Slashdot Mirror
Really Misleading Ads From Broadband Providers
Bourdain writes "Gizmodo has put together a good compilation of the — seemingly almost criminally — misleading (largely plain wrong) advertising from our favorite local monopolies. My personal favorite is from AT&T which states you need 3mbps to use social networking sites like Facebook."
Apparently I need a faster connection to use sla
My personal favorite is from AT&T which states you need 3mbps to use social networking sites like Facebook.
Have you tried to use Facebook recently? Sounds about right!
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
You need to have at least 3mbps to host a social networking site like Facebook.
"Max"
"Max Plus"
"Max Turbo"
Do these people even know what the word "maximum" means?
To be fair 1.5 plans are really starting to feel sluggish these days.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
My personal favorite is from AT&T which states you need 3mbps to use social networking sites like Facebook.
Some people might see that, think their connection is too slow and not use Facebook. That's some pretty clear defamation right there.
I would think that 3 millibits per second is about right for most social networking sites.
British Telecom are claiming that their ADSL package gives you the best connection... of course, it's the best connection to the local wireless router, and not the connection to the gateway... they have an enormous router with a high gain antenna set (and a phone handset for VoIP).
They can't bring themselves to admit that the cable provider walks all over them in terms of actual bandwidth.
What hacks me off about ISP's is the available packages for internet.
I just moved up to Colorado, and I had to sign up for internet at my new apartment. It was DSL, and the available packages were as follows...
1.5mb
3.0mb
7.0mb
10.0 mb
When in reality all that I need for gaming, and some Hulu action is perhaps 5mb, but they get you to take that extra jump to 7mb so they can charge you more. All that most anyone needs is maybe 3mb and even that would allow you to some some video streaming (Perhaps not in HD) 5mb would do most American's just fine.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
ATT recommended the highest speed (12 mbps) for online gamine. Ironically, streaming video only required 6!
On the bright side, if you're just sending and receiving emails, a 3mbps connection will suffice.
+1 Disagree
Right on, bruddah! You can't browse facebook with less than 10mbps. Any slower and it'll take forever for the four videos, two slideshows, background music, and flash animation to load. What were they thinking?!?
I know this isn't broadband, but I love that Verizon (Wireless) wants to charge $3/month just for visual voicemail. Chiselers!
after being lied to for decades, you bring THIS up as something to be upset about? how about COX cable's "Digital Tomorrow" that is never coming? The technology is in place but it's more profitable to NOT provide everything "On Demand".
I have Time Warner Cable, with Turbo. I use internet extensively, online streaming like pandora, netflix, youtube, and skype. Not only do I have to pay Time Warner for the internet connection I also have to pay for all the services like netflix & skype (out). In the US we are still in stone age compared to 3rd world countries like Korea when it comes to bandwidth. We supposedly have the best technology & brain power, but we are still short when it comes to servicing 200 mil people with cheap and fast internet. Will breaking cable monopoly help? or it the problem deeper than that? I pay roughly $600 a year for internet a utility that I use for average 8hrs a day. That is pretty steep compared to electricity which I use 24hrs a day, I never have any voltage fluctuations or power outs. But with internet I experience drop in BW or even outage for long periods of time.
The really sad part is that they want to sell you a super fast Internet connection but they sure as hell don't want you to use it. Most ISP's are slapping bandwidth caps which are all over the place. I believe comcast has a 250GB cap which is fair but I'm on Rogers (up in Canada) with a shitty low cap of 60 GB's. That's probably fine for most people but I actually use the internet so I need to be careful. It's just more deceit to get you to pay more for less.
Block the ads, and you can probably get away with 300 baud..
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
My favorite of these were the old Comcast ads.
The ones that said something alone the lines of " Unlimited internet! Download music and more!"
if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence / freedom of expression doesn't make it alright
This is /., so we need some car comparisons...
My gf claims she needs a 250hp (at the rear wheel) V6 in her commuter car so she can "get on the highway easier." She compared 0-60 times for Honda Accords and Toyota Camrys.
I have friends that bought a huge SUV for when they drive to the ski slopes (they go 2-3x a year). A rented SUV would be much cheaper.
So why wouldn't the telcos use the same tactics when convincing their customers to purchase something that they really don't need? People are buying dual/quad core CPUs with 4GB of RAM just to surf the web and upload pics to flickr and facebook.
