Slashdot Mirror
In UK, Broadband Limits Confuse Nine In Ten Users
Mark Jackson writes "ISPreview reports that 86% of UK broadband users don't understand the usage limits on their service, and nearly one million have reached or exceeded their ISPs limit in the last year. This is important because 56% of major providers are prepared to disconnect those who 'abuse' the service. However, it also shows how damaging bad marketing can be, with 6.2M people believing they have an 'unlimited' service with no restrictions. The UK Advertising Standards Authority is also blamed for making the problem worse by allowing providers to describe their services as unlimited even if there is a usage cap, as long as it is detailed in the small print. However, consumers are none the wiser with over 10 million broadband customers never reading their usage agreements and a further 1.8M not knowing whether they have read it or not. Unsurprisingly 7.5M do not even know their download limit, which is understandable when so few providers clarify it."
that limited unlimited plans are a bad idea.
Really, just throttle them based on how much theyve used in a given period. everyone wins. consumers keep their service, and providers can cut their bandwidth down a bit.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
Do U.K. ISP advertisements include the real total cost of the service?
U.S. ISP and telephone companies are notorious for not including all of their charges in their advertised rates, preferring to split out various fees, taxes, and other costs of doing business. Even VOIP providers regularly charge $5-10/month more than what they advertise.
The UK Advertising Standards Authority are a bunch of complete tossers.
They'll stop an Apple ad claiming the iPhone can reach the whole internet, but they let these ISPs advertise unlimited when it is anything but.
Double Standards anyone?
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
is why are companies allowed to describe something as unlimited when it's limited. If that was changed, there'd be no problem. The ISPs always say `most users....` then I lose attention. If most user don't use 50 gigs, then limit it to 50 gigs.
virgin media, anyone?
10% of the users using 90% of the bandwidth still leaves 10% for Grandpa to check his email and your sister to update her MySpaz.
Why punish those who actually USE what they paid for? I've had the same contract since BlueYonder "real" unlimited connections, and my usage hasn't changed. All that's changed is as soon as ive watched a couple of iPlayer programs, my downstream drops from 250k to 100k. My dad, mum, and brother don't notice, so there's 75% who don't understand and aren't affected. Only we know, and only we use it.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
a further 1.8M not knowing whether they have read it or not
Hmmm. Not an encouraging indicator of level of reading comprehension among Britons.
...usage caps were sold as a legit tool for ISPs despite advertising unlimited because these caps affected only a tiny minority of heavy users.
I'm not convinced 1million is a tiny minority. It's about time the ASA actually did some work for once and punished broadband providers for not advertising their caps more obviously. Last time it was brought up they said they didn't need to force them to change their practices for the above mentioned reason that caps were high enough to only effect a very small amount of users.
Even Plus Net which prides itself in being open and which is probably one of the most open out the lot can be quite evil. When I renewed my contract with them for a year I don't recall seeing anywhere (except perhaps in the depths of the contract which I did read but must have overlooked) that by renewing my contract I'd accept a change in the definition of off-peak from midnight to 4pm down to midnight to 8am.
Of course, it wasn't until I hit my 20gb on-peak cap within a couple of weeks that I looked into it and found I'd started being metred during the previously off-peak 8am to 4pm.
Similarly when I stuck with their old package I noticed my speeds dropped below their advertised maximum caps at times also.
If this is the kind of practice arguably the UK's most transparent ISP engages in it's no wonder users are confused about caps. The argument about the validity of ISPs imposing caps is one thing but the fact is that ISPs can't even be honest to their customers either and I'd argue this is the crux of the problem in terms of end user confusion on the issue.
Even if the users knew what their usage limits were, a huge majority still wouldn't have any reasonable sense of what that is. They have a vague idea of what the number means, but most can't even tell you how big a file is even when the number is staring them in the face, let alone when there's a constant stream of data trickling in every time they click a link. And that's not even getting into things like streaming video. The only way these limits will ever work is if the ISP provides some way of monitoring your usage.
This guy's the limit!
