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'Throttling' Broadband Provider Sued In Australia
destinyland writes "Optus has been severely throttling users who exceed a download quota, according to ZDNet — down from 100Mbps to 64Kbps — and it's drawn attention from federal regulators. Optus's ad campaign promises 'supersonic' speeds, and one technology blog notes that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission 'isn't happy about Optus' sensationalist claims, which it's sure breaches the Trade Practices Act.' Australia's trade commission called the practice 'misleading or deceptive,' and the broadband provider now has a date in court next month, the second one since a June hearing over 'unlimited' voice and data plans that actually had usage caps."
shouldn't it be "provider" and not "provided?" the difference is subtle, yet profound...
Damn, where do I have to live to get that?
From the summary:
Optus's ad campaign promises 'supersonic' speeds
Well, I'd expect that. I wouldn't like a ping time of 6 seconds per kilometer distance!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I think the title was meant to be read "Broadband provider that throttles sued in Australia"
GENERATION 9882463: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig & add a random number to the generation.
If you don't subscribe to Optus's "premium" tiers, your service can be throttled to 28.8 Kb/s. From the Optus price list:
'yes' DSL Basic 200MB
'yes' DSL Unlimited
Yes, they really call it "unlimited", in the same table with the limits. That table isn't easy to find. You have to go through three web pages, then download several Word documents
That's their DSL service. Their cable service has similar tiers and terms, but slightly different pricing.
With all the negative press these "limited-unlimited" plans have been getting both for cell phones and internet providers, I would think that a marketable slogan might now be:
"Due to the laws of physics, we aren't unlimited, but we'll do the next best thing and make it easy for you to monitor your usage and judge how much you are spending on bandwidth!"
It would be nice to have an ISP that attains success by being honest instead of by lying to their customers.
It seems the "unlimited" thing seems like such a good sell that every ISP feels the need to offer it, even when they can't actually handle the traffic. What ever happened to not selling things you can't offer?
(The corollary of SNL's "Don't Buy Things You Can't Afford.")
Even if the service was advertised as having no limit ("unlimited")?
I don't think the issue is with what they are doing, simply how they are advertising it on billboards/radio/tv/etc. Even if their website says otherwise, it could still be a problem if they advertise otherwise.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
I just looked up their plans. They have multiple tiers, but the AUS$60 plan allows 120GB prior to being throttled
You can buy upto 200GB if you are a heavy user (with 256k throttle when exceeded). That's still 1/3rd my full speed CATV plan and not that bad.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
It wasn't advertised as such. They advertise you get 120GB for the cheapest plan and 200GB for the highest plan.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Yes, there is nothing deceptive about placing a limit on a service that is being sold as "unlimited."
The problem is that the companies are not being clear about exactly what you are paying for.
Comcast has throttled any P2P traffic - regardless of your plan - into the ground. The FCC has told them numerous times to stop, they told the FCC to fuck off. Numerous times.
But hey - things can play out different in Oz right? Whatever keeps those delusion flags flying is fine by me.
Dude, I had the only comment on this article for like 2 minutes and I'm the one who gets modded redundant.
a.) Another post beat yours by 2 minutes.
b.) Complaints about typos in the summary are redundant anyway. We get it, you're too smart to read something with a spelling error in it.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
If the customers desires more than 250 GB, then let him buy more from his Aussie provider.
If that Aussie provider doesn't want to end up in court, let him advertise what he's actually offering. This isn't about the quality of service, it's about their quality of ethics.
I live in the U.S., and it's stories like this that make me feel better when I read other stories about countries where you can buy gigabit services for thirty bucks a month. Of course, one has to wonder whether those services are sold under similar misleading terms. I wouldn't know.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I just looked up their plans. They have multiple tiers, but the AUS$60 plan allows 120GB prior to being throttled
You can buy upto 200GB if you are a heavy user (with 256k throttle when exceeded). That's still 1/3rd my full speed CATV plan and not that bad.
Yes, I'm on AT&T U-Verse myself, and I'm currently on the 12 mbit/sec tier. I was on the max plan, rated at 18 although I was getting 22, but I decided to save a few bucks a month and back it off to 12. I have to say, Comcast's ridiculous commercials aside, I've been very happy with the service. I used to have Comcast and got less speed and more latency, for more money.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
It's _called_ Unlimited. Seriously...
