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Broadband firms must ditch 'misleading' speed ads
Broadband firms must ditch 'misleading' speed ads By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter
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Image copyright BT Image caption ISPs will no longer be able to use the term 'up to' about speeds of service
Broadband firms will no longer be able to advertise their fast net services based on the speeds just a few customers get, from May next year.
Currently ISPs are allowed to use headline speeds that only 10% of customers will actually receive.
In future, adverts must be based on what is available to at least half of customers at peak times.
It follows research that suggested broadband advertising can be misleading for consumers.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) looked into consumers' understanding of broadband speed claims and found that many were confused by headline speeds that they would never actually get in their own homes.
The concerns were passed on to the Committees of Advertising Practice (Cap) which consulted with ISPs, consumer groups and Ofcom to find a better way to advertise fast net services.
Most argued that the fairest and clearest way would be to use the average speeds achieved at peak time by 50% of customers.
As well as insisting ISPs use "average" instead of "up to" speeds, Cap also urged ISPs to promote speed-checking facilities in their adverts so that users could test out the speeds they were likely to get from any given service.
Consumer victory
Director of the Committees of Advertising Practice, Shahriar Coupal, said: "There are a lot of factors that affect the broadband speed a customer is going to get in their own home; from technology to geography, to how a household uses broadband.
"Our new standards will give consumers a better understanding of the broadband speeds offered by different providers when deciding to switch providers."
The UK's minister for digital Matt Hancock welcomed the change, describing it as a "victory for consumers".
"I'm delighted to see that Cap is finally changing the way broadband speeds are advertised. Headline 'up to' speeds that only need to be available to 10% of consumers are incredibly misleading - customers need clear, concise and accurate information in order to make an informed choice."
The ASA also considered whether the use of "fibre" in broadband advertising was misleading for ISPs that only use fibre to the road-side phone cabinet, relying on a copper connection for the so-called last mile to a consumer's home.
It found that most people saw the use of fibre as a "shorthand buzzword" to describe fast broadband and concluded that it was not misleading for ISPs the use the term.
Alex Neill from consumer group Which? said millions of households were currently experiencing broadband speeds that do not meet expectations.
She said: "It is good to see people may finally see the speeds they could achieve before they sign up to a deal."
Andrew Ferguson, editor of broadband news website ThinkBroadband said packages previously advertised as up to 38Mbps (megabits per second) will drop to speeds of between 24 and 30Mbps.
Services currently marketed at up to 76Mbps are likely to be in the 45 to 55Mbps region, he added, while those advertised as up to 17Mbps could fall as low as 6Mbps under the new rules.
"People shouldn't expect adverts to change overnight, as most changes are likely to emerge in April just ahead of the deadline," he told the BBC.
"However, consumers may start to see a much wider variety of speeds in adverts, and with the addition of the peak time period (defined as 8pm to 10pm) there is likely to be more variation between providers.
"As a result, some providers may elect to refuse service to customers likely to get speeds at the slower end of the scale, which restricts provider choice. Others may not sell the advertised service but instead push customers to a technically identical service marketed under a different name."
Many People Are Thankful For Artificial Intelligence This Thanksgiving, Says Poll
![The first Thanksgiving, 1621, Pilgrims and natives gather to share a meal, oil painting by Jean Louis Gerome Ferris, 1932. [Shutterstock - Everett Historical]: ThanksgivingPilgrimsNativeAmericans](https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BBFyAxc.img?h=129&w=300&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=1348&y=117)
© [Shutterstock - Everett Historical] ThanksgivingPilgrimsNativeAmericans
Many Americans appear to be starting to embrace the idea of artificial intelligence (AI), as well its growing prevalence in the world, according to a new survey set to be published Thursday.
In fact, many people in the U.S. are grateful for AI this Thanksgiving, with only 11 percent of respondents saying it should not be used during the holiday. The technological capability could, for example, automatically pick relatively benign topics of conversation for Thanksgiving dinner in order to avoid veering off into tense family discussions, according to participants of the survey.
Broadly, artificial intelligence is the technologically advanced concept that machines can display a level of knowledge highly similar to humans through learning and understanding of the environment. An artificially intelligent machine, for example, can perform almost-cognitive functions like problem solving, which often requires the adaptation of certain circumstances in realtime.
When asked why the larger population’s acceptance and even excitement of AI seems to be expanding, Carl Landers, senior vice president of Conversica — the tech company who conducted the poll of 1,009 diverse American adults — said it’s because “we are reaching a turning point.”
“Consider that our research also discovered that almost a third of Americans are already using AI, whether it’s Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, or Salesforce’s Einstein,” Landers told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “Now that people have a taste of what AI can do, they want to see how they can speed up routine tasks to make their lives easier and more productive—whether at work or at home.”
The company finds that 16 percent use AI in smartphone applications like Siri and Google, while 10 percent employ it with home applications like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home.
In the poll, Conversica also asked how an AI-powered assistant like Alexa or Google Home could best help them during the holidays. The number one answer was “gift recommendations,” with “product details” coming second. The response “connecting people” with another human was a distant third.