Except it is not 3 mbps, it is 2.66. QWEST says "Well, we mean up to 3 mbps." But it is never up to 3 mbps. It is always at 2.66. But that is OK with QWEST because they call it good if it is within 80% of 3 mbps.
Also I learned that the reason I am not seeing 3 mbps is because of "overhead".
I hated to do it but I switched to cable. I am paying for 5 and it is always above 5.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
What do they recommended for windows / ms update?
At lest windows updates are not as bad as mac os x that are at the 800meg+ level.
They're right, 3mbps IS required for facebook.
I mean, otherwise your torrents might slow to a crawl...
My personal favorite is from AT&T which states you need 3mbps to use social networking sites like Facebook
That would be pretty funny if it were true, but no, it doesn't actually say that.
Try writing a real article instead of just completely making shit up.
The little chats even say "good for:" or "ideal for:".
The checkboxes clearly mean "if you want to do these sorts of things you probably want this amount of bandwidth", not "lesser connections are incapable of this".
It doesn't take a genius.
"hands off busines" crap is costing you people time and money. because there are not enough tough regulations, corporations often can get away with scamming customers. to the extent that they dare put 'you cant sue us' clauses in contracts.
that "hands off business" thing really has to end. scamming, screwing people is not business, anyone using that excuse to defend such actions is a bastard.
Read radical news here
Our Bells are trying it too :)
http://cspcentral.com.au/2009/09/accc-executes-perfect-hit-on-telstra-optus-and-vodafone/
"misrepresents data allowances" and per meg up/down $ are very evil in Australia.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
When I got started, 20+ years ago, a few large universities had T1's. That was by definition broadband - 1.5 mbps. Smaller schools often only had 2400 baud or in some cases faster telebit modems to hook up to the backbones.
In the 90's things started taking off and it was expected that every institution, except the very smallest, would have a T1. The biggest ones were hooked up by a T3. By the late 90's a few wealthy, well-connected individuals had their own private T1 at home.
And today? 1.5mbps does not meet most definitions of broadband. It's the backwaters. Isn't that amazing?
There's a difference. It turns out that one of the great things about packet switched links is as you get more and more people, you can share bandwidth further. What I mean is that if I as a single person want a fast link, say 10mbps, I have to get a 10mbps link. However, turns out that I can have another person (my roommate) on that link and it'll still be about equally fast for both of us. We don't use it all the time, and as such 10mbps is just about as fast for two as it is for one. We don't need 20mbps just because there's another person.
This holds true as you go up the chain. This also allows for ISPs to sell access to consumers for cheaper than what it costs them. An OC-3 (155mbps) to a Tier-1 provider can run you $30,000/month or more. By the numbers that means that a 10mbps connection from that would cost about $2,000/month. However, if you oversubscribe it, sell more bandwidth than you have, you can lower the cost. Turns out this works well, since it is still fast for everyone. People get cheap connections for a low cost.
Ok well the problem is this all breaks down if people try to use their connection full blast 24/7. Because they are using it all the time, it saps bandwidth from others. The sharing only works on the assumption that everyone doesn't use it full blast all the time. The load is sporadic.
In the case of the OC-3, suppose you sell 10mb connections at $50/month, and you make $10/month profit on each. That means you need 600 subscribers. However, if they all tried to use their connections full blast, they'd only get about 260kbps each. For customers to maintain fast access, usage needs to be sporadic, which it normally will be.
That's the problem. They are ok with you using your speed. They aren't ok with you using it all the time to the max (which people who go nuts on torrents do). If you want that, you have to pay more (business accounts usually offer that, mine does). You can expect extremely cheap access that is also very fast.
You find this even in company LAN/WANs. We have gigabit ethernet at work. Gig right to your desktop. It's nice. However, it is only that fast if people use it as needed and don't run their connections full blast all the time. Reason is our switches only have gig uplinks. So there'll be anywhere form 1-24 computers with gig links that have gig back to the floor switches. Those switches also have gig links. So you then have 48 rooms that all have gig back to the building switch. That then has a gig link back to the core, so the whole building, all 700 computers or so, only has 1gb back to the core. As such if everyone tried to use their full 1gig all the time across the core, it'd go rather slow for everyone. That doesn't happen though. People get what they need and then their usage falls idle, making it fast for everyone despite the oversubscription.
