Anyone know if this has been done, anywhere? Or does the whole idea suck for reasons not yet known to me?
There is a place in New Zealand, lanplace, that does this. Sort of. It's extra for a monitor - they offer from 17" ViewSonics up to 21" Sony ones.
Oh, and no speakers, not that I think providing speakers is such a great idea when you have a whole lot of people with speakers in the same room...
On closer inspection it appears they charge a flat fee for most events (either weeknight or weekend ones over 24 hours) and on weeknights monitor rental is thrown in with seat rental seeing as apparently they believe most people wouldn't want to lug a monitor along to such a short (~8 hour) event.
Technically, that's "The Internet Movie Database" - though admittedly IMDb could easilly mean what you say, but it says the full name at the top of their main page and as the title of the page as well.
If you don't like Telecom products, go to someone else.
I'm afraid the options for consumer broadband (16KB/sec broadband?) are somewhat limited in New Zealand. Very, very limited. Go to someone else? I wish that were an option!
Having said this, I can fully understand the ISP's decision as I've seen what MP3 and DivX can do to my server's bandwith.
Yeah, the only reason they haven't done it earlier is because they're trying to get the high users. All the other ISPs have been forced to put 10GB or so caps on DSL because of the low profit margins (half of the money, at least, goes to Telecom no matter which ISP you choose). So this has left Telecom's Xtra as the only real option if you want to download more than that. Now they feel they've saturated the market for high-usage flat rate users they're now considering introducing a monthly cap of 6GB of so, which is lower than even the other ISPs have previously done.
I guess they're hoping that the benefits of switching to another ISP for an extra few GB aren't attractive enough to overcome the aggravation of dumping people's current account?
I'd love to be in NZ right now! Now all the kiddies that think downloading music and burning it to CDs for their friends constitutes a "business" - like some people I know - have had their access blocked, it means better connections for everyone else who does in fact respect the law. I think this should happen more.
Oh, don't worry - they still provide a poor service where you're lucky to even get close to the 16KB/sec (128kbit) cap. It's not about providing a better service to their other customers, but merely increasing their margins and avoiding the need to upgrade their own equipment.
It would be nice if they were doing this for their other customers though. If they removed P2P altogether (not that FastTrack isn't effectively crippled as it is) and increased the cap to 32KB/sec that would be a real improvement which perhaps customers who aren't purely leeching might appreciate.
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Anyone know if this has been done, anywhere? Or does the whole idea suck for reasons not yet known to me?
There is a place in New Zealand, lanplace, that does this. Sort of. It's extra for a monitor - they offer from 17" ViewSonics up to 21" Sony ones.
Oh, and no speakers, not that I think providing speakers is such a great idea when you have a whole lot of people with speakers in the same room...
On closer inspection it appears they charge a flat fee for most events (either weeknight or weekend ones over 24 hours) and on weeknights monitor rental is thrown in with seat rental seeing as apparently they believe most people wouldn't want to lug a monitor along to such a short (~8 hour) event.
Technically, that's "The Internet Movie Database" - though admittedly IMDb could easilly mean what you say, but it says the full name at the top of their main page and as the title of the page as well.
and insist on no anonymous calls if NZ telecom has those
They have them but I somehow doubt this prevents Telecom from knowing who is calling - just their customer's Caller ID and such.
Besides, would anonymous voice options even have any impact whatsoever on DSL?
If you don't like Telecom products, go to someone else.
I'm afraid the options for consumer broadband (16KB/sec broadband?) are somewhat limited in New Zealand. Very, very limited. Go to someone else? I wish that were an option!
Having said this, I can fully understand the ISP's decision as I've seen what MP3 and DivX can do to my server's bandwith.
Yeah, the only reason they haven't done it earlier is because they're trying to get the high users. All the other ISPs have been forced to put 10GB or so caps on DSL because of the low profit margins (half of the money, at least, goes to Telecom no matter which ISP you choose). So this has left Telecom's Xtra as the only real option if you want to download more than that. Now they feel they've saturated the market for high-usage flat rate users they're now considering introducing a monthly cap of 6GB of so, which is lower than even the other ISPs have previously done.
I guess they're hoping that the benefits of switching to another ISP for an extra few GB aren't attractive enough to overcome the aggravation of dumping people's current account?
I'd love to be in NZ right now! Now all the kiddies that think downloading music and burning it to CDs for their friends constitutes a "business" - like some people I know - have had their access blocked, it means better connections for everyone else who does in fact respect the law. I think this should happen more.
Oh, don't worry - they still provide a poor service where you're lucky to even get close to the 16KB/sec (128kbit) cap. It's not about providing a better service to their other customers, but merely increasing their margins and avoiding the need to upgrade their own equipment.
It would be nice if they were doing this for their other customers though. If they removed P2P altogether (not that FastTrack isn't effectively crippled as it is) and increased the cap to 32KB/sec that would be a real improvement which perhaps customers who aren't purely leeching might appreciate.