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UK ISP Imposes Download Limits
Richard_at_work writes "The BBC news site is reporting that NTL have announced it will be imposing 1GB download limits per day for its users. As you can guess, reactions have not been mild :) One thing to note, NTL has said that they will only be persuing persistent offenders, so i guess they understand you cant track your usage to the byte! Also with NTL, they appear to ban the usage of VPNs, citing that their service is for resedential use only. Does this mean I can't email work now?"
They're going to lose a few customers now who take for granted the fact they can leech at 1Mbit 24/7 and are now throwing the toys out the pram - maybe they'll implement a similar pricing structure to DSL - thank God we're not in Australia w/ BigPond cos their prices are scary!
IMO, this is a blow for the British telecommuters out there. All I know is if Earthlink had the same policy I wouldn't be able to work.
I thought technology was supposed to make our lives easier?
Come on, this type of reporting is getting out of hand. It clearly states that this is for residential use only. If you are using it for business why not pay more for it. Youll get better quality for one, since you will be on nodes with other business customers. Minus the occasional code red and nimda probes.
I originally had residential cable service, I then outgrew what it offered and realized the cable company was just using it to 'push' content, not a true internet connection. So I simply found a company that offered the service I wanted, I ended up on a business class DSL line with all the features I need, and none of the side stepping you get from residential accounts.
Basically, my point is that you just look like a moron if you only accept whats presented to you and dont look for options to better fit your circumstances.
I can't imagine really what home user would use a gigabyte per day downstream for... but then again, perhaps there are some who use that much. These users need to wake up to the fact that bandwidth costs money, it is by no means free. When an ISP finds that the bandwidth of their routers, backbone, or outbound links falls short of the demand, they have two choices:
- Increase the capacity of their network and pass the cost on to the customers in the form of higher subscription fees.
- Cap bandwidth usage per subscriber so that the total demand for capacity falls within the capabilities of the infrastructure.
Charging for bandwidth is fair, but I would like to see more flexible subscriber plans. Usually ISPs offer only a few limited home subscriptions with very low caps and limits, and business subscriptions that cost 10 times as much. Usually there is nothing in between. Also... not being allowed to run VPNs or NAT networks stinks. I'm glad my ISP has taken a flexible approach: basically they say "We sell you the connection; as long as you do not resell it, do whatever you want". Webservers, commercial activity, NAT networks, everything is allowed.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
So, does this mean that people can sue companies that advertise using pop-ups for using their limited bandwidth without permission?
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
You're forgetting the simple facts:
1) Service is advertised as "Unlimited" and "Always On"
2) Service is sold as "Unlimited" for a fixed rate.
Now granted, in the TOS there is probably a statement to the effect that NTL is authorized to change the terms of the service agreement at any time.
Of course, and I highly suspect it, I may be talking out of my ass. -oqti
On the other hand, the reality is that ISPs don't budget for everyone to have their connections maxxed out all the time. The only expect people to use a small fraction of the allotted bandwidth. Doing so allows them to offer generally high speeds, for a relatively low price.
Around here, a T1 connection (1.44 Mb/s) will cost you around $1000CDN per month. Why do these people seem to think that they should be able to get the same service for $29.95/month? Don't they understand WHY T1's cost so much more?
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Poor frikkin babies. I get 5GB/month aggregate bandwidth on my residential broadband access. They get 1GB/DAY. Quit whining!
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
* The cap is exactly the same for all 3 tiers of service (128kbps, 600kbps and 1Mbit).
* The prices for these services are £14.99, £24.99 and £34.99 respectivly.
* This is coming from the same ISP that recently did away with most of the binary newsgroups because it was easier than investing in some new hardware to cope with the demand.
NTL's network can't cope with the demand, and that's a fact. Rather than update their network, servers and infrastructure, they find it more cost effective to charge their mostly loyal users the same price for an inferior service. I'm sorry, but that just doesn't wash with me. Broadband is being sent back to the stone-age.
slainfu
"I can't be a terrorist if you're sucking my bum."
