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."

Comments

Re:further evidence

[IndustrialComplex]

The only reason PSU didn't lose customers is because PSU is a university with a captive audience.

I went to PSU before and after the bandwidth caps and I have hit that limit faster than they could send the emails. It wasn't hard either, just run a few too many updates, or pull in some data from a source that wasn't on Internet2 and you would be over. PSU's problem was a serious lack of enforcement combined with the fact that they used hubs instead of switches for a long period of time. There was already a bandwidth problem before napster even existed, then once it became popular outside of the tech-savy, it crushed the network in less than a few days.

I was desperate to use any other internet system before they switched out those hubs and cracked down on the assholes who were hosting terabytes of content from their dorms.

Sorry for the rant, in short, yes those emails did help. (Still pissed me off going over when I had to pull in video from a distant source though for one of my classes) That exemption for your room wasn't worth filling the paperwork over.