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posted by martyb on Tuesday June 03 2014, @06:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-you-don't-know-won't-hurt-us dept.

Comcast's been irking a large segment of the internet again this week. This time, though, it doesn't have anything to do with their pro-merger mania, their stance on net neutrality, or the problems with their actual service. The latest kerfuffle is all about a thirty-second commercial -- one that doesn't even seem to get the basics of its own technology right.

The ad in question is for Xfinity Internet, and how it's supposedly so fast that "real gamers" won't notice buffering or lag when they play online. The problem is that the game shown in the ad is Ubisoft's Trials Fusion, which notably does not have any online gameplay. The game modes shown in the ad are only played offline, and would look and feel identical if the Wi-Fi were completely turned off.

Notice how smoothly your Blu-ray is playing? That's the speed of Comcast Internet!

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday June 03 2014, @02:40PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Tuesday June 03 2014, @02:40PM (#50644)

    What exactly would breaking them up accomplish? Nothing. You could have a different mini-Comcast for every county, and prices would still be high (higher, in fact), and service would suck (probably even more than now). If you don't like your mini-Comcast, what are you going to do, switch to a competing one? There are no competitors in your area. This is the whole problem with utility monopolies. It really doesn't matter how many of them or how large they are, because you are only able to get service from one.

    The only thing that'd really fix things is for municipal governments to seize ownership of the last-mile infrastructure of all these ISPs (since they were paid for with tax dollars after all), and then lease access to them to different ISPs.

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  • (Score: 1) by compro01 on Tuesday June 03 2014, @02:47PM

    by compro01 (2515) on Tuesday June 03 2014, @02:47PM (#50645)

    The only thing that'd really fix things is for municipal governments to seize ownership of the last-mile infrastructure of all these ISPs (since they were paid for with tax dollars after all), and then lease access to them to different ISPs.

    Or just do the breakup along those lines, leaving a "physical infrastructure" company and an ISP company, with the former mandated to lease lines to anyone interested.

    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday June 03 2014, @05:40PM

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Tuesday June 03 2014, @05:40PM (#50705)

      Then the physical infrastructure company will just jack up rates as much as they want since they have a monopoly. If you make it munipality-owned, you don't have that problem.