Jan 24

Comcast Can no Longer Lie About Having the ‘Fastest Internet’

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Comcast agreed to abide by the recommendation in future advertisements, including that it expects “NAD and NARB will hold all advertisers to the same standards when making similar claims.” Typical speed across all customers is not the only important measure, because some readers could be getting much slower rates without bringing the average down much. More than 90 percent of Comcast customers got at least 95 percent of promoted download speeds in the FCC measurements. A couple of percent obtained between 80 and 95 percent of advertised rates, while about 5% were getting less than 80 percent of advertised rates. In this measure, Comcast outperformed most ISPs:

Despite that, there are a decent number of Comcast customers who pay for higher rates but aren’t consistently getting them, as the report revealed that Comcast speed test often struggled to match advertised speeds for 105Mbps clients: Yet because Comcast didn’t make this clear in its advertising material, consumers could reasonably be led to believe that this was the case when purchasing any home internet service plan from Comcast.

Comcast has been told to stop promoting its Xfinity broadband service as the “fastest internet in the united states,” according to a recommendation issued today by the National Advertising Review Board (NARB). The decision came after Verizon last year raised questions about Comcast’s marketing, which specifically sought to undermine Verizon’s FiOS offering and throw Xfinity in a superior light.

At the heart of the debate was data obtained from speed test provider Ookla, which Comcast used to claim that its offering was the fastest available. The investigative panel decided that Ookla speed test data wasn’t the representative sample of all subscribers, but rather just a sample of the top 10 percent of Xfinity customers who happened to examine their internet speed. Verizon also had better upload rates for its top-tiered provider, further disproving Comcast’s claims.