Where is it on this earth where governments are going to play their proper role in making sure the playing field is level and participants are not deceived?
Government's roles are to provide rule of law, not bending of laws, & adherence to meanings of words, not redefining them in advertising to suit a malicious manager.
to see how much bandwidth you have used. That's probably the most retarded thing. How can they set limits without you being able to see them?!
As others mentioned, I don't know why they don't just cap your speed once you hit a certain threshold of usage. What is the point of disconnecting and kicking off a paying customer? Bad business if you ask me.
I can guess why they do all this though. They don't want you to be able to see the limits because they are afraid people would actually use their allocated bandwidth instead of being scared of some secret value they can't see. This is probably the same reason they don't have automatic speed limiters once you reach a certain usage because then there is no hidden line to cross. Again, they are afraid that people would actually use the bandwidth they paid for.
We knew this already.
Thanks Slashdot, two chances to plug http://superawesomebroadband.com/ in two days.
"Unlimited connections on static IPs. No download or upload limits. No port blocking, no packet shaping, no transparent web caches, no 'fair usage' policy, no logging, no Phorm, no ad-serving, no small print. Rolling 1 month contract. No lock in period. Direct Engineer Support 24 hours a day, every day. Good, not cheap. £60 /month"
Super Awesome Broadband
are the 24 hour P2P users that are at risk of getting cut off. So it is all good.
The 9 out of 10 have never heard of P2P and aren't at any risk of getting cut off. Can down load all their OSx updates, window's fixes and updates of Firefox. Never a problem. Can download songs from ITunes, apps from the App Store. No Problem.
These limits are only really a problem when you decide that you are going to torrent Linux Distributions 24/7....
And those people are the ones that read their broadband limits.
...they can do as one of our ISPs did before we completely rejected the idea of gigabyte limits - full speed until you hit your quota, then drop the speed to 64kpbs (ISDN speed) for the reminder of the month. No abuse or threats of disconnection, you simply can't milk it past the limit and it's enough for people to do basic stuff. Unless they actively call support and ask why the line is slow, you don't have to bother with them. Even the people that are utterly clueless about how much they use or what the limit is probably realize that they just hit it. In our case the quotas were quite well communicated though, our consumer protection agency can get rather nasty otherwise.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I'd rather this wasn't tagged uksucks as not all of it does.
And I'm also getting sick of this site
Whenever you see an ad claiming "unlimited" from an ISP you know limits in the small print, i.e. BT, Talk talk, Virgin, Tiscali etc. Send in a complaint.
http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/how_to_complain/complaints_form/
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
In Soviet Russia, you confuse broadband!
Always proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
It proves that limited plans are a bad idea. They allow ISPs to charge more for data even as the cost of transmitting that data plummets.
They provide a very 2002 view of the internet and the way that it's connected.
They allow ISPs effectively to limit new services such as Internet Radio, Streaming video, video rentals, etc. simply for those who do more than look at email and surf the web (which you'd have to effectively retarded to spend $40-50/month for access to a paltry 1-2GB per month; you might as well use dial-up).
They're a bad idea because they allow ISP to delay upgrading their infrastructure.
Rate limits don't lower any price, they simply allow the company to raise prices to those who use more than looking at emails and surfing the net. Much like ISPs used to limit your modem connections to 30-60 hours a month; it's not tenable and sustainable.
I'm with Nildram (owned by Pipex, owned by Tiscali), 'cos it was the only free to setup broadband without a 12 month contract. I get a clearly advertised 25Gb on-peak allowance, which is followed by a downstream throtle to 64k. I get a webpage where I can see my monthly usage (on and off peak), even split by day and up/down stream if I like. I think I'd get an email alert if I was close to using it up too, but I've yet to top 10Gb. I wish all ISPs had to be this transparent about exactly what they're offering. It would make consumer's lives soo much easier.
Get free bitcoins: http://freebitco.in
However what really happened is our 'higher contention' meant our whole netlink was virtually unusuable during that time. Which if you assume their goal is minimizing costs by keeping transit bandwidth down, and thus oppressing their 'high' users, makes a lot of sense.
