'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."

Comments

They have 100Mbps broadband here?

[Nursie]

Damn, where do I have to live to get that?

Re:They have 100Mbps broadband here?

[Nursie]

Oh right, I see, any city that's not Perth. Got it!

Re:They have 100Mbps broadband here?

[Trentus]

I'm having trouble finding any reference to a 100mb/s plan on either Optus' site or whirlpool.net

As for throttling once you've used a set amount of data, that's pretty much standard practice... it's not like they hide it.

Re:They have 100Mbps broadband here?

[Netshroud]

Optus' 100Mbps plan is what they call the "Optus Premium Speed Pack". An extra AU$20/mo on almost any Cable plan, plus a new DOCSIS3.0 modem, and you'll be chewing through your monthly quota about 5 times as fast. Then they throttle you. If you get the more expensive Fusion plans (the 'Unlimited' ones) the throttling speed is 256kbps. They try getting away with that because 256kbps is the minimum speed to technically be 'Broadband'. ACCC, attack!

Supersonic speed

[maxwell demon]

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!

Re:Title?

[x2A]

It's only a centimeter if we're talking physical distance between the keys it takes to press each of the letters, so really, it depends on your metric.

Throttling to 28.8 Kb/s.

[Animats]

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

• High Speed Data Allowance: 200MB
• Speed Limit if High Speed Data Allowance Exceeded (kbps): 28.8
• Monthly Access Fee (from 15 April 2009): $49.95

'yes' DSL Unlimited

• High Speed Data Allowance: 12 GB
• Speed Limit if High Speed Data Allowance Exceeded (kbps): 64
• Monthly Access Fee (from 15 April 2009) $91.95

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.

Re:Throttling to 28.8 Kb/s.

[ScrewMaster]

Yes, they really call it "unlimited", in the same table with the limits.

I'm always amazed by people whose frontal lobes are capable of generating and publishing such non-sequiturs without exploding.

Re:Throttling to 28.8 Kb/s.

[kaptink]

Those access fees are quite high compared to some of the competition. Possibly why they are using dishonest advertising to trick people who dont know or care that much into using them instead. Just looking at broadbandchoice.com.au shows several providers offering 150gb for $90 a month. A bit more than 12gb. Worth looking at this comparison http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/bc/?action=search&state=any&class=0&type=res&pre=3000&cost=100&speed=512&upspeed=0&ip=1&contract=99&upfront=999999&needhw=yes&conntype=1&conntype=4&conntype=5&sort=0

ISPs, sell yourselves on _service_!

[radarsat1]

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.")

Re:I see no problem with this

[ScrewMaster]

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.

Re:Big deal

[maxwell demon]

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.

Then the FCC should revoke Comcast's license, plain and simple.

Re:Big deal

[David Gerard]

The ACCC are quite popular in Australia because they actually make companies behave.

They're the reason you can't enforce DVD region-locking in Australia, for example. (DVDs are still often sold region-locked, but players can play any region.)

Limited ISPs

[kangsterizer]

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!)

Re:I see no problem with this

[theaveng]

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

Re:Big deal

[mjwx]

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.

Two completely different cases here.

ISP's in Oz cant throttle p2p connections, they can only throttle entire connections and this must be advertised with the service. ISP's in Australia are dumb pipes, doing any kind of throttling or port blocking without the customers knowledge is illegal. That being said, throttling (the entire connection) after a certain cap has been reached is completely legal as long as it has been advertised (customer knows when signing up for the service).

This complaint is because a customer feels that Optus has misrepresented their service in their advertising, not because Optus is throttling (in plain English, Optus was caught lying). As other posters have mentioned the ACCC (Australian Completion and Consumer Commission) our competition watchdog is quite popular and does work, albeit a little slowly.