Released: June 23, 2008

Cable firms’ ads leave fuzzy impression

Source: Peter Svensson, Associated Press (Free Registration)

Avery Axel was annoyed with his cable company, Comcast, and was considering switching to Verizon’s new FiOS fiber-optic TV and Internet service.

The picture on his TV would freeze now and then, and he had heard good things about FiOS. Then the 21-year-old student saw a TV commercial from Comcast that made fun of FiOS and claimed the cable TV company has a larger fiber-optic network.

“I thought to myself: Maybe I don’t have to switch, because if Comcast has fiber optics now, that means that they’ll be better,” said Axel, who lives in Roosevelt, N.J.

But after asking around online, he found that nothing’s changed about Comcast’s service: It still uses coaxial cable to connect homes. It does use fiber-optic cable farther away in the network, as it has for many years.

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