*shrug*. I can understand the reason for a bandwidth limit, but FUP limiting 'unlimited' services, is just plain fraud. Complaint to the ASA, and get the ad pulled, and maybe we'll start seeing an end to this outright deceit.
Someone should test this in law. The headline is "Unlimited" and "blah blah cap blah blah" in the terms and conditions is clearly in disagreement. Under UK consumer law, the terms and conditions can't give away your basic rights, and one of them is to get what you paid for. Unlimited has a clear and unambiguous meaning in plain English. Sue the buggers.
(I have an unlimited allowance...)
This is a problem in the US too. The user agreements are convoluted and there isn't a telecommunications consumers bill of rights, so it's hard to know exactly what you're getting. My brother recently got a Netflix Roku box that lets you stream movies, but the cable company is threatening to charge him as a commercial user because he's been consistently exceeding his allotted bandwidth.
It takes about 20 seconds to file a complaint here:
http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/how_to_complain/complaints_form/
Let's all do it!
I often wonder how ISPs will go in future marketing these types of deals... there is increasing pressure on ISPs and internet users to prevent and stop P2P traffic and illegal filesharing respectively. Personally I see little benifit (at this point in time) in paying for a unlimited/high bandwidth connection when it's nearly impossible to find legally (and ethical) available multimedia content. I don't need 24 Mbps unlimited download limits to read the BBC news and check my email, even more so with 3G mobile data... Bring on the internet media revolution.
Once you transgress this limit - whatever it happens to be, you get a letter (or email) telling you that you've broken the rules and if you do it again, you'll be cut off. However, this is completely arbitrary and un-testable as normal users have no means of challenging the veracity of the claim, nor of knowing in advance what this unspoken limit was.
So confused? yes, but confused that the ISPs are able to get away with such blatant mis-selling and arbitrary and un-appealable activites.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I am not aware of any usage limitations on roads. I've never been told, "sorry, you have driven too much today, go home for a bit".
For one thing, road use is metered: governments tax road fuels. For another, governments limit vehicle size and weight on public roads.
I think it could be changed to "Everywhere, goddamn everything confuses nine in ten users."
i think it would be completely fair to simply throttle users a bit - say your first 50gig is at top speed (e.g. 16megabit), the next 50 gig's speed is reduced to, say, 10 megabit.
i think there is a basic logic error here in that the ISPs are using a total gigabyte usage as a metric but bandwidth is a byte per second measurement.
and i agree with the guy above- the tags on the article leave a lot to be desired "comcast & uksucks" are irrelevant
I thought caps were only supposed to affect the top 1% of users who abuse the system and destroy its usefulness for the remaining 99% of the good citizens. 1 million people breaking through the cap in a year sounds like 1% for very large values of 1.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Here in Brasil, we have some sane regulating agencies, and noone advertises unlimited bandwidth. Mine has a monthly cap of 20 GiB (yes, very little, but I paid less for it, and I can buy additional quotas as needed). We even have companies that let you have low speed at business hours (when bandwidth is expensive) and high speeds at night, when I let my BitTorrent running.
It isn't that hard, you know, charging the real cost instead of punishing the users for using your service in an unprofitable way.
What I can't understand is why the ISPs can't charge per GiB, with low prices when the network is idle, and high prices when it's busy. Like the telcoms do, for, 30 years?
That way they could just expand their infrastructure, like the telcoms do, instead of rationating their service.
entropy happens
I'm curious, with Comcast's 250 Gig monthly cap, surely they have some incredibly convenient & easy way to check on their website my home has used, right? What's the URL by chance?
Now before anyone answers with some bizarre homebrew method for figuring out bw usage:
1) I'm not buying a new router that I could do some sort of firmware upgrade to add a bw monitor. While nice, I'm not going out of my way to do it.
2) I'm using multiple systems at home, so a TSR app won't cut it
3) Comcast won't believe for a second how much some 3rd party bw monitor says I used, no more than my bank will believe I have a xyz dollars in my account because Quicken says so.
Note: I work for Sky.
