Comcast Takes Heat For Misleading ’10G’ Cable Broadband Branding

Back in 2019 the cable industry, envious of all the attention 5G wireless was getting, pulled a new marketing term completely out of its ass. It simply started calling ordinary cable broadband upgrades 10G, based on absolutely no real-world standards or definitions. It was a hollow attempt to capitalize on wireless 5G hype because these companies hope to someday offer 10 Gbps cable broadband.

Fast forward to 2023, and Comcast has gotten an adorable little wrist slap for its abuse of the marketing term.

The National Advertising Division (NAD) is part of the advertising industry's self-regulatory system run by BBB National Programs. 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.

It's all a bit performative; punishments" occur long after the ads have run. There's no serious penalty for telling the organization to piss off (outside of an empty threat to forward concerns to actual regulators, who also may or may not actually give a damn). Still, the organization last week urged that Comcast stop abusing the 10G term," or at the very least make it clear the term is aspirational":

Discontinue its 10G" claims or qualify them to (a) make clear that Comcast is implementing improvements that will enable it to achieve 10G" and that 10G is aspirational, or (b) use 10G" in a manner that is not false or misleading."

If you actually want 10 gigabit per second broadband, you'll have to subscribe to fiber, not cable, especially when it comes to upstream speeds. And even then, symmetrical 10 Gbps tiers are pretty hard to find. One of the very few ISPs offering this kind of speed is Chattanooga's city owned utility provider, EPB, a project companies like AT&T and Comcast have long tried to sue and harass out of existence.

So this stuff does matter. But it's extremely unlikely NAD's gentle prodding actually results in any meaningful change at Comcast. And it's equally unlikely that over-extended U.S. regulators at the FCC or FTC much care that everybody's least-favorite cable giant misleads and confuses consumers in this way.