It's also the only way to do it. There is no way we could afford the network equipment to give everyone dedicated gig bandwidth. It would take room switches from little $100-200 gig jobs to $3000+ switches that have 1-2 10gb uplinks. Floor switches wouldn't be $3000 gig pizza box Ciscos, they'd be $100,000 modular blade routers loaded with 10gb cards and OC-768 uplinks. The core switches would probably have to be CRS-1s.
The Internet as we enjoy it, where we can get cheap access that is reasonably fast, relies on the idea of sharing bandwidth. That means we all can't use all our bandwidth all the time.
[...] — seemingly almost criminally — [...]
If not misinterpreting in Canada it is criminal offence. To quote competitionbureau :
The false or misleading representations and deceptive marketing practices provisions of the Competition Act contain a general prohibition against all materially false or misleading representations. They also prohibit making performance representations which are not based on adequate and proper tests, misleading warranties and guarantees, false or misleading ordinary selling price representations, untrue, misleading or unauthorized use of tests and testimonials, bait and switch selling, double ticketing and the sale of a product above its advertised price. Further, the promotional contest provisions prohibit contests that do not disclose required information.
[...]
The Competition Act provides criminal and civil regimes to address false or misleading representations. Under both regimes, the Act prohibits the making, or the permitting of the making, of a representation to the public, in any form whatever, that is false or misleading in a material respect.
Roadrunner Highspeed Internet is 150x faster than dialup, for only $19.99/mo!
That's what their ad says, but it's lying. You can't get their $20/mo service unless you specifically ask for it. They will only tell you about their $45/mo or $55/mo service on the phone. It's also not as fast as they say - the $20/mo service is only 4 times faster than dialup (~200kbps), and the $55/mo service is only 18 times faster than dialup (1mbps). I'm referring to upstream bandwidth, because upstream bandwidth the limiting factor - 56kbps dialup is symmetric, but cable Internet is asymmetric.
Have to remember that not only does online gaming entail transferring game data, which is low bandwidth and mostly latency important, but it increasingly means transferring game assets which are much larger. Patches for MMOs, new maps for FPSes, heck even buying whole games digitally. It's cool stuff but you want some heavy hitting bandwidth for it. It would suck to connect to a TF2 server and have a map end, just as you'd finally got the file downloaded.
You have to remember that part of having a high speed connection is making things feel fast, such that you aren't waiting on anything. It is easy to say "Oh who needs that just for web surfing," until you go back and try it and realize that man, you really do a lot of waiting with lower end connections.
I noticed a difference when I went form my 4mb DSL to my 10mb cable with things like web surfing. With my DSL, pages were just a little laggy compared to work (extremely high end connection). It wasn't like a had to wait a long time, but there was a noticeable amount of time. With my 10mb connection that went away, it was fast enough that things seemed more or less immediate. Big deal? No, not really, but worthwhile if it didn't cost too much. Certainly the kind of thing I'd recommend to people.
Ideally, we want everything on a computer to happen under human perception time (which varies depending on what we are talking about but is usually in the range of tens of milliseconds). Ideally, it should never feel like you are waiting on your computer, it should always be waiting on you. When you ask for something it should happen immediately from your perception.
Part of that requires fast net connections. Yes, it is easy to get all "onion in the belt" and talk about how we did just fine with 128k broadband and so on. However, it is also false. Sure it worked, but it wasn't immediate.
Cox powerboost lets you use extra available bandwidth around your area for a few seconds when starting large downloads. So 25 mbps becomes ~30 mpbs for 10-15 seconds. Works on torrents aswell. It's pretty sweet, especially if you dont live in an area with lots of kids downloading mp3s all the time. Then 30 mbps almost becomes the norm.
Most of those suggestions are perfectly reasonable if you want an optimal online experience. If you can't tolerate hiccups when streaming HD video, something that many consumers would call their ISPs to complain about, then yes, you are going to pay an arm and a leg for that convenience. The same goes for uploading albums of high megapixel images from your cameras - sharing pictures. You are going to pay an arm and a leg for that upload bandwidth.
It's not as though we're talking about medications here. It's not as though this is predatory. Anyone with this kind of money to dump just to avoid hiccups when streaming HD video of Dances with Douches from Hulu.com, but can't be bothered to do even minimal consumer research, is going to get exactly what they deserve. Consider it a tax on ignorance. It's a public good.
are they like misleading headlines on slashdot?