Sky in the UK offer unlimited broadband with no fair use policy, and no traffic shaping on certain conditions.
You *MUST* be a LLU customer. This means you connect directly to Sky owned equipment in your local exchange. We currently have about 70% population LLU coverage, and it is growing slowly (as it just isn't economical to LLU up some of the more remote exchanges). You also *MUST* be paying for MAX, the highest speed and obviously the most expensive product.
Note, if you are NOT an LLU customer, we will still sell you broadband. However it *WILL* come with a FUP, and traffic shaping will be used to enforce that FUP (if you go over your limits that are clearly explained in the offer, we will mess with your connection). This is because out of LLU areas we have to resale a BT wholesale connection (like most ISP's in the UK).
While we had to invest far more in getting this network setup, it now costs us A LOT less per mbit than through BT.
If you don't know if you are on LLU or not, or if you can get LLU or not, samknows.com is an excellent site with information on what products from all providers are available in your area.
When I moved to a new flat last year, I did my research and eventually signed up for one of the Entanet resellers. When I tell people I'm paying £20/month for 30GB peak (8am-10pm weekdays) and 300GB offpeak (all other times, including all weekend) they look at me as if I have a screw loose and invariably ask why I didn't got with Provider X who is half the price and "unlimited".
The problem, I explain, is that every provider I've looked at that offered "unlimited" had a FUP and from a site on the web (which i've sadly lost) I found out that that FUP could be down to as low as 5GB per month.
In the year I've had the broadband (living on my own), I've only managed to get at most 15GB peak and 70GB offpeak in a month. It's true I don't work from home, don't stream music or video during peak hours and download really big files offpeak - but I've not found it to severly impact my browsing abilities. Hell, I'll happily suck down a 500MB update in peak - simply because I have tonnes of it to go around.
Thankfully Entanet offer a nice set of tools to monitor my usage, so if I start to get near their limits (due to changes in the way I use the web) then I'll re-evaluate the options again. It's not like I'm tied in, I only have a months notice period.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Was this:
People in the UK either don't read the contracts they sign, don't question things they don't understand (the fine print), and just sign, so they can get on the internet.
Same thing as the mortgage scandal on this side of the pond.
I'm not into government intervention.... I'm into an educated populace. If people actually READ what the FUCK they are signing, people wouldn't be signing these contracts. If enough people don't sign on to the crap, the companies go out of business.
Other companies will step up, if it shows enough profit to be made, to allow people to actually use their pipes. Yes, you might have to spend a bit more, but in the long run, more people are happy, and companies like the ones mentioned in the article would be, losing.... Business, customers, etc.
Simple, people, quit being sheeple and letting companies push you around by YOUR BEING IGNORANT.
I read my contracts before I sign them. I'd be a fucking idiot not to. If I don't agree with something, I scratch it out, and submit it. If it comes back changed again, I have to agree to it. If the company doesn't send anything back changed, my contract stands. Doesn't mean I'll win in a court of law everytime, but it does mean I've actually STUCK TO MY GUNS and actually decided to THINK for myself.
Seriously, READ THE FUCKING PAPERS YOUR SIGNING. Simple, to the point, and won't happen, since that would require people to be literate :(
The general populace is stupid. New news at 11. :(
--Toll_Free
I'm with BT (British Telecom). They publish their cap, but they will not allow me any way of telling how much how much data has been downloaded. The whole family uses the PC, from the 6-year old upwards, so it is literally impossible to tell how much data is being transmitted by streaming video etc. Crazy. They will put up my monthly charge if I exceed their limit, but they won't tell me what I'm using!
Unicorn Setu. "Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines".
Thats's EXACTLY what they're designed to do. How do you expect them to make money? Tell us the truth? Pfff, subjective...
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
The virgin media traffic shaping rules make no sense at all. They say it's to stop "abuse" and keep the system fair for everyone, but for some reason there's no limit between 3-4pm each day. How does that make sense?
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html
why are companies allowed to describe something as unlimited when it's limited.