Strange the First Post was at 10:58 and his is at 10:49, meaning his was 9 minutes before being anyone else commented - so Yes I can see that /. has some problems.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
he probably posted when it was still in the firehose. i've noticed when i post in the firehose, my post tends to disappear for a while after the story hits the main page.
Well, isn't it obvious? A gigabit service is one which lets you transfer a gigabit of data per month. So don't be surprised if your 4 gigabyte DVD image needs 32 months to download. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Yeah that means "unlimited time". It used to be, back in the 90s, you were only given 100 hours (approximately) per month. Even today some providers like Netzero only give you 10 hours.
So unlimited time is a nice benefit, and should not be held against the Aussie ISP. Especially when they TELL you exactly 200 GB.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
So their other plans not called unlimited are limited time, are they?
Yeah Australia's service is pretty bad. One of the worst according to these figures by Speedtest.net (average internet speed):
Russian Federation 8.3 Mbit/s
U.S. 7.0
E.U. 6.6
Canada 5.7
Australia 5.1
China 3.0
Brazil 2.1
Mexico 1.1 Mbit/s
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
In germany there's an ISP called kabeldeutschland that claims 100mbit down 6mbit up (its cable + fiber behind).
Except from 6pm to 8am you get less than 1Mbit up/down on every protocol except HTTP. Everyday, no matter how much you downloaded or not (there's no download cap actually).
Quite sucky and probably borderline legal. They documents only say "up to" of course with no mention of the enforced 100k/s limit depending on the time of the day.
Their marketing material however, compares their 100mbit versus the 16Mbit of traditional DSL like the best thing since sliced bread. Except the traditional DSL provides 16Mbit on every protocol internet supports regardless of the time of the day, and is therefore much better. (and cheaper!)
>>>4 gigabyte DVD image needs 32 months to download
Wow that IS slow. Even on dialup it would only take a little over 9 days
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Alright I looked it up. "Unlimited downloads" is what the fine print says. The other plans only let you have a fixed number of downloads during primetime.
I guess it's similar to how cellphones only let you have XX minutes during primetime, unless you specifically buy an "unlimited minutes" plan.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
That is not correct. The service is actually adretised as '1 Mbit/s' or '10 Mbit/s' service and in such case it is reasonable to expect that I should be able to get what I paid for - such as 1 Mbit per second for the whole duration of the contract (and the 128 Kbit upload too).
Shh! Don't give 'em any ideas! On the bits thing, either. Next we'll see the marketing claims of 120GB/mo change to the much more favorable 960Gb(its)/mo... (they'll be hard-drive manufacturer "marketing" gigabits too...)
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
Yeah that means "unlimited time".
Way to work that weasel. Back in the dial-up days, I signed up with a ISP for an "unlimited" account. I had my account terminated because I was connected too long. It was then explained to me that "unlimited" meant that they didn't restrict where you could browse.
The reality is that the marketing folks really like "unlimited" even when they can't actually deliver. So they won't be truthful and call it the "200GB Plan" or such. Instead, they'll slip in restrictions (or not even document restrictions as in my case) and begin playing linguistic limbo as soon as you run in to them.
A fixed 'number of downloads'? What does that even mean?
If it's limited by the number of gigabytes then we're going back to the argument that they're advertising something as unlimited when it's clearly not. If it's limited by number of files then that just makes no logical sense (although that's by no means enough to rule it out as a move by a major company).
I don't even have a problem with data limits from ISPs, I've made plenty of posts in support of them (although with certain caveats that many current ISPs don't live up to). I just think they should be more upfront about it in the advertising, and using words like unlimited without further qualifiers is in no helping on that front.
I've noticed the 'unlimited time' argument come up on Slashdot before. That might be the argument that the ISPs would try to make, but since many of the ads actually say 'unlimited downloads' they're already on very thin ice. Beyond that, since 'always on' is a standard feature of the vast majority of broadband connections, it would be hard to argue before most advertising standards boards that the 'unlimited' moniker is not, at the very least, highly misleading if referring to time without stating it explicitly.
Way to work that weasel. Back in the dial-up days, I signed up with a ISP for an "unlimited" account. I had my account terminated because I was connected too long. It was then explained to me that "unlimited" meant that they didn't restrict where you could browse.