Conversica is a company that specializes in AI assistance, specifically in offering a virtual assistant for businesses to use for customer service, sales, and marketing purposes, among other functions. It sees the advantages of its proprietary AI firsthand and on a daily basis.
“Our research shows that in order to be truly successful, a salesperson needs to follow up 8-11 times,” Landers explained. “While most humans would only be able to follow-up a handful of times at most, an AI assistant can follow up with a lead many times, never getting sick and always sounding happy and polite. Our clients who use our AI platform say they are more successful and are even able to hire more people as a result.”
Not everyone is so enthusiastic about the advent of ever-growing AI.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who heads a nonprofit research firm called OpenAI, said earlier in July that government bureaucrats must craft regulations for AI before robots begin killing people in the streets.
But it isn’t just Musk. He and 115 other tech leaders collectively announced in August that they sent a letter to the United Nations asking it to ban “killer robots,” formally known as lethal autonomous weapons. Famous physicist Stephen Hawking has also warned that, if used wrong, artificial intelligence could end the human race.
“I think you can build things and the world gets better. With AI especially, I am really optimistic,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said in July in an apparent, indirect response to the aforementioned remarks made by Musk. “I think people who are naysayers and try to drum up these doomsday scenarios — I just don’t understand it. It’s really negative and in some ways I actually think it is pretty irresponsible … In the next five to 10 years, AI is going to deliver so many improvements in the quality of our lives.”
Some have gone even further than Zuckerberg’s personal advocation and his company’s commitment to develop and utilize AI-empowered features.
Anthony Levandowski, a former Google and Uber executive who is known as one of most prominent advancers of autonomous vehicle technology, is starting his own church, in which AI is essentially the deity. Levandowski is taking the initiative so seriously, that, along with other organizers, he filed papers with the IRS, listing himself as the official leader of the religion.
In respect to Conversica’s poll, somewhat surprisingly, the older a respondent was, the more convinced they seemed to be of AI’s power and benefits.
For instance, 51.2 percent of people ages 65 and older thought businesses should be grateful for AI, while in contrast, 44.5 percent of 18-24 year olds said the same. There is an uptick when comparing to older generations, but the appreciation plateaued at 50 percent for age groups 35-44, 45-54, and 55-64 years old, respectively.
One could conceivably think that the younger generations would be more appreciative or grateful of AI since the more youthful usually comprehend the many wonders of nascent technology due to their higher proportion of exposure. But, perhaps since the older generation stereotypically know less about technology, they may be more surprised and thus more impressed by AI.
Regardless of what the response variance in the age distinctions convey, some don’t see such polls as a perfect way of examining public perception of AI.
“Take autonomous vehicles, which are basically just AI on wheels: some surveys suggest a majority of respondents are eager for a future of autonomous vehicles, but there are plenty of other surveys that conclude the opposite,” Ryan Hagemann, director of technology policy at the think tank the Niskanen Center, told TheDCNF. “So in general, I take survey results of public opinion on emerging technologies with a pretty big grain of salt.”
Public perception of AI is highly dependent on the framing of the question proposed, much like for other complex policy debates, Hagemann also says.
He adds that, regardless of how much consideration AI polls should receive at the moment, there are tangible and considerable benefits of the technology’s wide-spread development, implementation and adoption.
“Probably more than any other technology, AI is contributing the lion’s share of those productivity returns to technology firms,” Hagemann concluded. “If I was the CEO of a tech firm, I’d be giving thanks this holiday season to the blossoming springtime of AI advancements we’re currently living through.”
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S&P 500 Futures Fall As Merkel Coalition Talks Fail; Marvell-Cavium Near $6 Billion Deal
Futures for the S&P 500 index fell slightly Monday morning, recouping most of its overnight losses from German coalition talks breaking down. Meanwhile, Marvell Technology (MRVL) reached a deal to buy fellow Cavium (CAVM) for about $6 billion as chip takeover buzz has heated up with Broadcom (AVGO) making a $130 billion overture to Qualcomm (QCOM).
XAutoplay: On | OffS&P 500 futures lost 0.1% vs. fair value after retreating 0.3% or more overnight. Germany's Dax erased a 0.5% loss to trade 0.2% higher.
German Talks
Month-long talks on forming a new German government collapsed Sunday night, as the Free Democratic Party walked out. Merkel's Christian Democrat Party, along with Bavarian CSU sistery party, were trying to form a coalition with the Free Democrats and the Green Party.
Merkel could try to form another grand coalition with the Social Democratic Party, but SPD leaders say they aren't interested in continuing to be the junior partner.
Chip M&A
Marvell Technology will pay $40 in cash plus 2.1757 Marvell shares per Cavium share, the companies announced Monday morning. That is currently worth $84.15 a share. Cavium shares rose 7% to 81.15. Marvell was unchanged at 20.29.
The Marvell-Cavium deal come as Broadcom recently offered $130 billion for fellow wireless chipmaker Qualcomm. Qualcomm has rejected the offer as undervaluing the company. Both Broadcom and Qualcomm are suppliers to the Apple (AAPL) iPhone.
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