Xfinity
Comcast Cable Communications, LLC, doing business as Xfinity, is an American telecommunications business segment and division of Comcast Corporation. It is used to market consumer cable television, internet, telephone, and wireless services provided by the company. The brand was first introduced in 2010; prior to that, these services were marketed primarily under the Comcast name.
For other uses, see Xfinity (disambiguation).
Cable telephony[edit]
Xfinity Voice (formerly Comcast Digital Voice) is a Voice Over IP cable telephony service that was launched in 2005 in some markets,[73] and to all of Comcast's markets in 2006. Comcast's older service, Comcast Digital Phone, continued to offer service for a brief period, until Comcast shut it down around in late 2007.[74] In 2009, after completing transition from their old service, Comcast had 7.6 million voice customers.[75] As of the end of 2013, Comcast Digital Voice had reached 10.7 million subscribers.[76]
At the start of 2012, Comcast stood as the United States' third-largest residential line provider,[77] supplying 9.34 million residential lines.[77]
Xfinity Voice allows communication over the internet using VoIP, but uses a private network instead of a public IP address, which allows Comcast to prioritize voice data during heavy traffic. In technical terms, on Comcast's Hybrid Fiber Coaxial network, calls are placed into individual Unsolicited Grant Service flows, based on DOCSIS 1.1 Quality of service standards. For the customer, this has the benefit of preventing network congestion from interfering with call quality. Other, non-Comcast VoIP services on Comcast's network must use the lower priority public IP addresses. This separation of traffic into separate flows, or Smart pipe, has been criticised as a violation of net neutrality, whereby all data traffic should be treated equally—dumb pipe.[78] The practice was questioned by the FCC in 2009.[79] In their response, Comcast stated that services that use telecommunications are not necessarily telecommunications services, and said that the FCC's designation of Comcast Digital Voice as an information service exempted it from telecommunications service regulations on traditional landline. Comcast also said that because Comcast Voice was a separate service, it was unfair to directly compare the data for Comcast Voice with the data for other VoIP services.[80][81]
Because telephone services over VoIP are not automatically tied to a physical address, Xfinity Voice utilizes E911 to help 911 emergency service operators to automatically locate the source of the 911 call.[82] Voice calls are delivered as a digital stream over the Comcast network, signal is converted to analog plain old telephone service lines at the cable modem, which outputs on standard physical analog style RJ-11 ports.
Home security and automation[edit]
Comcast has a home security and home automation service known as Xfinity Home in some of its service areas. The service has a burglar and fire alarm, surveillance cameras, and wireless motion sensors put on doorways and windows to detect when said doorway or window was opened, and to detect when someone was in a house when it was vacant, However, Xfinity Home had a vulnerability that when exploited, falsely reported that all was well. The wireless motion sensors Xfinity Home used could also be easily jammed, and thus disabled, by radio frequencies.[105]
Industry
Xfinity 3D[edit]
Comcast ran a 3DTV channel known as Xfinity 3D from February 20, 2011[111] until December 16, 2014, on Xfinity cable systems.[111] The channel mainly featured NBC Sports and Universal Pictures content in the format, along with content from other studios and demonstration films in the 3D format.
NASCAR sponsorship[edit]
Xfinity currently sponsors the NASCAR Xfinity Series and is a premier sponsor of the NASCAR Cup Series. They sponsored NASCAR Cup Series driver Carl Edwards in 2016 at Richmond Raceway. Edwards won the race with a bump and run on teammate Kyle Busch.
Controversies[edit]
Xfinity and its parent company, Comcast, were sued in August 2016 in King County Superior Court by the State of Washington (AG Ferguson, Washington's Attorney General) for 100 million dollars[117] over claims that Comcast violated the state's Consumer Protection Act 445,000 times over its Service Protection Plan[118] by overly charging for call service fees, knowingly using improper credit screening practices, and by lying about the costs of its Service Protection Plan to 49,660 customers on support calls.[119] The amount that the customers unknowingly paid for the plan from 2011 to 2015 was 71 million dollars. However, when asked for recorded customer service calls discussing the Service Protection Plan, Comcast said that it was "too burdensome". Eventually it gave 4,500 samples of the requested calls, but was accused of deleting many other calls by Washington. In response, Comcast said that it was "not under any obligation to preserve them" and that it deleted customer service calls routinely. It accused Washington of only "listening to 150 calls when we gave 4,500 of them",[120] and said that "customers receive an email confirmation when they sign up for the protection plan". The lawsuit lasted until June 2019, when a King County court judge, Judge Timothy Bradshaw, ruled in favor of Washington State and against Comcast, ordering Comcast to pay 9.1 million dollars in penalties, 12 percent interest on restitution to Washington State customers, and refund all affected customers within 60 days.
Xfinity and its parent company Comcast were sued through putative class action on June 19, 2018, by Illinois customer Elizabeth O' Neill, over accusations of opening Xfinity Mobile accounts for customers without their consent, and failing to notify customers when the same accounts were infiltrated without their authorization to buy new cell phones from Comcast's website.[121] They had done this by using information from the customer's already established internet and cable accounts. The case was ruled to be solved in arbitration in accordance with the subscriber agreement she had agreed to.[122]
In 2023, the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau (BBB) ruled that Comcast's marketing of its broadband service as the "Xfinity 10G Network" was misleading, as "10G" could be insinuated as referring to 10 gigabit service. This service is not available to all households as it requires installation of a fiber optic local loop, as DOCSIS isn't capable of 10 gigabit end-user speeds.[123] In January 2024, Comcast agreed to stop using the "Xfinity 10G Network" branding in this manner.[124]