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'Throttling' Broadband Provider Sued In Australia

Posted by timothy on from the for-some-values-of-unlimited dept.

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."

4 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Supersonic speed by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  2. Throttling to 28.8 Kb/s. by Animats · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. ISPs, sell yourselves on _service_! by radarsat1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.")

  4. Re:Big deal by David+Gerard · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.)

    --
    http://rocknerd.co.uk