I have friends that bought a huge SUV for when they drive to the ski slopes (they go 2-3x a year). A rented SUV would be much cheaper.
A lot of rental car places won't rent to people age 18-24 and/or won't allow driving the vehicle across state lines. And what's the Internet access analogy to a rental car? Ordering the work on optical disc from its publisher?
You're confusing advertised speed with actual speed (which are two very different things.) What they're telling you you can do with each of those plans gives you a better idea of what their actual speed capabilities are on those plans.
But don't make them give you any sort of actual figures. They'd never be able to compete if they did that.
The OS X *combo* updates tend to be large, but the incremental ones are small.
If you update frequently then you'll get the smaller patches. If you don't update for a very long time (or you do a nuke and pave and haven't saved the combo patcher before) you get hit with the big one.
The vast majority of OS X patches are nowhere near 800Mb.
The biggest ISP lie of all is that 7mbps is a fast connection. Just because it's the fastest they offer, doesn't make it fast. Rather than arguing about how fast a connection one needs to watch videos, we ought to be storming the telco office with pitch forks and torches, demanding 100mbit to the home.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
You do need a bit of speed for sniping on ebay auctions.
But how about that maximum thing when buying pills to "extend your tool?"
internet a utility that I use for average 8hrs a day. That is pretty steep compared to electricity which I use 24hrs a day
Your power runs 110Hz.
Your DSL runs at.... 3000000Hz. And is bi-directional.
I never have any voltage fluctuations or power outs
Your power never goes out? That may be true depending on where you live, or at least extremely rare, but you definitely have voltage fluctuations.
Also, the costs of the power network are born by more users.
paintball
You have a "max", and then you put a turbo on it, and suddenly the max goes up. Doesn't mean it wasn't a max before - take away the turbo and you have your plain old max back. Go ahead and try to exceed it.
I've read this and some of the comments below, and it amazes me how many people easily and even jokingly accept dishonesty and other abuse from businesses.
In Malaysia, we can't !
The local monopoly won't allow that.
Our 1Mbps package actually delivers around 384Kbps speed.
Our 4Mbps package maybe able to get 1.5 to 2 Mbps speed.
And when we need more, the local monopoly (telco) keep telling us "10 Mbps very soon" and we have heard that for the past 8 years !
Compare to Japan or Korea, or even Singapore, Malaysia is nothing !
So...where in America do you live??
I don't know of anywhere within 100 miles or more that you can get better than maybe 15Mbps on a consumer line.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
I have no citations but I do have experience. I wouldn't say that they add "lag", but they definitely seem to do something weird with connections. For example, on a couple family members that have it, I can't get two pages browsing at the same time. If I use a VPN then it works just fine, and the speed seems to be faster too.
I don't believe that actual issue is that the pages are hitting the speed limit, even running a couple of curl's seems to be blocked.
The best buy add i recieved last weekend had a chart in it showing that a core i-7 was necessary to use social networking sites.
Sure that stuff is pretty sleazy, but it doesn't really compare to the stuff QWest has been spamming all over my city. They are advertising their new "fiber optic" service. One would assume based on the ads that they will actually provide you with fiber service. A little investigation (not on their website of course) reveals the truth. It's just regular DSL, they ran some more fiber lines to their exchanges. Qwest may as well just call all their internet services "fiber optic" since your traffic is probably flowing through a fiber network somewhere along the way....
I've honestly never seen an 800MB patch for OS X.
Has anyone seen an ad from a broadband provider that wasn't misleading?
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
You need 18 Mbps to stream video, according to AT&T, but you need 24 Mbps to do video conferencing. That makes sense.
But they block something say, like port 80 outbound or port 25.......
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
The US is where Internet was born and, consequently, where it is the most developed. Yet prices for ADSL connections are way higher than in my country (Romania). I admit, minimum wage is way higher in the US, but still. Besides, prices for almost anything else, from food to clothing to electronics, are way lower in the US.
Long story short, a 20mbps adsl connection here is EUR12.5, meaning around $17.99. Taxes included. So.... umm.... what gives?
Use free online sniper gixen
Now that the mobile internet is with us, I know that "unlimited" can mean as little as 100MB.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They do not have a high gain antenna, despite the claims. They have a high efficicncy omnidirectional antenna. There is big difference. In the world of antennae, high gain *MEANS* directional.