See? EVERYTHING comes down to net neutrality!
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
The other, limited plans only let you have 50 GB during peak hours.
The unlimited plan lets you have unlimited GB during peak hours.
That's the difference. Like some phone plans only let you have 50 minutes during peak; or you can get unlimited peak minutes.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
Your numbers are out of date, and here's the latest from that website
Mbit/s
11 US/Russian Federation (tie)
10 E.U.
9 Canada
8 Australia
7 China
4 Brazil
3 Mexico
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
If you paid for 250 GB (for example) and you hit that limit, I think the companies have every right to cut your off completely, just the same as my calling card or cellphone "cut me off" when I run out of minutes.
People need to stop being petty when they moderate. He has a valid point. Currently Comcast is doing the same thing except they are'nt offering unlimited service (I think their current bit is "the fastest fast"). I'm pretty sure some other ISP's are doing the same thing as they don't want any scrutiny from the FCC. The comment is valid, if they make the limits clear they the ISP is well within their rights to either ask you to pay up or disable your service till the next month. Modded up +2 under rated.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
Hopefully I'm not missing the point entirely here (and if I am, I apologise), but isn't that still constrained by the overall limit of 120GB (or whatever amount)?
What's this 'unlimited time' crap?
I had cable service back around 1999 and used a NetWare server as a firewall, mostly to play around with filtering ads. Since I had it on 24x7, when the cable company ran a contest and gave a t-shirt to the user with the most hours online, I won. No problem.
The second month, they gave me another t-shirt, and then asked me if I would mind if they gave a third t-shirt to some other user... Well, I said no problem.
Third month, I'm the #1 user again, and the marketing department said they had to give me the shirt or there would be trouble. That's when they asked me what I was doing online.
I told them. They were quite upset, and tried to cut my service off for some BS terms-of-service violation. I threatened to complain to the city and the state, and called their bluff. They relented, but I asked them to stop sending cheezy t-shirts. They gave up on the contest, since I only won the third time because another player/user had some downtime. I found out he was running NTAS, of course. That explains the downtime.
But despite being 'online' for 720-744 hours a month, I wasn't downloading much at all. They had a contest for that too. I ran a chron job on my firewall just to annoy them. Won that too. Novell's FTP site was also crazy fast, and they didn't notice I was downloading it a few times a day. This would not work today.
All of this to make a point. 'Time' doesn't mean anything for online usage. Many people leave their PC on all the time, and it's talking at least a little bit always. Sounds like this ISP is just weaseling the true cap, bytes, and trying not to tell anyone. Complete and utter crap. They should pay up. Pure corporate weaselry.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
This is also happening here in the US. I've recently signed up with CLEAR internet provider for a 6Mb/s unlimited download deal..... unfortunately, 90% of the time the download speed is capped to 0.25Mb/s....
Take a look at the CLEAR forum : http://forums.clear.com/clearcom where many many people are having heavy restrictions placed upon them for just using the service....
CLEAR deny this is happening, however I spoke to a CLEAR tier 2 network guy who said yes, you are currently being capped.
Something DOES need to be done about the way that ISPs market themselves. I provide 2 quotes from the website of my current ISP, and ask you to guess which one is most prominently shown :)
1. "We think you deserve more. So no matter which of our fibre optic broadband packages you chose, you get unlimited downloads. That means you can download as much music, as many films and as many photos as you want without having to worry about going over any kind of limit."
2. "So to make sure that our service is fair for everybody, we sometimes moderate the speeds for the top 5% of customers who are downloading and/or uploading an unusually large amount."
Lovely....So, you don't need to "worry about going over any kind of limit", but if you go over a limit, you'll get things really, really slow. It's OK. cos you can still download all you want, you'll just not be able to do it at the speed that you paid for...
Gotta love that kind of doublespeak.
Optus are utilising the same basic tactics that the Tobacco industry uses - they flagrantly dodge strict advertising laws, but all they ever get is a slap on the wrist.
Even if Optus only got a thousand new subscribers with that campaign, then they'll still make a long-term profit if they get fined by the ACCC.
"We are Samurai, the Keyboard...Cowboys"
'Time' doesn't mean anything for online usage.
