Slashdot Mirror
'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...
What the heck is up with that title?
'Throttling' Broadband Provided Sued In Australia
I've tried to parse that sentence several ways and I'm still not getting it. Even replacing a single word in it (say, "Provided" -> "Provider(s)") doesn't seem to fix it properly.
WTF, editors?
coding is life
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.")
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. The fact you still have Dialup speed is actually quite generous of them.
If the customers desires more than 250 GB, then let him buy more from his Aussie provider.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Dude, I had the only comment on this article for like 2 minutes and I'm the one who gets modded redundant.
WTF, mods...
coding is life
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.
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!)
consid3r worthwhile do, and with any and some of the
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.
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"
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!
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
... 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