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

further evidence

[PunkOfLinux]

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.

Re:further evidence

[dintech]

That way you don't lose your customer

Take PIPEX as an example. I've been subjected to 56K speeds for exceeding my bandwidth quota of 50Gb per month. I can tell you that if I wasn't on a one-year contract, they would have lost a customer immediately.

Once this go-slow was lifted, I noticed that they were actually throttling my connection even when I'm a long way under my quota. I was getting a perfectly flat 512Kbps instead of the advertised 8Mbps and the 2Mbps I was getting previously. When I called to complain about it, they told me it was contention because of the olympics. When I pointed out that contention would cause variable transfer speeds instead of a flat one, they tried to get me off the phone and told me to write to their head office. I totally hate that company. Avoid.

Re:further evidence

[ijakings]

This is what happened to them

Tiscali buys Pipex broadband unit

Bunch of Tossers

[Finallyjoined!!!]

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?

The only confusing thing

[Threni]

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.

Re:The only confusing thing

[Barsteward]

its the truth, Jim but not as we know it.....

Leave it as it is

[L4t3r4lu5]

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.

Re:Leave it as it is

[Shaman]

Because you never pay for it, the price has a built-in over-subscription requirement. Dedicated bandwidth costs a lot more. Go price a DS-3 and see.

What you're saying is a little like saying you want to use the whole road for yourself at the maximum rate possible. After all, your taxes pay for your access to it.

Re:Leave it as it is

[lysergic.acid]

that's bullshit. the average price of U.S. per Mbps is about 10 times higher than countries like Sweden, Korea, and Japan, and it's still 2-3 times that of most other developed nations. just because the telecom/ISP monopolies charge extortionate rates for decent quality service doesn't mean that's what it costs to provide.

consumers expect what they paid for--what was advertise by the ISPs. if they'd been honest about the broadband service in the first place, this conflict would not have occurred. trying to shift blame onto consumers and use traffic throttling & package shaping to manipulate demand is counter to good business sense. while we're trying to scapegoat "power users," countries like Japan are upping their infrastructure to meet public demand. that's how technology usually works--you increase supply (speeds, capacity, etc.) to meet public demand. you don't artificially decrease demand to meet the supply.

unlike you, most intelligent internet users don't subscribe to this pay more for less mentality. and if you actually did some research into how other broadband networks/services are run, you'd see how much we're being completely screwed over. Japan's already rolling out 100 Mbps connections to all homes, and many are being offered 1 Gbps for £28($43). meanwhile ISP greed and incompetence is leaving our countries in the dust.

but, hey, let's spend more packet shaping technology analyzing user traffic to increase unnecessary overhead. that's a much better use of resources than actually increasing network speed/capacity and providing better value to customers.

It's funny how...

[Xest]

...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...

[gEvil (beta)]

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.

Go for a truly unlimited provider

[shin0r]

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"

PS - Link to complaints form

[Finallyjoined!!!]

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/

Entanet

[Mr_Silver]

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.