Well, if you were creating your own music videos and collaborating with several of your friends that 4Gb wouldn't last very long.
If you were an aspiring artist that allows anybody and everybody to download your artwork, that 4Gb won't last very long.
If you actually use those teleconferencing solutions (Netmeeting for example) with your friends that 4Gb will be gone in no time.
If you were trying to download fansubbed episodes of old foreign TV shows you can't get anymore, that 4Gb won't last you a season.
If you are interested in television commercials and want to download them in storable/indexable format, especially for old commericals, then you aren't going to get much with your 4Gb
If you are trying to download all of the independant free music online to try to find the diamonds in the rough, then you're 4Gb are going to fall short.
I've noticed a trend from MRTG that some games (RTS games in particular) take up a surprisingly large amount of bandwidth, especially if you are acting as the server in an 8+ player game. I don't have hard numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that add up quickly if you are an avid gamer. I don't know of MMORPGs are worse, but if they are then it's almost certain that the 4Gb wouldn't be enough.
This is only the tip of the iceberg. As time goes on more and more people are going to start using high bandwith applications on a regular basis. I don't think there has every been a time where the amount of bandwidth people use decreases without some sort of drastic outside influence (bandwidth caps for instance)
I could turn the question around and ask: if you aren't using 4Gb a month then why are you paying the big $$$ for broadband service? It seems to me you aren't utilizing it enough to make it worth the $40/month minimum it tends to cost. You don't need 1.5Mb download speeds to surf the web, read email, or SSH around.
I read the internet for the articles.
Two things:
Firstly, ntl support NAT setups. 1Gb a day for me isn't bad. 1Gb a day between me and my three housemates, with a bit of streaming audio, a bit of movie trailer watching, a bit of game playing, a little bit of Xbox Live (3Mb/min, I am told, that one), keeping four installs of Windows, two of Mandrake and two of Debian up to date... now that looks rather more intrusive. Even keeping a single copy of Win2k in patches can consume gigabytes a month!
I pay for a 1Mb cable modem connection that can saturate my 1Gb limit in under three hours. That doesn't sound like the "unlimited internet" I was sold.
Secondly, this is almost certainly the thin end of the wedge, as many other people with capacity limited broadband around the world have discovered. 1Gb/day now, 750Mb tomorrow, 250Mb next week. After all, no matter how many users you kick off, 80% of bandwidth will always be used by 20% of the users because of the shape of the bell curve. And those 20% of users are always in a minority, and that 80% of bandwidth sure is expensive.
You win again, gravity!
what is being done with it is not the point. and quite frankly it's none of your business. It's questions like that which distract from the real point here: people are losing unrestricted access to the net even though they are paying good money for access. What once seemed like a right is becoming a precious commodity. Somewhere in some office, a bigwig asked the same kind of question you did, and simply because he and his cronies weren't imaginative to think of why people might actually want to take advantage of unlimited access, they imposed a ceiling limiting all their users to the bounds of their own inadequate imaginations.
If your supermarket created a rule stating that you could only purchase 55 gallons of milk per week (sounds like enough for even the largest family to me), wouldn't the simple principle disturb you? Isn't that seemingly harmless imposition an anti-capitalistic precedent for future limitations, one of which will eventually penetrate the bounds of your comfort?
ôó
If you're an aspiring artist letting people download your music or other work, I salute you. But I also suggest you get a service that's intended for constant use.
I'll say it agsin: P2P networking and "personal servers" are exactly the reason that DSL and cable will soon offer a cheap service which uses a webTV type box with a closed, no-storage OS.... And another more expensive service for users who want to run windows or linux on a machine attached to the net.
Come to think of it.. Why should I pay the same flat fee to browse the web and play a couple games of Quake when my neighbor runs a VNC session that chews up 400kb/s 24x7?
One GByte is insane. I would have to really try hard to use up that much in one day legally. One can only download so many Linux distributions per day.
