Mildly Infuriating

Honestly, this is the same shit the telcoms have been doing for decades. They also did it with the previous generations.

When telcoms started promoting “3G” it was a mix between networks with proper broadband speeds, and edge networks that were more like 2.5G. 4G was an even bigger dumpster fire with a very wide array of “fourth generation” specs that ranged from glorified 3G to actual next generation speeds. And 5G is a repeat of this marketing bullshit trend.

You can really see the effects of this if you get to rural coverage areas. Your phone might say it’s on 5G or 4G, and you might be experiencing shit speeds even if you have decent reception. You might be on a part of the network that the marketing department considers 4 or 5G, but doesn’t mean it’s actually fast.

IMHO, we need consumer protection laws that prevent companies from using brand names or generational buzz words to trick customers. Network speeds should be advertised in bits per second, or standardized BPS chunks.

Meanwhile my fiber provider actually offers 5 gig symmetrical for $150 a month. I don't have the network gear to do over a gig, but they offer it and it's a hell of a lot cheaper and better than Comcast.

This is confusing, but the mobile gens are for cell data.

Wifi has 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands.

Internet service can be offered with Gbps speeds. 10Gbps can be called 10gig or 10g. That's also crazy fast for what's standard right now.

Wireless "G" labeling has always mostly been marketing wank anyway.

The actual technology has used more pragmatic (if less marketing friendly) terminology.

Fuck Comcast. Even when it was clear what they were referring to, they made it seem like they were offering 10gigabit fiber service. Nope, same old service offerings. There’s some plausibility: some of us have had gigabit fiber for years and if ComCast wants to reset its reputation. One way is to jump ahead rolling out the next generation of technology. Nope. @Next generation of technology” is apparently upgrading their infrastructure to be able to achieve what they’ve sold for years

Is 200/20M asymmetric, over provisioned up the wazoo, shared across the neighborhood m, high latency, any better now that it’s relabeled?

You are conflating Internet service speed and mobile generations. I work for an ISP. I hear this all the time. Especially since there's also "5G WiFi" which is 5 GHz band. People confuse it all, and it's understandable but still annoying.

My company offers 1 Gbps service. No one is getting confused by that yet, but our modems have 2.5 Gbps Ethernet ports now, and I had a customer that was outraged the other day because "Your modem is only 2.5 G and all my devices use 5G! You need to send me a 5G modem!!" FFS