Just out of curiousity, why do people insist on putting cap in capitals? Is it an acronym for something?

After asking AOL and checking on my Nan's AOL account at keyword BROADBAND, I can confirm that there is no cap and they do not plan to introduce a cap. you can read their "conditions of service" at http://www.aol.co.uk/cos.

I was pleasantly surprised at the politeness and knowledge of the rep I spoke to knew strait away what I was talking about and said that even though I have BB with Ntl I would need a visit to swap the modem over to an AOL owned one but other than that I could change asap if I wanted to, and I am seriously considering it. For £2 a month more it may well be worth it.

Well done AOL, you still are great, just how I remember you.

:D :D :D :)

edit If the above link doesn't work for you try : http://www.aol.co.uk/about/legal/cos.html

IMHO I believe the guy I spoke to at AOL who said that they didn't have a plan to introduce a cap, I did see the quote you have highlighted, however, the same COS are used for both ADSL and cable and as they have never introduced any sort of limitations on any of their services in the UK I don't think they will start now.

And to be honest even if they did introduce a 1 gig a day cap it would still be worth the extra £2 for decent customer service, E-mail that works, newsgroup servers that you can access and the knowledge that Ntl are getting a smaller proportion of my money each month.;)

I really dont see what the big issue is about the service provided by AOL & the service provided by ntl. Theyre different proiducts with their own price structures and their own T&Cs. If you don't like one then change supplier.

Put it another way if you had ADSL via <INSERT ISP NAME> would you complain to BT about <INSERT ISP NAME> 's T&Cs etc or would you just find another provider. Do BTs customers complain about <INSERT ISP NAME> getting better standards of customer service than BT provide ?? Somehow I doubt it :rolleyes:

From what I can see ntl are simply providing the hardware to allow other ISPs to offer a broadband service in exactly the same way that BT provide the lines that allow you to have a choice of ISPs. If package A has more desirable features than package B then you know what to do :D

To be honest this sort of debate would probably be better suited to a generic cablemodemhell site rather than here as this is a forum about ntl products isnt it :confused:

Now their's a point do AOL use proxy's on their own network ?

no idea but you do get some cute cuddly software to put on your PC (& it probably wont be *nix friendly)

not sure you asked a propper question there, but every ISP uses proxies, thats how you get onto the internet with an NTL address and have access to everything. i think what most people on here refer to as proxies are actually the cache's.

but yeh, at some point you have to go through AOL in order to get an AOL hostmask.

oCome on lets be honest here we would not be having this debate if the service was not CAPPED for NTL users and UNCAPPED for AOL users .

All we are after is to be treated fair and ditch the CAP

Lets not forget though they said they introduced this cap because their network couldn't cope. Well unless your an AOL customer that is

Obviously you miss the point.

AOL is offering a service on NTL's network, this is the network which NTL imposed a cap on to stop excessive users. Now, AOL users will be taking up that bandwidth and more because they have no cap, it also seems the cap was introduced to open up some more free bandwidth for AOL users. So, in other words NTL have screwed us in every possible way to make the deal more appealing to AOL, I'm sure the offer of a few million pounds from AOL is enough to treat us like this.

And, as mentioned somewhere else in this thread (post 22ish) , AOLs T&Cs/User Policy are pretty woolly the way theyre worded and I wouldn't mind betting that there *is* a Bandwidth Usage agreement in place between ntl &aol and that its probably based on the 1Gb per day guideline that applies to ntlworld customers

When you think about it ntl are now in the same position that BT are in that they cannot treat their own customers more favourably when it comes to being an ISP and I would rather suspect that the 1Gb a day figure stems from any potential BU agreement. , its simply a matter that aol have not put a figure upfront to their customers and are prefering to wait & see how much their customers do actually download on a monthly basis as opposed to ntlworld who have put a figure in their User Policy. Lets be honest 'heavy leeching' doesn't exactly fit your average aol 'user profile' does it !!!

And anyway its not a CAP it's a GUIDELINE


A CAP implies some sort of automatic throttling/blocking which isn't whats being done, instead there is a GUIDELINE to normal usage and ntlworld may contact you if you exceeed that GUIDELINE (although there does appear to have been a tadge of an overreaction as it doesn't appear that anyone has been contacted yet, have they ??)

AOL could not colocate servers - if they did they would be hosting out of the UK and be forced to charge VAT. AOL automatically makes 17.5% more than most ISPs as their servers are based in the US. They have no hardware in the EU.

Didn't NTLs TOS originally have similar bandwith limitations statements before the cap. Better refered to as guidance was put in place.

As others have said its not a cap. If you want to download 5Gb of linux you can do so in one day. NTL will just get upset if you do that daily.

Not true. From 1st July all companies that offer internet services to EU customers have to charge VAT. If the company is located within an EU country then they can charge the VAT rate for that country for all EU customers, rather than country specific VAT rates.

For this reason, AOL UK (or is it AOL Europe) have set up their operations in Luxembourg as their VAT rate is 15%. So from 1st July AOL will be charging all EU customers 15% VAT (currently they are absorbing this increase in cost into their existing rates)

I see no reason why AOL couldn't have hardware located in the UK - their registered office would still be in Luxembourg.

Duncan