My own connection has an unofficial limit of 5GBytes/month. Per month people! Not per day.
According to ipacsum, I average between 1 and 2GB per month here.
There is a quote about using up your time in 2.5 hours. How often have you ever sustained a 110KB/s download for 2.5 hours every day?
Yes I have downloaded game demos and linux dists but I have never exceeded 5GB in a month. I am a bit of a light user since I don't video conference, listen to net radio, or pirate.
What part of 'always on' do you not understand then?
You pay the same flat fee for your web browsing as those running VNC sessions because you bought the same product. If you have a problem with that then can ask your ISP you limit your service and charge you less.
If you under-utilise the service you've bought then that's your problem.
Why not charge people by their usage + some basic overhead.
It would be tough for anyone to complain if they were charged $20/mo plus a dollar a gigabyte downloaded (or whatever is the bandwidth cost for your provider plus some fair markup).
I understand how the broadband companies don't want to raise prices on 90% of the users for the extra cost that 10% of their users incur.
So charge by use. I don't think anyone would argue "No, I shouldn't have to pay more just because I use more." There may be a few people out there that think bandwidth is free and unlimited, but.. well they're dumb.
Imagine paying $40/mo for gas. No matter how much you use. If you drive 4000 miles a month or 40. It doesn't make much sense does it? Bandwidth has cost per gigabyte just like gas has cost per gallon. It's not like 'pirating' software, where there's no additional cost incurred. When you use bandwidth, you are causing a cost to your ISP. You should be responsible for that.
That said, they shouldn't be bothering me with WHAT I do with the bandwidth I pay for.. that stuff bugs the crap out of me..
Well, let's put it this way. If they charged you what it actually costs them for the bandwidth, would you continue to use broadband? I sincerely doubt they can buy 1.5Mbps of bandwidth for $40 a month from THEIR upstream provider so they obviously have to radically oversell their bandwidth to provide those burstable speeds to their DSL customers. Customers that abuse this arrangement and leech tons of gigs of files only serve to hurt other users. So why not kick off the abusers to satisfy the requirements of 90% of the other customers? Sure, it sucks to not get streaming porn and live DVD quality movies over the Internet, but it was all a bullshit business plan to begin with.
That's the whole reason behind banning VPNs, etc. They just want to be able to charge you extra for a "business" account. They figure plenty of telecommuters work for large companies who have already afforded sophisticated IT, so they'll have plenty of money to pony up to support their telecommuters. It's not uncommon to see static IP or "business" accounts sell for 2-3 times as much as standard. This really sucks for freelancers and contractors, because it comes right out of their own pockets, not The Corporation's. But if it's any comfort, Earthlink in the US sells static IP accounts for $10-20 more than standard, so they're not as bad as most.
Sorry, but if you're doing more than 30GB of month at home, you're really lucky your ISP isn't just getting so pissed off that they report your downloads to the police :P How much of that 30GB+ is legal? 1GB? 2GB?
I think that's a really unfair assumption. While I'm sure there are quite a few people that use more than 30GB/mo. for illegal purposes, it seems like an indefensible non-sequitur to imply that such a fact gives any reason to believe that a person is doing something illegal simply because they also happen to use 30GB/mo....
It's that type of propaganda logic that supports the RIAA and allows it to continue functioning.
There's a LOT out there on the net. I could easily find 30GB of legal stuff worth downloading every day. Fortunately for me, though, I have better things to do, but the point remains.
Personally, I really fear that this type of stuff will start happening. It would be my guess that the type of people who do use that much bandwidth are not the type to spend lots of money on other forms of entertainment, because they seem to be able to get plenty right at their computer. Those are perfect targets for the RIAA and MPAA... And I'm sure they'd be more than happy to label anyone who finds entertainment outside the accepted forms a criminal.
My electricity supply is "always on", that doesn't mean I should be charged the same if I leave all my appliances on all day as someone who doesn't.
