Cable Company Speed Claims

My perception of internet service providers (ISPs) and cellular advertising is that companies push the envelope more every year in trying to make claims that can give them a marketing edge over the competition. What’s funny about many ads is that carriers try to differentiate themselves from their competitors, even though their peers are delivering essentially the same product to the market. The competition between cable companies and fiber overbuilders, however, is not based on equivalence. There is a clear technical advantage of a 300 Mbps broadband connection on fiber versus the same connection from a cable company. Cable companies know when a fiber network shows up in a market that they will lose customers who care about signal quality, but cable company marketers never stop trying to make a pitch that makes them sound better than fiber. One of the latest examples comes from Comcast, which has started to advertise itself as the 10G ISP. Verizon took exception to Comcast’s advertising and asked the National Advertising Division (NAD) of BBB National Programs to get Comcast to stop using the term 10G. NAD ruled that the 10G term was not factual and said Comcast should stop using it. The participants in the NAD generally comply with NAD rulings, but this time, Comcast is appealing the ruling. As an outsider, it’s pretty easy to agree with Verizon in this case. The 10G term was based on some theoretical future upgrade to meet the CableLabs 10G specifications, and Comcast’s coaxial networks today cannot achieve that speed. The only example of where Comcast has a 10 Gbps capability today is where it has upgraded to a 10 Gbps fiber platform—a tiny portion of the overall Comcast network.