Bits, not bytes

[Sackboy]

I can't stand it when bits and bytes are mixed up, it is a pet peeve.

So when this Cybersmart advert started playing regularly last year on Cape Talk I complained, the first time to Cape Talk and Primedia on 23 September 2008. Yumnah Hendricks of Cape Talk acknowledged receipt of my complaint.

Not really a complaint but just pointing out that there is 8 bits in 1 byte, a 8X difference. Clearly false advertising.

They continued to run this advert and I notified them again with no response.

In early January I notified Cape Talk and Primedia again and finally a Christina Burger of Primedia made contact (7 January 2009) and said they are only aware of one complaint (mine) and in any case it was warranted because they wanted the text to rhyme:



She said that the Cybersmart MD wanted to phone me to explain. I declined and simply requested that they stop doing this. She said they will pull the advert before the end of January.

By middle February I've had enough of this and reported the matter to the ASA through their web site. They confirmed receipt 11 March 2009. On 25 March 2009 the ASA wrote to me saying they are already dealing with a complaint (other than mine) and warning me that each additional complaint is sent to the advertiser and affords them an additional five days to respond. "This can delay the process" they said!

Anyway, just for the record:



This is untrue.

[Anal] The shorthand is "B" for Byte and "b" for Bit. Use "K" for Kilo, not "k". Same for Mega, Giga and Terra. Rule of thumb, if it's large use a capital letter, if it's small use a small letter like "ms" for millisecond. E.g. 48 KB/s = 384 Kb/s [/Anal]

For the record, Cape Talk (567 AM) was flooded with complaints from the first week it aired. In true 702/567 style they ignored them.

 

[Sackboy]

Ok you lost me, my post had no relation to the advert, just a comment to someone else's quote. and 384KB/s is obtainable over quite a good period of time on a 4mb line if that's what you were aiming at.

You said the speed is obtainable. I say that isn't the criteria used by the ASA. They go much further. Read what you said and my reply again.

 

[Pilgrim]

Ummm, the telkom 4Mbit line can theoretically do 500KB/s under perfect conditions so the line does exist.

Doh! My bad, you actually could get a 384 KiloBytes per second line in South Africa... 384 * 8 = 3072, so it would be a 3 Megabits per second line... /me hides

 

[Pilgrim]

You said the speed is obtainable. I say that isn't the criteria used by the ASA. They go much further. Read what you said and my reply again.

Read what I posted and read his reply then you get the context of his post. From our point of view your post is weird, but you have a point too. Hence all the "Up too" adverts nowadays.

 

[Netguy]

Well done Mr. complainant, as well as the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (ASA). Regardless of what average Joe understands, standards as well as the moral high ground needs to be brought back and maintained in SA society.

 

[Sackboy]

Well done Mr. complainant, as well as the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (ASA). Regardless of what average Joe understands, standards as well as the moral high ground needs to be brought back and maintained in SA society.

The ASA are doing a fine job considering the skelms in charge of the phone networks. Up to tricks all of them, seeing what they can get away with rather than what they can offer. Corporate ethics should be on the varsity curriculum IMHO.

 

[acidrain]

You said the speed is obtainable. I say that isn't the criteria used by the ASA. They go much further. Read what you said and my reply again.

Actually i read your post, it seems you didnt read mine properly. I never said thats the criteria they look at. I merely pointed out Pilgrim who said 384KB/s lines dont exist in SA, that they actually do

 

[ponder]

Corporate ethics should be on the varsity curriculum IMHO.

Kinda pointless. Simple value systems should be instilled from a very young age by parents. Oh, and don't look towards religion/church for this either.

 

[acidrain]

Ok, point taken. I'd like someone to come up with a definition of broadband. Everyone talks about it and advertises it, but what is it?

As i understand it, a band is a certain set of frequency(s). Hence broadband defines a much wider band to operate on which means more traffic can run over the same line simultaneously. Take a normal telephone line for example ( and not an ADSL enabled one, just plain old voice telephone line ). You can only run one thing on it at a time, so when you dialup, you can't make calls, and visa versa. Broadband eliminated this problem by introducing a wider range of frequencies for services to run on, so your dialout can run on one frequency while you talk on another, on the same line.