If people using more than a gig a day are in a minority then it is they who should have to request special pricing from an ISP. There's no reason a majority of people who fit in some 'normal usage' bracket should subsidise extreme users by default.
To me it makes sense for an ISP to offer a broad range of pricing options to consumers but if an ISP wants to go down the "one size fits all" route then it makes sense for the size and cost to fit the majority of users.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
it's quite simple, really. If you're wasting IP network bandwidth d/ling Simpsons episodes then you are an idiot. Much more efficient would be to use a TiVo or other recording device to cature them from television in real time. In fact, this method has been successfully used for decades the world over. Many people now own a device known as a VCR that can capture and replay televisio formatted content - and you can purchase whole seasons of the Simpsons on VHS video cassettes for trivial sums of money in media outlets known as RETAIL STORES.
That was classic intercourse!
then don't sell 24/7 unlimited bandwidth if you don't mean it. They have the same thing as an "all you can eat bar". Should I not be allowed to purchase all you can eat ribbs because last time I did I ate four full racks? Should I not be allowed to eat the crab leggs because I at 12 halves? that is the bisuness model, sell "all you can use" to everybody, a few use alot most don't. The ones who don't feel good becuase they CAN use large amounts, if you kick off everyone who does then it's not unlimited (and at least in the US you can sue). Same concept with insurance and many many other things.
AT&T dialup used to send me frequent letters about "too much usage on my unlimited plan. After about the 5'th day I got one I sent back a polite letter. They said If I wanted 24/7 I should purchase the bussiness plan. I e-mailed them back with my service plan and basically said if they kicked me I am a student, have unlimtied time, and could probably find a lawyer who is willing to work for 80 percent of the winnings - go ahead and try. Apparently they were having difficulty with others doing this, made it metered and lost nearly all thier customers, then re-instated thier unlimited plan.
They can't have it both ways (have unlimted usage and require no one use much), if you offer "all you can eat" someone like me is going to come along and eat all they can.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Quotas and caps are not the answer. What they really need is a flexible and *reasonable* billing system based upon fair usage. The problem is that the pricing is based upon overselling available resources. At any rate, the market is self correcting, it will adjust. In the end, users will flock to the system which makes the most of them happy.
This problem reminds me of the late '80s when the phone companies wanted to charge modem users extra since they couldn't multiplex as many modem signals across the same line as they were using all available bandwidth (miniscule though it was at the time).
-- Good judgement comes with experience. -- Experience comes with bad judgement.
"I just use it to download Red Hat ISO's" is a explanation often heard when ISP's try to get their residential customers to stop abusing their service. Second only to "I only use it to get free, open distributed MP3's"
:
These people seem to download Red hat ISO's 4-6 times a week. Why not just come out and admit that 90% of the time you are downloading copyrighted material ?
The biggest bandwith hogs are
Pirate Software
Pirate Music
Pirate Video
If Red Hat ISO's didn't exist, it'd be OS service patches, or redownloading the virus definitions every 20 minutes being used to justify massive data bills.
No pure residential user in this world can justify 30 gb of data / month. And if you are using it for CVS or streaming video, bite the damn bullet and purchase a Business plan, and claim it on tax. You are ruining it for the true residential customers.
The bandwidth is all being sucked dry by people reading the binary newsgroups.
That should bother you, being as you're actually reading news articles on Usenet.
There should be news servers for the rest of us with binary attachments blocked.
I do think all their subscribers should be given the opportunity to bail from any current contracts without penalty, though, since they signed up for "unlimited usage".
I bet if you asked the business manager at the ISP they would be *delighted* to lose the class of customer for whom this is a problem.
The bottom line is if your service is xG/time then SELL IT AS SUCH!!!!. The issue is broadband ISP's are trying to sell the "perception" of 24/7 but only delivering a limited product.
Cut the crap and sell what you can deliver....