Because it is unlimited. Back in the days of dialup, you would buy access in terms of minutes, or hours use per month. Now you can use your connection full time, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, all month long. There are no more time limits. Hence, the account is unlimited.
That doesn't mean there are no bandwith or traffic volume restrictions, though.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I'm on Verizon Mobile Brodband (EVDO) here in the USA, and it's limited to 5,000 megabytes (5GB) per month. That's about 166 megabytes per day. Just normal web browsing can easily use that much, plus with a PS3 the system or games are always wanting to download updates.
It's a reasonably fast connection, about 1.5 megabits, but I just can't USE the damn thing.
And of course my only other Internet options are dial-up or satellite.
Be happy, here in the Canary Islands (and I suspect the whole freaking Spain), 320kbps is all you got for upload.
There is no other ADSL option, so companies with more then 5 PC needs to pay for extra lines.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
fortunately, where I live, internet usage limits are a thing of the past. only connections from mobile phones are limited in such way. for clarification, I live in Poland, and my national inferiority complex, instilled by citizens of "developed countries" (it seems that mainly sods from USA feel they're soo above everyone else) fades each and every day, with each and every Slashdot article I read. regards.
There is absolutely no reason why the practice of placing limits on advertised unlimited broadband should be legal.
It should be banned now and anyone currently in a contract with a company advertising unlimited broadband should be given what the company advertised until their contract is up.
Dialup can very easily cost more than a broadband connection in a lot of places, because you need a full POTS line in addition to the ISP charges. I know I pay more for that (all I can get unfortunately) than a lot of the numbers I see bandied about here for various broadband. Try 70 bucks a month once all the extra fees and whatnot are tacked on. I would gladly pay less for just the ISP service and skip the voice telephone service if that was possible, because I rarely if ever use it for a phone, I use cheap cellphones for that purpose. But, I am unaware if such a thing exists, I know it doesn't here, you want internet connection, you *must* have full bloat telephone service on that copper, if you use it or not. I know you can get unbundled DSL some places, but the point is moot if you can't get it either way and dialup results in your only option.
If it was widely known that each month you can only get about 12 hours of full usage before you hit your cap, then perhaps they would have to change their rules or ads.
They are trying to turn the argument around by saying 'it doesn't effect you so don't worry about it'.
From the linked website:
"uSwitch.com has agreed deals with some suppliers across all our services to receive a small commission payment when a customer chooses to switch or apply for a product through us."
It's not news, it's, er ... Slashdot.
I'm with BT, with their option 3 "unlimited" tariff.
Does anyone know what the limit is before you come under their fair usage policy?
Because I do not, BT's call centres do not, other forums on the web do not.
I download between 10-15GB per month, some months I get capped to 250kb/s on ports such as http, various ports used for video such as used by Youtube, and more. Some ports such as 8080 or 21 do not get any throttling, and I can download at the 5Mb/s that my IP profile with BT's BRAS is set to.
I'm yet to ever get the BBC's iPlayer to play without pausing every 20 seconds during peak hours.
...where i just moved from Canada my Internet connection is the envy of my nerd friend back home: i pay about 30 dollars a month, I can upload at 9mb/s and download at 20mb/s... The ratio on my private torrent trackers are all in the black now to say the least. Since the 12 of october when I started running a little app called bitmeter to track my usage I have uploaded 229 GB (though 70gb of that was just one one day) in about 13 days and no nasty letters or slow downs. My laptop's cpu gets taxed pretty heavy and the machine starts to bog down when utorrent starts sending out data higher than 7mb/s; my little 1.4 celeron M is in need of an upgrade (though when i run my linux partition it goes a little better - I think the virus scanner is what bogs the cpu down scanning all the incoming and outgoing data...).
a World Wide law that states (in part)
If you advertise X speed or "up to X speed" and "unlimited" then your system must be able to sustain
Y% of that speed minimum for Z% of your customers W% of the time minimum.
also no protcol based throttling packet sniffing except in the cases where QOS says "I need this to be fast"
Notes Y Z and W should all be in the upper eighties
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
let's all go back to aol.