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Ad Board To Comcast: Stop Claiming You Have the 'Fastest Internet' (arstechnica.com)
The National Advertising Division (NDA) said on Monday that Comcast should stop claiming that its Xfinity service delivers the "fastest Internet in America," adding that the carrier should also discontinue some ads where it claims to offer the "fastest in-home Wi-Fi." ArsTechnica reports: For its fastest Internet claim, Comcast relied on crowdsourced data from the Ookla Speedtest application. An "award" provided by Ookla to Comcast relied only on the top 10 percent of each ISP's download results. "Although Xfinity offers a variety of speeds at a range of prices and tiers, Comcast's advertising does not limit its claims to a particular tier," the NAD's announcement said. "NAD determined that the claims at issue in both print and broadcast advertising reasonably conveyed a message of overall superiority -- that regardless of which speed tier purchased by a consumer, in a head-to-head comparison, Xfinity would deliver faster speeds." Though one methodology might be reliable for one purpose, "it may not be sufficient substantiation for advertising claims made in a different context," the NAD said. Ookla's methodology "wasn't a good fit for the purposes of substantiating Comcast's overall superior speed performance claim that 'Xfinity delivers the fastest Internet in America,'" the NAD also said.
To avoid getting sued, they should use subjective words instead, like "Comcast Internet is the most synergetic!"
Table-ized A.I.
Comcast in Quincy MA (just outside Boston) is charging their customers for fast internet, but according to my buddies over there, the speed is just faster than a modem.
The entire town has essentially called Comcast to complain, and they've done nothing to fix it, and this has been going on for over a month.
And the best part? Apparently, there's no alternative for internet access. And you're within sight of a major metropolitan area.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
To be the fastest internet in America, you have to provide the fastest internet in America. Just one counter example is enough to discredit the claim. If you are going to argue semantics where size of area served is taken into account, than add that qualifier to the claim!
Who provides a larger number of internet connections at higher speeds than Comcast?
You know that's a completely different metric, right?
Sure, there are faster speeds available, but only in extremely select, limited areas.
As are the limited areas where Comcast's speed is 1Gb/s or higher. You know they probably use those ads in markets where those select few competitors are available too...
The last thing I want is every ISP commercial followed by 25 seconds of a guy reciting disclaimers like we are at with pharmaceutical ads. Fucking lawyers.
Right. We should all just trust what our corporate betters tell us. After the all, they're richer and smarter than us, so they must know better than anyone, especially dirty government regulators, what's best for us. Advertising shouldn't have to truthful, just truthy. Right?
Fucking dim-witted Rand fan boys.
Choosing the wrong ISP probably won't cause birth defects in your unborn children or permanently destroy your bowel
If you think that you've never had to deal with Comcast.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Perhaps their ad should say, "We suck slightly less than all the other greedy sleazy competition-free ISPs."
Table-ized A.I.
He's right about the lawyers, though. Being "truthy" is making wild claims in your ad, then covering any lie in the 25 seconds of hasty, unintelligible mumbling following the ad. Disclaimers do nothing for the truthfulness of ads, they just make sure advertisers cannot be called out on their lies. They are meaningless legalese that makes government regulators, consumer advocates, and corporations all a little happier while accomplishing nothing; you're better off without them. And that's the hard to swallow truth*
*) May or may not be the truth. Not valid in the state of California. May cause irreversible damage to kidneys and liver. Conditions apply.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Yeah, their service is great! I have 105Mb cable internet, which allows me to hit my monthly 1TB data cap in just over 22 hours!
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
Now you've gone from fudging the truth to flat out lying.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
I added a Monster coaxial cable to my Comcast Wi-Fi receiver and now I have the fastest Wi-Fi! The internet really comes alive!
Take that Google Fiber!
Or in other words, perfect for 80% (if not higher) of the population that would hear "fastest wifi" and think "faster internet" regardless of any technical details.
If you have a connection lasting longer than 4 hours, call your doctor.
See: https://ispspeedindex.netflix....
These speeds are for prime time delivery of Netflix's data for July comes in 6th at 3.47 Mbps whereas Verizon, number one, is at 3.61 Mbps. Not much difference. Some caveats here: there can be variations for data travel over intermediate connections, it's prime time. Then again, Netflix produces something like 37% of network traffic during prime time so maybe the numbers are useful.
One problem with Ookla results is that for their speed tests the data between your modem and your ISP's servers likely never leave the ISP's network. That's very unlikely to be the case for general Internet usage.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell