• paraphrand
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    10 months ago

    These companies are constantly mislabeling these networks every generation. They are addicted to advertising bullshit.

  • Kid_Thunder
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    10 months ago

    I imagine an argument in my head like this:
    Comcast: 10G doesn’t confuse customers. Obviously we are saying they can buy up to 10 Gbps on our network.

    Somebody: Do you call your 1 Gbps plans Xfinity 1G?

    Comcast: No

    Somebody: Why not call it that instead of Xfinity Gigabit?

    Comcast: Because customers might think cell plans at 5G are bett…oohhhhh you almost got us!

    I know it didn’t go like that but it would have been a good laugh.

    • @Jerkface
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      10 months ago

      Left guy: Eehhh? 👉👉

      Right guy: Aahhh? 👈👈

  • @Brkdncr
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    6510 months ago

    This shit started with 3g. None of the carriers were even close to supporting 3g, which was designed to support 100mbps.

    Tmo and vzw had a modest improvement from 2g even though it was still slow as shit but AT&T simple did nothing and started calling theirs 3g.

    • @[email protected]
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      10 months ago

      Doesn’t it stand for generation? Like 3rd generation and 5th generation? This is referencing a wifi router is it not?

      • @[email protected]
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        2210 months ago

        So sort of: the 3g is part of a standard for data rates, but the difficulty, comes in that networks are not homogeneous. Similarly to how you might be familiar with 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz WiFi signals. As a general rule of thumb the higher the frequency the more data you can send but with more attenuation so the signal can be blocked more easily and cannot travel as far, whereas the inverse is true for lower frequencies. So while the generations did make some changes in terms of protocols— it also came with higher frequency emitters which can theoretically carry more data. Other changes include MIMO antennas which do beam forming to make more of the energy go in the direction of a user using constructive and destructive interference from an array of antennas to accomplish this. However marketing people are always very eager to adopt technical terms and inflate them into oblivion. However some of this can be attributed to honest misunderstanding within a company.

      • @iarigby
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        910 months ago

        generation for cellular data, not wifi. I liked this video that explains it

    • @SpaceNoodle
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      1610 months ago

      One hundred millibits per second? That means it takes ten whole seconds to send a single bit! That’s outrageous.

      • @chiliedogg
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        310 months ago

        When I sold Century Link that would have cost 59 dollars a month plus 30 dollars in hidden fees.

    • @Ultraviolet
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      1310 months ago

      4G LTE was the point of no return. It was supposed to mean “it’s not 4G yet but we have an upgrade plan to get there”, but when they finally did, marketing found out that to the average person, going from 4G LTE to 4G sounded like a downgrade, so they rebranded it to 5G.

    • @brlemworld
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      510 months ago

      What kills me is it’s the same with CPUs. A 5nm chip is larger than 5nm.

      • @Brkdncr
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        510 months ago

        I thought it meant the transistor size.

        • @[email protected]
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          910 months ago

          It doesn’t really mean anything anymore. The transistors are not 5nm either. It’s just marketing.

          Quoth Wikipedia:

          The term “5 nm” has no relation to any actual physical feature (such as gate length, metal pitch or gate pitch) of the transistors being 5 nanometers in size. According to the projections contained in the 2021 update of the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems published by IEEE Standards Association Industry Connection, a “5 nm node is expected to have a contacted gate pitch of 51 nanometers and a tightest metal pitch of 30 nanometers”. However, in real world commercial practice, “5 nm” is used primarily as a marketing term by individual microchip manufacturers to refer to a new, improved generation of silicon semiconductor chips in terms of increased transistor density (i.e. a higher degree of miniaturization), increased speed and reduced power consumption compared to the previous 7 nm process.

  • @[email protected]
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    6410 months ago

    Who the fuck cares about 10Gbit/s? With data caps, there is nothing I am downloading on a mobile device that is perceptibly faster than downloading it at 1/1000 of that speed

      • Kilgore Trout
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        2610 months ago

        And this a problem only in the monopolistic culture of the US. I can’t name a single EU State with broadband data cap.

        • @[email protected]
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          2110 months ago

          Uhh… Germany would like to have a word

          Most carriers do offer some uncapped plan, I think, but it’s expensive and not the default

            • @[email protected]
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              510 months ago

              Ah. Well the first comment in this chain talked about mobile devices, so I was assuming we were talking about mobile data plans

    • Saik0
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      10 months ago

      I have 8/8 gbps with no caps… quantum fiber (lumen, CenturyLink). The speed is amazing.

    • @TheGrandNagus
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      10 months ago

      Holy shit I thought data caps died in the mid 2000s. Why is the US allowing ISPs get away with this nonsense?

      • Mike
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        1010 months ago

        Because we apparently love A-B testing our government.

      • prole
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        110 months ago

        Money. The answer is always money.

    • @[email protected]
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      1110 months ago

      This isn’t about 10gbps which is the point. It’s also not really about mobile. The packages they are offering are mostly cable connections (with a side of mobile).

    • arc
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      810 months ago

      The point is for dense areas, so theres enough bandwidth to share

      No one needs 100Mbps on their mobile data 99% of the time.

  • magnetosphere
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    5510 months ago

    Jesus. I always hated those ads, but even the industry’s own “self-regulatory” system thought 10G was bullshit.

  • @blahsay
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    5010 months ago

    Fine I’ll stop misleading people about 10g.

    In other news have you heard about our 11g network?

  • Vaggumon
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    3610 months ago

    Cool. Now add the modem I just bought 6 months ago, that supports the speeds I pay for and you had on your approved list before your recent updates back to the approved list.

  • @[email protected]
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    2510 months ago

    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 they basically said “lol no”

  • @[email protected]
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    1410 months ago

    What’s wild is I assumed that they had created a fake “5G” like name to fool people into thinking it was a 10Gbps network when it’s exactly the opposite.

    Weird.

    • SeaJ
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      710 months ago

      Kind of. It is the aspiration for 10Gb connections. They have been using the term well before those were a possibility even in a lab.

      • @[email protected]
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        810 months ago

        Yeah but they’re using 10G like “5G” is the argument being made rather than saying it’s a 10Gbps network

        It’s just that I expected them to lie differently

      • @[email protected]
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        310 months ago

        …the company “makes available 10Gbps of Internet speed to 98 percent of its subscribers upon request.”

        …upon request? Forget aspirations, this sentence is breaking my brain

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    610 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Comcast has reluctantly agreed to discontinue its “Xfinity 10G Network” brand name after losing an appeal of a ruling that found the marketing term was misleading.

    Verizon and T-Mobile both challenged Comcast’s advertising of 10G, a term used by cable companies since it was unveiled in January 2019 by industry lobby group NCTA-The Internet & Television Association.

    The challenges lodged against Comcast marketing were filed with the advertising industry’s self-regulatory system run by BBB National Programs.

    Comcast said it disagrees with “the recommendation to discontinue the brand name” because the company “makes available 10Gbps of Internet speed to 98 percent of its subscribers upon request.”

    But those 10Gbps speeds aren’t available in Comcast’s typical service plans and require a fiber-to-the-home connection instead of a standard cable installation.

    NCTA claimed that “10G can change lives” and that the “10G platform will facilitate the next great technological advancements in the coming decades, ensuring fast, reliable, and safe networks continue to power the American economy.”


    The original article contains 756 words, the summary contains 162 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • toiletobserver
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    -310 months ago

    Remember, qualquack should oligobble your balls