Not at all. Leave a video stream connected to your family (monitor a residence, invalid family member, pet, just keeping in touch). You can suck 30GB/month easily.... Isn't that what "broadband" is for???? If the ISP's are getting into the "judgement" business than they need to advertise the products as such: 1. Browser use only 2. Browser use & e-mail client (no attachments) 3. Browser use & e-mail client (with attachments .5 Meg).
I think you can see where this is going....
They only should be allowed to advertise what they can truely deliver. No more, no less...
It's real simple, if you want to download 1GB per day regularly then PAY FOR IT!
Geeze, why some people get all flustered when a cap is introduced on a low cost service is beyond me. Quit freeloading of other customers and pay for what you use.
Completely correct. Unlimited means, well, unlimited. If a company offers unlimited bandwidth, they need to be prepared to back that up. I am subscribed to an unlimited DSL plan in the US (bussiness class) and I do use it. There have been months where I've done 70GB+ up and another 30-40GB down. Never have they complained. That's what unlimied means. I can slam my line 24/7 and not hear anything about it.
Same thing with a Sushi resteraunt we like. They do all you can eat for $20. They mean it too, they'll keep bringing you food till you pop if you like (you have to pay extra if you don't eat it though). Now normally, it's a good deal for them. The unlimited thing (adn the fact they have the freshest fish in town) gets people to come in, and most people have trouble eating much more than say $30 at menu prices of fish. However me and my firends have been known to come in and eat tremendous amounts, in excess of $50 menu prices. Still, they do not complain. All you can eat means all you can eat.
The problem comes from companies that want to attract customers with unlimited deals (people like unlimited, even if they'd save money with a metered service) but then don't want to deal with the people that want to take full advantage of it.
The reason answer is in bandwith throttling and the like. During busy times, clamp the bandwidth an individual can use. They still get unlimited usage of it, it's just scaled back. I would lvoe a service that offered a huge maximum like 10mbit or something, and just clamed it to something reasonable during the day, like 512kbit or something. Better yet, have a device that does dynamic traffic shaping.
I do get sick of people that want to pretend like they are offering unlimited service and then bitch when people what to use it.
I find it amazing how Slashdot's community change their tune on fundamental issues so easily.
Lets do a little review:
(i) In Australia/Outer Mongolia/wherever I have a capped service...
Well I'm sorry to hear this. Was it sold to you as such? Well NTL used to have an advert about daring you to wear out your modem... so much for limited use. This is the point. I *know* bandwidth ain't free, but its their fault for offering what they can't deliver. Tough, they should be held to it. End of story; we have a contract. If you disagree, then please sign up for my unlimited bandwidth ISP covering the globe for a dollar each. And switch off your machine until I connect you to that service. I reserve the right to alter the T&C to enslave your entire family should I see fit.
(ii) "No-one can use 1Gig bandwidth legitimately". Erm OK, so you don't ever look at open sources then? Any of you? And you don't download *nix software. Fair enough. Looks like its buying CDs from M$ is the only way you lot operate.
A point to make to all of you scanning this; they've changed their tune twice since changing the T&C, have so far failed to notify their own staff and the MD only found out about it on Saturday morning. This is a knee jerk mess up. The T&C already covered abusers. This is just a way of alienating their core (and normally economically viable) customer base just because they had a weekend off and nothing to do but update their applications and OS.
At first (as a 1Mb NTL customer) I was really rufious, but actually sitting down reading the comments and thinkning about it, it really isn't as bad as it seems. The official line is if you consistently break over 1Gb a day for 3 days or more, you will get a warning. You will not simply get cut off mid download! Now unless your the local warez kiddie running a warez ring on your house your gonna have trouble. I spend hours downloading useless crap, but when I think about the amount of time I spend, during a working week, its so little, get in from work at 6pm, download a little bit, maybe leave something over night. Once every two months download Oracle setup (2Gb) or maybe a new RH release every quarter. This is a crack down on people running a six machine share over a single IP, student types and business' not willing to pay for business rentals. Jeez, at least we haven't got to put up with 4Gb a month, now that is hard!
"I kill you! You no good 56'ing!"