A high gain antenna is good for a point to point link and useless for an area access point. Some access points have moderate gain "omnis" which emit 360 degrees in plane and maybe 20 out of plane. These are not good for multi storey houses.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I've got 750 kbps, and everything works just fine. Facebook loads quickly (matter of seconds), youtube isn't buffering (except maybe when watching HD), 700mb movie downloads in 3 hrs.
Where's the rush ?
IMHO.. you don't need more then 3mbps today. And that 3mbps, to download a movie, and to watch youtube simult.
Have you tried to use Facebook recently? Sounds about right!
Just turn off Adblock, Noscript or Flashblock. And then go to any website (be it Facebook or whatever else) :
I dare you to browse most of webpages on anything slower than a university / corporate 10mbps line.
In fact, in case you *do* have access to 10mbps-line, I dare you to sustain all the blinking shit on screen for more than 10 seconds straight without having to resort to bleach in order to clean your eyeballs.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
And here I thought that with 2 PCs and a Wii connected at 400kbps in total was enough.
Minti: What's that huge shuriken in your back?! Kin: It's the instrument of my victory.
No, neither have I - even a 10.2 base install (no incremental patching) with the combo updater I very much doubt would be 800Mb.
Original poster was making assertions that OS X patches are "800Mb+ level" which is clearly not true.
Apple Computer
If you want it that way then that's fine, but be prepared to pay hundreds of dollars for connections in the 128-256k range. Me? I'll take a connection that is higher speed but not as guaranteed.
After all, if you want committed bandwidth, you can have it. You just have to pay for it. High end lines, like frame relays, come with CIRs, that means "committed information rate" which is a minimum rate they commit for you to always get. However, you'll find you have to pay a lot for it. A 1.5mbps CIR can run you $1000/month for line, transport, local loop and such. You can have what you want, it just costs a lot.
Also, there's a middle ground in most places and that would be business class cable or DSL. That's what I personally go for. That costs more than consumer grade, usually twice as much or so. The benefits are that they don't limit your total usage, and don't stop you from doing things like running servers. Also, it sometimes has higher upload bandwidth. It isn't committed rate though, you may get less than your max during peak usage. I find it the best tradeoff, it isn't too expensive for high speeds, and isn't too limited.
What you can't have is everything for cheap/free. If that's what you demand, well then you are an idiot who has no idea how things work.
So, don't bitch about it, buy what you want. If a low price for a high max speed is the most important thing, then a consumer connection is what you want. However, for that low price you are expected to be reasonable in your usage. If an absolute rate commitment is what is important, then a frame relay, T-1, fractional DS-3 or the like are what you what. You'll get your CIR 100% of the time no matter what, or they'll owe you money as per the SLA. That SLA will also have uptime guarantees and so on. However for that SLA, you will pay a hefty price.
Figure out what you want, do some homework, and then talk to ISPs to get something that meets your needs. But don't expect to have everything for no cost, that isn't how the real world works.
You're very much missing the point.
Yes, DOCSIS 3 allows speeds of hundreds of megabits per second, and DSL technology allows speeds of 20 megabits.
But a) almost no one is rolling out DOCSIS 3, so far as I can tell, b) DSL speeds tend to be around 8-15Mbps for consumer connections, and c) fiber-to-the-home is only happening in some parts of some major metropolitan areas.
Basically, there's no incentive for the ISPs to make even the bare minimum investment required to get the most out of the infrastructure they already have in place, because their competitors aren't offering anything better.
So...your assertion that we shouldn't "accept" the ridiculously small 10Mbit connections is nothing short of preposterous, given that we don't have the least bit of choice in the matter.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Google: "osx combo update". On the first result you'll see that the 10.5.8 combo update is 759MB and the 10.5.8 server combo update is 978MB.
Right, so the server update combo - assuming you were to install 10.5.0 server on a slow internet connection, and then not patch it until 10.5.8 was current would be 978MB. (Not sure how many home users are running OS X server on a slow connection)
Similarly, 10.5.0 retail to 10.5.8 is 759MB if you never updated at all in the life cycle of the OS.
This is a long way from the GPP's original assertion that regular OSX updates were "800MB+". Maybe if you're running 10.5.0 Server on a dial up connection and you need to patch up to 10.5.8 server.
Normal OS X patches are not that large (ie, the incremental ones that most people use when they run software update).
Since when is Facebook usable at 3mbps? Facebook is still slow on my 100mbps LAN.
Popisms.com - Connecting pop culture