Comcast Gets A Wrist Slap For Using Dumb And Misleading ’10G’ Marketing To Confuse Customers

Back in 2019, when fifth generation (5G) wireless was getting a lot of dumb (and as it turned out, unwarranted) marketing hype, the cable industry came up with an amazing idea: they’d simply call their existing cable broadband service a “10G technology” in a bid to (1) piggyback on the hype 5G was getting, and (2) falsely represent coaxial-based broadband as something more futuristic than it actually is.

At the time, former FCC boss turned top cable lobbyist Mike Powell insisted that this was a revolutionary step for the cable industry:

“With groundbreaking, scalable capacity and speeds, the 10G platform is the wired network of the future that will power the digital experiences and imaginations of consumers for years to come. As an industry, we are dedicated to delivering an exceptional national infrastructure that will power digital advancement and propel our innovation economy into the future.”

Of course here on planet Earth, cable broadband has a notorious reputation for being much slower and less reliable than fiber, consistently overpriced, and featuring painfully slow upload speeds. Cable companies like Comcast also have a well-established track record of being grotesquely full of shit.

Quite rightfully, AT&T and T-Mobile complained to both the National Advertising Review Board (NARB) and the National Advertising Division, noting that the 10G terminology would confuse customers. Both organizations have subsequently recommended that Comcast stop using the term:

“The NARB panel concluded that 10G expressly communicates at a minimum that users of the Xfinity network will experience significantly faster speeds than are available on 5G networks. This express claim is not supported because the record does not contain any data comparing speeds experienced by Xfinity network users with speeds experienced by subscribers to 5G networks.”

Keep in mind both NARD and NAB are part of a self-regulatory system run by BBB National Programs (read: corporations). It’s basically an attempt for industry to claim that you don’t need government regulators with any backbone policing misleading ads, because industry will regulate itself.

The problem is it’s all a bit performative. “Punishments” for misleading ads occur long after the ads have run (notice how this ruling came four years after cable began using the 10G term). There’s no serious penalty for telling the organization to piss off (outside of an empty threat to forward concerns to actual regulators, which usually doesn’t happen and might not result in penalties anyway).

Comcast has defended the 10G term because some very limited parts of its network (namely a very limited number of markets where it has deployed fiber) are capable of 10 Gbps speeds. And while it the company says it will make some changes to the way it uses the 10G term, it says it won’t phase the usage out entirely, showcasing the performative nature of the entire numerical charade.