.
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My interpretation is that 1080p is 1k and these are 4 times as many pixels, so it kinda makes sense? Not really, but w/e.
There are 4x the pixels so…
Totally agree, but then
2k, 4k, and 8k
Is internally inconsistent!
If 4k is four times the pixel count of 1080, then 2k means 1440 (-ish, it should be 1530) - that’s fine. But then 8k must be 3050, but it is actually 4320!!!
So it can not refer to the number of pixels (quadratic scaling). On the other hand, if we assume linear scaling and 8k is 4320 and 4k is 2160, then 2k is 1080 - but 2k is never used in that context!
Edit: as you can see I’m very passionate about this XD
Eww, who refers to 1440p as 2k? 1080p is 2k. Not that anyone really says 2k to begin with.
That said, that particular instance is irrelevant as long as things are consistent going forward.
2048x1080 is DCI 2K.
The slight difference between the ratios is why home releases of films often have small black bars at the top and bottom, as the DCI flat ratio is slightly different than 16:9.
Exactly. The up tick in resolution was slow, 360 to 480 to 720 to 1080. Relatively small improvements. Then we jump to 2160/4k and the resolution goes up by 400% from the previous 1080. 4k is 4x1080 screens put together.
1440 was a thing when 2160 released. 4k is a shit name because it infers you know what generation it’s 4 times the size of
4K doesn’t mean 4x the size. It means there’s (nearly) 4000 pixels from side to side.
But at least 4k is indeed 4 times bigger than 1080p, at least in terms of pixels, so it’s not all bullshit in a way
I like to call 1440 “4k” as well because it’s 4 times bigger than 720. Stupid fucking naming system
4K refers to the horizontal resolution of the video, not how much larger than FullHD it is.
Also 1440p is sometimes called QHD (Quad HD) because it’s 4x 720p aka HD
The correct naming scheme btw, if you don’t subscribe to bad marketing:
640x480 = SD (NTSC)
768x576 = SD (PAL)
1280x720 = HD
1920x1080 = FullHD/FHD
2048x1080 = DCI 2K
2560x1440 = QuadHD/QHD
3840x2160 = UHD
4096x2160 = DCI 4K
7680x4320= UHD2
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1440p in a 16:9 aspect ratio has a resolution of 2560x1440 though, not 2160x1440
Type the right numbers in. It’s 4x
K means 1000 by convention though, and 1080 is the closest to 1000
The K refers to horizontal resolution though. The Resolution used for cinema are 2048x1080 aka DCI 4K and 4096x2160 aka DCI 4K. TV manufacturers thought it would be fun to market UHD aka 3840x2160 as 4K, which it isn’t. It‘d be 3.8K if you’d have to label it like that.
Why marketers are allowed to label the speed of a network is just beyond me as an engineer. Call it whatever you want. “Our Purple speed”. Don’t care. But underthat it should be labeled with a standard 1gbps/1gbps.
That would shut up xfinity’s bullshit claims pretty quick. “Our new Plaid speed fiber” 200mbps/4mbps
Seriously I called them years ago asking about fiber, they were real hyped, they bragged they could give me 800! 800 what I asked. Megabytes! Megabytes or Megabits? 800 Megabits, okay fine, symmetric right? Well, no one uses upload anyway. That was their literal response.
symmetric right?
I talked about this in another thread recently, but my favorites are the ones that are so lopsided that you literally can’t send back ACKs fast enough to keep up with your own download speeds when using TCP.
I’ve had that! Upload so bad that I couldn’t even send out a request! Even the DNS requests failed. “But you have download available”. Yes, mr customer service, but how does it know what to download?
Download-only internet.
Your water line is now connected! There is no way to turn on the taps in the house.
It’s actually even worse. They tried to pass off 2048x1080 as a big upgrade over 1920x1080 by marketing it as “2K”. It didn’t work, but locked marketing into using the horizontal resolution.
That’s actually being used in the context of movie production. It’s called DCI 2K. Same with DCI 4K, which is 4096x2160 and thus actual 4K
And 4K isn‘t even correct in the horizontal direction. “4K” TVs have a horizontal resolution of 3840 pixels. That’s 3.8K. True 4K, as used in movie production (aka DCI 4K) is 4096x2160
Technically should be called 4.096K I suppose
Meanwhile my fiber provider actually offers 5 gig symmetrical for $150 a month. I don’t have the network gear to do over a gig, but they offer it and it’s a hell of a lot cheaper and better than Comcast.
Wireless “G” labeling has always mostly been marketing want anyway.
The actual technology has used more pragmatic (if less marketing friendly) terminology.
Absolutely. 3G, 4G, 5G - they’re all a mess. Each G is a wild mix of specs with wildly varying speeds. And many parts of a next generation network are a glorified version of the previous generation network with no large generational speed bumps.
Government organizations like the FCC should force telecoms to advertise speeds as bits per second.
It’s tricky though, do they advertise their maximum speed in all areas? Or the minimum speed? Or the average speed?
If you have 50 megabit service in New York City with multiple millions of people can you then offer 3G speeds to the rest of the state and still advertise it is 5G?
I get 45 in town, is it a birthday party the other day and I could barely get 1.
The same problem exist today with access to 4G, LTE, 5G or 5G mm wave coverage in an area. Service is going to change based upon your exact location.
Regulators should just tell telecoms do to exactly what they do today - provide customers a coverage heat map. But base it average bandwidth at the network node, not what technology their marketing department has decided to call the node’s hardware.
It’s all about the benjamins. Ain’t nothing but a G thing.
Fuck Comcast. Even when it was clear what they were referring to, they made it seem like they were offering 10gigabit fiber service. Nope, same old service offerings. There’s some plausibility: some of us have had gigabit fiber for years and if ComCast wants to reset its reputation. One way is to jump ahead rolling out the next generation of technology. Nope. @Next generation of technology” is apparently upgrading their infrastructure to be able to achieve what they’ve sold for years
Is 200/20M asymmetric, over provisioned up the wazoo, shared across the neighborhood m, high latency, any better now that it’s relabeled?
I’ve personally had ok experiences with them. There service is fast and well priced. There support can be a little annoying at times but they get the job done for the most part.
Compare that to AT&T which is expensive and awful to deal with. There support is the worst support I’ve ever talked to. I had to deal with them for work and they kept transferring me repeatedly and I even managed to get on the line with a computer trying to sell me an alert button in case I fell.
United States of Advertising
It was hilariously reading the presser on NBCComcrap talking about how 10G DOCSIS development is progressing and they could almost hit 10Gbps in labs on the downlink but uplink would only be a few hundred megabits tops. Like, none of those numbers are worth selling a marketing brand of “10G”. Real fiber Internet can hit it, my provider offers 10Gbps/10Gbps. That could be called “10G” - if we continued to conflate speed with generations like Comcrap tried to do.
I really wish the FCC would step up and slap all these companies perpetuating these weird lie terms the last half a decade.
This smells a bit like the old Fuck Everything, We’re Doing Five Blades.
Pretty funny the blades on disposables actually did top out at 5. The Onion wins the prediction game again.
(I know there’s a 6 blade brand out there but I think it’s the only one, whereas all the big companies make 5. So glad I got out of the disposables and traded them for safety razors anyway-- dunno why it took me so long)
Probably fear of cutting yourself with that single blade.
That’s what took me so long.
BTW, anyone here who face shaves regularly, switch to a safety razor. This is a threat.
Yeah gotta admit I was pretty nervous the first couple times, kinda assuming I’d be just shaving and all of a sudden see a long trail of blood appear. After I got used to it though it’s just as fast as using a disposable, and I haven’t cut myself yet
Ars reported on this at the end of January.
Comcast reluctantly agrees to stop its misleading “10G Network” claims. Comcast said it will drop “Xfinity 10G Network” brand name after losing appeal.
They say that but are running the ads this very night during college basketball games…
Yeah, it’s still confusing. It could be that since the ruling was made less than a month ago, there are active ad campaigns that they’re just going to let run their course, rather than cancel them.
But also, note the following from the source article:
Comcast said it may still use 10G in ways that are less likely to confuse consumers. “Consistent with the panel’s recommendation… Comcast reserves the right to use the term ‘10G’ or ‘Xfinity 10G’ in a manner that does not misleadingly describe the Xfinity network itself,” the company said.
When contacted by Ars, a Comcast spokesperson said, “We disagree with the decision but are pleased that we have confirmed our continued use of 10G in advertising.”
