Talking about using "Confusion" in marketing - does anyone know why every ISP uses "xxx times faster than dialup" in their adverts. We're not children - please tell us what speed you're offering. Even on ISPs web-sites, you have to muck around for ages trying to find out what exactly they're offering. Just a pet peeve of mine.....
When they use "you can download 250 emails, 4 video clips and 5.75 MP3s on our Grand Mega Inbox Surfer Plan per month!!!", that's when I start swearing...
JonC: Talking about using "Confusion" in marketing - does anyone know why every ISP uses "xxx times faster than dialup" in their adverts. We're not children - please tell us what speed you're offering. Even on ISPs web-sites, you have to muck around for ages trying to find out what exactly they're offering. Just a pet peeve of mine.....
It's a simple marketing ploy for those stuck on dialup. The thing that really annoys me (and I am do wonder sometimes if the commerce commission have investigated the claims) is that with the exception of TCL Cable it's impossible to get a residential broadband service in NZ that is 50x faster than dialup. . . Maybe on downloads but certainly not uploads. Therefore the service isn't 50x faster as claimed.
sbiddle: It's a simple marketing ploy for those stuck on dialup. The thing that really annoys me (and I am do wonder sometimes if the commerce commission have investigated the claims) is that with the exception of TCL Cable it's impossible to get a residential broadband service in NZ that is 50x faster than dialup. . . Maybe on downloads but certainly not uploads. Therefore the service isn't 50x faster as claimed.
What's the upstream for V.92 again? 48kbit/s? So that'd be... 2.4mbit/s. Even at 28.8, a 50x multiplier is 1.44Mbit/s.
sbiddle: It's a simple marketing ploy for those stuck on dialup. The thing that really annoys me (and I am do wonder sometimes if the commerce commission have investigated the claims) is that with the exception of TCL Cable it's impossible to get a residential broadband service in NZ that is 50x faster than dialup. . . Maybe on downloads but certainly not uploads. Therefore the service isn't 50x faster as claimed.
Agreed, but even TCL cable advertise up to 250x dialup speed - http://www.telstraclear.co.nz/. Their best plan offers 10Mbps down, 2Mbps up - I presume that if you've got 8 coming down, then you can have a maximum of 2 up, so total connection speed is 10Mbps. 50kbps (usual dialup connection - I've seen 52, but very rarely) * 250 = 12.5Mbps. Still well over what they're offering. They seem to assume a poor dialup connection in the first place and then compare it to the best connection possible on their service.
Maybe they're pulling a quick one on the definition of kilo and Mega, like the Hard-drive companies do. The hard-drive companies define a mega-byte as 1,000,000 bytes, not 2^20 bytes and a giga-byte as 1,000,000,000, not 2^30 bytes. If an ISP claim they've got 2Mbps, is it 2,000,000 bits per second or 2,097,152 bits per second????
This whole xxx times faster than dialup seems to be a way of obfuscating what they're offering and making it seem better than it really is.
juha: What's the upstream for V.92 again? 48kbit/s? So that'd be... 2.4mbit/s. Even at 28.8, a 50x multiplier is 1.44Mbit/s.
Stop with the logic already ;-)
It's all a crok and we know it.
What's more, the general public know it as well. Why do you think the uptake of bb is so low? The public understand that when they pay $50 for Sky they're getting Sky. They know when it stops running for a day they'll get a credit without asking. They know it just works and they can start viewing within seconds of sitting down.
The CC don't do anything about these issues because every playing in the market is doing it and it's an even playing field. The CC also aren't getting call after call from Mr Kiwi Public because no one cares.
Anyway I'm off to take some photos of power polls and traffic light controllers for my next interesting project... stay tuned. :)
Cheers Don
Promote New Zealand - Get yourself a .kiwi.nz domain name!!!
Are you subscribed to our RSS feed? You can download the latest headlines and summaries from our stories directly
to your computer or smartphone by using a feed reader.
Retired Mod
Trusted
Biddle Corp