Different dictionaries/companies will determine they own minimum requirement speed for the service to be properly lableled broadband, which in this country is 384kbps

 

[vodacom3g]

As i understand it, a band is a certain set of frequency(s). Hence broadband defines a much wider band to operate on which means more traffic can run over the same line simultaneously. Take a normal telephone line for example ( and not an ADSL enabled one, just plain old voice telephone line ). You can only run one thing on it at a time, so when you dialup, you can't make calls, and visa versa. Broadband eliminated this problem by introducing a wider range of frequencies for services to run on, so your dialout can run on one frequency while you talk on another, on the same line.

Different dictionaries/companies will determine they own minimum requirement speed for the service to be properly lableled broadband, which in this country is 384kbps

The original definition of 'broadband' was a system that could run a 'broad' range of services.

As discussed before on this forum, speed is nowadays used to define broadband but (as you point out) there is no consistent definition and the local definition is 384kb/s.

 

[risingtide]

The complaint may pick on something that is technically incorrect and not even understood by the listener, but if it gets that advert off the air there will be hundreds of listeners who are grateful for that.

 

[Tns]

class action lawsuit?

 

[That_JC]

Wow...people are anal

I'm SO with you on that one. It's such a $%&@ to make a living these days, as far as I'm concerned, give the guys a break!* Have you even SEEN the $%^& they (not Cybersmart) advertise on TV these days?!

*Even though Cybersmart's PR skills are right up the with the worst of them - what's with that response?!

 

[eltherza]

If I were cybersmart, I would have argued that they dont state it as a speed. If someone can tell the difference between a bit and a byte, they can tell the difference between "384 kilobyte" and "384 kilobytes per second". Amazingly - not even that ASA can't tell the difference.

 

[DblD]

Their arrogance is criminal...
To make a public statement that the targeted market is ignorant and therefore will not be misled is on border with criminal!!!!

 

[DblD]

I guess we should get those 6000 new subscribers to lodge official complaint and demand the fully quoted speed rating..

 

[Borrels]

While ASA may be pretty quick in dealing with the complaint, I think their response is toothless. To instruct Cybersmart to remove the ad provides absolutely no incentive for companies to take more care in ensuring their advertising is not false since the worst that'll happen is their ad gets yank after a couple of weeks.

ASA should have fine them for misleading the public, even if not all consumers that don't understand the technicalities. Or even better, force Cybersmart to provide the 384 kilobytes line for the advertised prices for everyone that applied before the ad was stopped.

 

[acidrain]

The original definition of 'broadband' was a system that could run a 'broad' range of services.

I would think that would be a definition in layman's terms but maybe I'm wrong, which in that case whoever came up with that word needs to revisit the dictionary then because imo that word in technical terms means broad frequency, yes it can run broad services simultaneously, but only because it has a broader range of frequencies to run on.

That's just how i see it

 

[vodacom3g]

I would think that would be a definition in layman's terms but maybe I'm wrong, which in that case whoever came up with that word needs to revisit the dictionary then because imo that word in technical terms means broad frequency, yes it can run broad services simultaneously, but only because it has a broader range of frequencies to run on.

That's just how i see it

No, it actually was defined as a 'broad' range of services. nothing to do with the underlying technology.

But it's not the popular understanding anymore. Today we think of broadband as a big pipe, running IP over it.

I'm all for a standardised, speed-based rating. Question what is it, maybe 1Mb/s? Up and Down?

 

[Gambit317z]

I dont' think this was anally retentive at all... The law is the law and even if one person was fooled by this and took the service based on the misleading information then an injustice would have been done... And what makes it worse is that it wasn't a mistake, and they fully believed that they could do this... Of course the removal of the ad might now lead them to getting in more business, I know two people who didn't consider them based purely on their ad!

Anyways, on the other side of things... I haven't been to the loo in days.....