So maybe Ars overstepped in their headline?
Ad buys for TV are generally scheduled ahead of time as part of a campaign.
Because of all the bullshit with subsidies etc. intended for improving broadband infrastructure being abused, my dream is:
- All the poles & lines (and access rights to them) are nationalized and then opened up for individual ISPs to service. Current ISP exclusivity contracts/agreements should be dissolved. Let them actually compete for customers with price, features and customer service.
- The government should also offer tax-funded baseline connectivity to everyone since it’s effectively impossible to live in modern society without internet access. The provided speeds must be sufficient for a typical bloated framework-script-heavy site, all (meta)data/packets should be considered constitutionally protected private info not able to be monitored/scraped/sold.
- Use building out and supporting the above as a useful jobs program instead of more military adjacent stuff.
You have my vote if you run for office.
I’ve heard in other countries they have a CHOICE of electricity providers. Boggles my mind. CHOOSE who you buy electricity from? Like more than 1?
Pennsylvania has choice of electricity provider. You pay a line maintenance fee to the line owner of a few cents per kWh, then you have a choice of dozens of providers for the electricity itself.
In Atlanta I had a choice of natural gas companies, even though it would have been cheaper if there were simply one single regulated monopoly.
Competing utilities are just a way to give out cash to rent-seeking middlemen.
This is the case in the UK. Rare example of where privatisation of a utility went well. Don’t ask about the water
In my city there is so much completion in the internet space that the prices have dropped significantly. It is also in very high demand as my city is growing extremely fast.
I’m not sure if it will last but the demand made it cost effective for the internet companies to install fiber everywhere. They literally have trucks and people deploying new fiber lines 5 days a week.
ITU defined 4G in 2008 as wireless connectivity with speed of 100 megabits per second for mobile users and 1 gigabit per second for stationary users.
LTE never achieved such speeds. It did not stop mobile operators from calling their service 4G.
ITU since then revised their definition to lower the required network speed.
5G was supposed to have network speeds of 10 gigabits per second. ITU however wisened up and are just defining it as ‘fifth-generation wireless’, because the mobile operators will butcher the definition anyway.
Well there you have it. If ITU hasn’t defined 10G, then ISP’s can call it whatever they want. It’s not regulated.
Interesting
LTE Long term evolution, I think 5g is still LTE. 5g builds on the tech of 4g.
Yup. 5G is LTE with more frequency bands.
Just slap one more antenna into your phone, that’s how we’re increasing network speed.
Imagine not calling your 10 Gig network Mr Gigs.
That name again is Mr. Gigs
Are you from the Onion?
I’m sorry sir, I only possess moderately passable IT skills.
Of course they did. They know the average person would see xfinity saying they have 10G and assume their service is 5x better than every other service.
Ads from large companies rely on people being braindead and not complaining when the product they get is a scam or false advertising. At least, that’s how I see it.
10g fights the 5g that’s turning everyone into gay frogs. You won’t need the 5g blockers anymore.
They should be forced to have a standard like a food label. Should show average speed and uptime for past 12 months
Crazy idea…
Phone OS developers often fight with carriers about the network labels that get displayed on a phone’s status bar. Carriers often demand a certain name and label to be shown.
Apple does some shitty stuff, but they have often been able to strong-arm carriers into industry-wide customer experience improvements, because they have a monopoly on iOS and have fast OS update adoption. Apple should just push a software update that always shows bandwidth instead of “4G,” “LTE,” “5G.” Then they should update their maps app to show crowd sourced bandwidth speeds across a carriers’s network.
Air their dirty laundry and watch them squirm.
Good idea on theory but it would have to constantly be doing speed tests in the background and those eat up a ton of bandwidth. All the phone knows is what kind of network it’s connected to and what kind of signal strength it has
Cellular networks a can already monitor bandwidth, signal strength, packet loss, etc. They just need to expose that data to the public. There is no need for extra “speed tests.” The network’s speed can be measured during an upload / download to a phone.
That’s not an effective metric because you don’t know the network speed of the host that the user was downloading from. It’s impossible to tell if the network is slow, or the site they visited was throttled to .5mb. speed tests work because the server you’re downloading from is a known entity
The next one can be called “Series X…G”
