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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."
"Max"
"Max Plus"
"Max Turbo"
Do these people even know what the word "maximum" means?
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.
I'd say it has more to do with the continual bloat of the net rather than the link to the router at those speeds.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
For most people "Email" means logging in and downloading a bunch of humorous and/or motivatinal PPS files so they're not too far off the mark when they say 3mbps minimum.
No sig today...
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.
Amen. I don't know about computer games, but on XBOX Live one person in the match is selected as the host/server. So they have to upstream one copy of everything to each player. You'd better hope they have FIOS.
I don't see any technical reason not to offer symmetric packages. I've always assumed it's to curb P2P *grumble*
"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
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.
I'm not sure if you're trying to be sarcastic or actually serious, but I always watch and I very consistently get my full 1.5Mbps down, from my ISP at least. There are several reasons 1.5Mbps feels sluggish these days though.
1. Websites in general are a *lot* more bloated than they were 10 years ago. Dialup really isn't fast enough for even just basic web browsing any more. Imagine trying to browse nfl.com with a 56K.
2. Many websites are simply overloaded, or intentionally restrict bandwidth. A good example (of the former I hope) is Youtube. Many times I've gone to watch a video, and no matter how much bandwidth I have there, it just doesn't download fast enough to keep up. A great example of the latter is ASUS' driver server. Good luck getting anything over 10KBps from there. (Actually, good luck getting even 10KBps.)
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
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 clearly have a better understanding of the internet compared to someone who doesn't know any better. People look to advertising to guide them when they don't know what they want. If advertisements are saying "Hey, this 3mbps plan is great for social networking sites!" then that will stick in their mind when it comes to making a determination. The person making the ads understands their network, why shouldn't you trust their judgement unless they're shady? And if that's the case then why would you consider business with them in the first place?
You have to admit it's a bit silly (and a stretch) for Time Warner to even claim that you should consider the 15-30mbps plan if you're a big online shopper, or a 7mbps connection if you share a lot of photos (I guess if you share full resolution camera raws...)
Sure it's "ideal" to have that kind of bandwidth for whatever they're advertising. I mean hey if everyone just bought the best plan I'm sure their web experience would be amazing for that task. The problem is their advertisements are in fact misleading unknowing customers, and intentionally so, to get people who don't really understand the difference to pay for more and use less.
They would love it if everyone bought 30mbit plans and used it for email. They don't love it when people like me buy their plans and use it for what should be considered its intended purpose.
I know ISPs will fuck with your bandwidth, but...
Actually, lag injection doesn't sound that far-fetched given the quality of most ISPs.
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.
Has anyone seen an ad from a broadband provider that wasn't misleading?
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Every Western (and I am sure most Eastern :)) country has a similar law, the trouble is not legislative.