In this article, AT&T talks about its new ‘5G Evolution’ network which will be coming later this year to about 20 cities and taken advantage of by the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus. The 5G Evolution network is said to be twice as fast as their current 4G LTE speeds. I’ll ruin the surprise and tell you it isn’t 5G. Apparently, AT&T never says they are building a 5G network, they are only making something called 5G Evolution which is supposed to pave the way for their 5G network once the standards are finalized. This 5G Evolution thing isn’t even new technology. Apparently, T-Mobile has been using the same tech for six months but just don’t have the insane marketing department that AT&T has. I’ve written about my issue with this type of marketing recently so I won’t go into too much detail about it, but it definitely shouldn’t be allowed. It’s obviously attempting to mislead people into believing that they have a true 5G network and thus have the fastest speeds. The article mentions something worrying at the end. This is only the beginning; the rest of the companies will probably start pretending they have 5G soon too.
Reading articles like this one make me wonder, at what point does something become false advertising? If companies leave themselves a small amount of wiggle room like tacking evolution onto the name of something, should we allow that? Just because you can say, it’s technically not a lie, doesn’t mean it should be allowed. This reminds me of a time about 10 years ago, when the XBOX 360 came out. There was a big trend on the internet to sell the box that the 360 came in on eBay or some other site for the price of a console. Every posting would say something on the page like, “This is just a box, I am not selling a console.” When you hear stories like that, you think the people who made posts like that are terrible, but we don’t seem to notice that it’s not very different to situations like the one with AT&T.
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An article came out today talking about Verizon's attempt at gigabit internet service. The advertisements for the service state that the price for gigabit will be $70/month. This is a very low price point that is only being matched by Google Fiber after a $300 installation fee or $25 for 12 months. Of course Verizon doesn't mention that it too has an installation fee which is not quite as expensive, but will still run you $150 or $10/month. Assuming Verizon is able to deliver the service to a large amount of people, maybe we'll all have gigabit internet soon for roughly $70/month, except that we won't. The article goes into some detail about the fact that Verizon's gigabit service does not give you a gigabit of speed yet, so you will be paying $70/month for gigabit internet and not receiving gigabit internet. Also, the $70/month thing isn't true either since you are still paying the additional $10 dollars/month but only if you are a new customer, otherwise you will be paying around $200/month. Of course new customers will also be paying that much in a year or two when the special deal expires and they start charging more than double the amount you were used to paying.
I hate marketing decisions like this. Not only can Verizon not give their customers the speed they are paying for, they are tricking them into paying more than expected. Current Verizon customers have signed up for this service expecting the $70/month deal and been charged $200 on their next bill. I'm sure this gets way more people to sign up for the service, but it just seems like a horrible thing to do. I haven't done enough research into the pricing options of Google Fiber, but I haven't heard anywhere that they are doing anything like this. Their installation fee is definitely pricey, but it still doesn't compare to Verizon. On top of that, I always find it annoying when companies decide to treat their new customers way better than existing ones. It may convince new customers to join, but I think they need to focus on making their current customers happy. Seeing special treatment given to others but not you is a terrible way to keep people happy. |
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May 2017
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