It does if your ISP limits you to 10 hours per month (netzero or juno). Others like AOL have a 4 hour per call limit and then disconnect you, unless you click a "stay connected" popup. (This can be defeated by killing the AOL bacground program, so you never get disconnected.)
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
Yeah, because the experience of the internet is so amazingly different if you're at 8Mb/s or at 11Mb/s.
Ah, yes, dialup is constrained by available modems.
I'm thinking more about typical brodband - cable, DSL, wireless.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Take a look at the plans by Comcen, a smaller ISP that I'm with. Their new ADSL2+ plans throttle off-peak bandwidth down to 2Mbps all the time, even if you haven't exceeded your quota!
See the plans here. Click a plan to get more information, where it will say "Off-Peak Speed: Speed is slowed to 2000Kbps (2Mbps) during off-peak only". All but one of the plans has a permanent throttle on night-time bandwidth.
What if you're a professional who wants to sync or back-up data to your work at night? What if you're a techo like me doing after-hours remote maintenance over a VPN? If you're with this ISP, you won't get a choice, you'll be throttled, even if your physical link can do over ten megabits!
I'm going to clarify what the word "unlimited" means in this context (regardless of how it's complete bullshit).
On an "unlimited" plan, you get for example 50 gig. This 50 gig is at the maximum (theoretically) speed allowed by that plan by the ISP. Should you exceed that 50gig, your speed gets throttled down (or "shaped" to use the weasel word). You still can use your connection to do whatever you want, and for no extra charge, it's just that it's practically near impossible to actually do so when your speeds are cut to nearly nothing. They claim it is "shaped" to dialup speeds of 64kbps, but at least on my plan that is never really the case and I'm lucky to get 15.
That's what unlimited means, theoretically infinite amounts of data, but only 50gigs of that is at the speeds associated with how fast the technology allows. Nothing to do with time or anything like that.
Where optus has run into problems is not with the term "unlimited", it's a pretty common term thrown about by ISPs in Australia. The only problem they ran into is by claiming the speeds are "supersonic" indicating they're superfast, when, if you're throttled, they're nothing of the kind. That's it, that's the entire story.
And why is this troll?
Optus actually had virtually unlimited cable plans.. they used to cost about $60 per month and you could just go crazy, as fast as the lines could feed the data.
There was a contract proviso that Optus reserved the right to limit your service speeds if they felt you were abusing the privilege of unlimited downloads. If you downloaded more than 10 x the average download amount of all the internet users on the plan, you'd be notified with a warning. If you did this 3 months in a row, they might throttle your connection for a month. So you had to break half a terrabyte of downloads, 3 months in a row (bare in mind .. this was when computers had 80GB hard disks) to possibly have your connection reduced to something which was just faster than every competitor.
How things have changed ... now Optus sells $30 'broadband' connections which drop down to half modem speeds after watching an hour of youtube videos.
If that Aussie provider doesn't want to end up in court, let him advertise what he's actually offering. This isn't about the quality of service, it's about their quality of ethics.
This story caught me by surprised; at first I was like "what's the big deal?", because ISPs shaping/limiting connections after you've passed your monthly download limit is standard operating procedure here, and has been for years.
The big thing here is apparently the ISP in question was advertising this service as 'unlimited' and not clearly stating that it was, in fact, limited. This, too, was a bridge we crossed years ago with the ACCC stomping down, hard, on the practice - I haven't seen the word 'unlimited' used in ISP advertising for years. They have all been very clear and very upfront about their limits.
I suspect this is just a really bad marketing fail where they came up with a campaign and forgot to run it past anyone with a clue, or anyone with a memory of more than a few years. The reality is though the ACCC has done a great job - much better than in the US, say - about stomping on people that advertise 'unlimited' (or put other vague non-limits down) and have ensured that, in general, Australians have been pretty clear about what they're getting when they're signing up to an ISP.
All home broadband plans throttle speeds after you hit your limit. Most business plans charge you an excess.
What the hell are they supposed to do, let you go past your "limit" as much as you like with no consequence? Some penalty is implicit in the advertising of a x-MB/GB plan.
The fuck am I missing here?
much better than in the US, say
Ha. You don't have to work very hard to do better than we do in that regard. Some are better than others, of course. Currently I'm on AT&T, and I am getting better than my rated download speed, a faster backchannel than I ever got from Comcast, and haven't heard a peep about caps or limits. Of course, in my area I'm fortunate to have several options for broadband ... if anyone needed to know why competition is good, well, there you go. They fight for my business.
I remember when we were house shopping a few years ago, my realtor told me that her customers were asking about broadband availability when looking at homes. It complicated matters for her, because a lack of adequate Internet access would often blow the deal. When I eventually move to a new house, I'll be looking for places served by multiple providers. I like it when they have to work for it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The problem is that all of our connections use a Telstra backend (well, nearly *all* of them). Telstra needs to be absolutely hammered into the ground and everything taken away from them and given back to public domain and control. Let's consider the ABN - the government gave a closing date for tenders for the ABN. Telstra gave the government the finger and didn't submit a tender by the closing date because it had a hissy fit that it didn't get preferential treatment. Now what should have happened is that the government said tough shit, you miss out Telstra, too late. That's what happens in *business*. Of course, the government did a backflip and allowed Telstra to submit a highly biased tender after the closing date I might add. Worse, the government has happily accepted this plan of the ABN, to basically update Telstra's infrastructure, at public cost. WTF? Let Telstra pay for the fucking upgrades, it's supposedly their network. It really isn't, not when you look at the actual law, and even that legislation is highly suspicious if you do enough research on the matter (in the words of AC/DC - dirty deeds done dirt cheap). The other competitors need to band together and sue the government for providing legislation that gives Telstra a monopoly. For those in the US, think of AT&T in the 70s and then triple it. That's how *bad* Telstra's monopoly is.
I've heard of substantiated reports where an ISP (using Telstra infrastructure) has not been able to provide a DSL service due to some problems with the PSTN infrastructure provided by Telstra I might add (DSL application rejected). Said person then applied for DSL with Telstra's Bigpond directly and got DSL without *any* issues, using the very same infrastructure. WTF? Of course, this person was a smart cookie and used the 30 day cooling off period to churn back to his preferred ISP.
I myself have had issues - DSL2+ service which whilst not always totally stable, worked well enough for over 2 years. Around 5 months ago, it started becoming very unstable, with drops every 5 minutes. An isolation test, replacement of modem etc did nothing to alleviate the issue. The issue became worse in colder or wet conditions too. Here's the deal - my wholesaler (AAPT powertel) has an agreement with Telstra on a wholesale level for what it calls "spectrum share" services. These are DSL services provided on Telstra PSTNs, but the DSL service is not provided by Telstra, but by a 3rd party using Telstra's infrastructure. This agreement stipulates that the 3rd party will NOT ask Telstra to check the line for DSL faults. Now, in my own personal case, as our PSTN is with Telstra (as is most peoples'), all I could do was to have Telstra come out for a line (voice) fault. They will not test for DSL faults as the DSL service is not with them. My wholesaler will only check to see if the service is in sync, not radius drop times etc, but nothing else, not even an OATS/RVOP test etc as its beyond their ability. They will not get Telstra to do a DSL test on the line. So, I'm stuck with a shit service, that neither my wholesaler, or Telstra will fix. Piggy in the middle. And there's jack shit that I can do about it, since minimum service agreements are 1.5mb for a DSL 2+ service (which it just barely meets). I can't make my wholesaler fix the issue, and I can't make Telstra fix the issue. Where's my rights as a consumer? If there was any other industry, the players in the game would be in deep consumer shit.
Oh, and the Internet ombudsman is a total joke. ISPs can't complain against other ISPs or wholesalers. End users can only complain against their ISP, and not the wholesaler, even when their ISP is not at fault and it's a wholesaler issue. Does that sound right? No. It's utterly borked and utterly useless. I did formally complain against my ISP, but all it did was mean that pressure was placed on my job to withdraw the complaint (I actually work for my ISP). My ISPs/employer's view was "go use Optus cable then'. Not good service at all.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. --Martin Luther King Jr.
The issue is that they advertise "unlimited" then promptly throttle (ie LIMIT your throughput) if you pass the allowed usage.
The issue is that you cannot say UN-limited,then promptly deliberately apply a limit.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
To me it seems that flat-rates are never flat-rates, but bets of the providers on a average consumption per user, and that the "outliers" are few enough to ignore their legal complaints or pay them off. Usually the latter is stated somewhere in the fine-print.
this means:
-Provider wins in average because normal user never used the data he pays for by the flat-rate.
-Provider wins even more because he is not even bound to providing a flat-rate, even for those who use more.
My suggestion:
-Line providers and Internet provider may not be the same company, and the line providers must give transparent conditions to Internet providers.
-All offers are only allowed to have a single pricing model consisting of price per GB (goes to internet provider), installations cost (one time, split between line provider and Internet provider), monthly basic fee (line provider).
-The Line providers must support multiple Internet providers at the same time over the same DSL line
Also net neutrality is settled in that moment. If is use so much, then i pay so much. If some Internet provider then wants to provide super-fast access to some of the hyped services, the he should rent the lines and pair appropriately.
Perhaps not the WWW, but everyone and their dog uses P2P these days (My ISP actually has an FAQ about - "I downloaded XGB, but you billed me for YGB " which refers to P2P clients) - so 4 Extra Gb/second makes a difference if you're torrenting a lot.
I get truly unlimited 100Mbps for about $30 a month in rural Japan.
You Aussies must really enjoy taking it up the ass from big companies. Why is that?
Saying you "made plenty of posts in support of them" (them being ISPs use of data limits) "with certain caveats that many current ISPs don't live up to" is the same as saying you are OK with Dr Kevorkian killing people, as long as he only does it to terminally sick people, but he kills non-sick people anyway.
Either you support what they actually do, or you don't support it. With FCC sanctioned monopolies, much like other things in Real Life, "in theory" never happens. Unless it is bad case for consumer scenario theory.
Does that mean the connection is advertised to be faster than shouting TCP data out loud from the rooftops?
Because they're probably in the clear in that case.
My record for dial-up was 178 hours. We found that real people would call our mobiles and telemarketers gave up.
... at least 6mbps, but my service provider throttles everyone.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
the broadband provider now has a date in court next month, the second one since a June hearing over 'unlimited' voice and data plans that actually had usage caps."
Too bad companies in the US can't get hauled into court for their misleading claims of "unlimited" VoIP and data plans. Vonage for example has a limit of 5000 minutes of talk time. While this may seem like a lot, it isn't when you have two teenage daughters and one teenage son in the house during the summer when school's out. It's about 2.75 hours per day of phone use. When I exceeded this, Vonage sent me an email telling me to call them as I was going to be moved to their call center plan which is VERY expensive. They deem 5000 minutes per month to be the limit for acceptable and typical for household use. (So much for unlimited). Also, the various wireless data plans were always touted as "unlimited" but there was a 5 Gig / month limit to that... (So much for unlimited).
I honestly can't understand how these companies can get away with such claims when it is quite blatantly false advertisement / claims.
But I like it that way (yes, I'm with Optus).
When I had a basic 256kb/64kb sec ADSL connection with Telstra, they charged something like 15 or 20 cents per megabyte if we went over quota. One month I got a bill for $120 on a nominal "$29.95 per month" account.
After an ongoing billing dispute with Telstra (their billing system was an Urban Legend of fail), I paid everything out and we signed up with Optus. .iso file for a Linux CD overnight usually with Telstra.
My monthly bill went down, my connection instantly doubled in speed (512/128) and as soon as they installed ADSL2+ dslams, we'd be on ADSL2+.
I remember downloading a
The day Optus hooked us up to ADSL2+, they hadn't told us, but when I started to download a CD, I got it in 7 minutes. Blew my mind!
I was recently looking to upgrade our connection for a larger data allowance, as prices recently seemed to come down a long way, but all the accounts I looked at on their website, even the very best "Unlimited" connections, all had a visible rider shown among the details, of throttling to some degree. .15 cents/MB for excess usage up to 2GB per month, then throttling. Could cost $300 extra on a nominal $29.95/month ... read the fine print! There's always a catch, I never believe advertising. I assume any advertisement is a lie. ... in any event, all I have to do is pay occasional attention to my data usage, and I have no throttling.
The very cheapest ones had
Yes, that was Optus not Telstra.
They're giving me a small upgrade for free next month anyway
Don't blame me, it's usually 2 in the morning when I post
During the time of using unlimited Dialup, my Record for 56K Dialup was over 360 hours continuously (15~ days). Would only happen once every couple of months, when the script that the ISP used to run that would kill the user that had been on the longest, stopped working for several days.