Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Not sure whether this has occured to NTL but all these customers they lose to ADSL due to these caps, who are being encouraged to "vote with their wallets" won't just be disconnection their broadband, they will be taking their TV and telephone custom elsewhere. There are plenty of alternatives and at cheaper prices. Personally the only reason I am with NTL is for the unlimited broadband. I will regularly go over that 30gb month cap. Once NTL kick me off my TV and telephone package will be cancelled. I'm not going to continue to pay £40+ a month for a sub-standard service when I can be with Sky for less, with a better service.

I would prefer 512k and no restrictions, to do what I want when I want, than 2mbit for a couple of weeks usage.

NTL needs to remember how lucrative their TV service is, losing customers due to restrictions on their broadband service is far from wise. But they are a company and their decisions are down to their shareholders, not their loyal customers.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Are you suggesting that the the connection quality will be so poor it will be impossible to sustain a download at that speed?

I probably don't use that much, but a 170MB limit a day is going to make me think twice about doing an apt-get upgrade and having it say it wants to download 40MB of stuff.

Maybe you should go read some of my other posts?

Weeb

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Some people seem to think that there are only two types of users, the granny who does a little browsing and sends a few emails and the power user who uses every high bandwidth product possible 24/7. The truth is that every user has a requirement that can be anywhere between the two extremes.

Anyone that can say that it is the really heavy downloader that is important to ISPs should remember that it is only the light users who make it possible for the heavy users to have their service at the price they do. If all there was were heavy users then I dread to think what price you would have to pay.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Ev1Servers
http://www.ev1servers.net/english/value_series.asp

Very reliable, had several servers with them for a couple of years.

I appreciate that NTL have other overheads, but these days to cap bandwidth is pretty poor, it may be what several isp's do, but I suspect that is only because they can, not because they must :(

It used to be that only poor quality bandwidth was low priced (Cogent/Williams etc) but now even premium bandwidth such as Level3 and AboveNet are almost as cheap.

cheers

Ian

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

EXACTLY my point. I'm not a granny who sends one email a month, and I'm not a "power user" that hammers the thing 24/7. Which package am I "supposed" to be on? Is the intention that the (new) 1Mb service is supposed to be for super-light users only? If so I doubt they'd be willing to pay £18 a month for the privilege and will keep on using modem (is there going to be a new 150k service in there with some pitifully minute download limit for that market). Or will I be expected to cough up extra cash because I (hypothetically) use 6GB a month ?

Weeb

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

I play Planetside, download TV series if I miss them, music from time to time, remote administration, 2 PCs running, so browsing, email, also newsgroups (binary and text)

EDIT: Bandwidth: /Current Downstream: 245.37kb/s º Current Upstream: 5.73kb/s\

Not really, I doubt many 300k users use it for big downloads, its' attractions are that it's always on on a price point close to that of freecall dialup.

Nope, I'm looking at it from the point of view of at what point a company can make money and afford to innovate while keeping as many customers as possible happy. Based on what I know about the UK and international internet industry these limits are a reasonable compromise, and more generous than current competition in the low price higher speed market.

Check out Wanadoo, they've added hundreds of thousands of users on the back of low cost high speed capped services. This is why I'm saying your viewpoint is that of a minority, the facts say the majority like this kind of service.

35% of ALL internet usage is Bittorrent. Bittorrent is responsible for 55% of all P2P. ISPs are having strain placed on their networks by P2P, as they pay a metered charge to their bandwidth providers, and P2P by nature tends to use non-peered connections. Check the links I gave to see how other providers are being forced to act to keep their prices to reasonable and provide good QoS.

Agreed to an extent on the first point. Entirely disagree on the second point. If the top tier is unprofitable where's the incentive or as you put it the funding to raise speeds so that you can lose more money each month on data transfer?

Level3, Sprint, Cogentco, Cable and Wireless.net and all the other transit providers would disagree that ntl provide all the bandwidth themselves, someone has to take your data to other countries and they expect to be paid for the use of their networks.

I wouldn't bet on the 5% not costing that much. Interesting you use the word 'overusing' there. That 5% are a big margin muncher.

So long as you don't mind paying premium rate for tech support, supplying your own modem, paying for engineer calls if that kit goes wrong, need I go on? There's a hell of a lot more to the costs to provide the service than just bandwidth!

If ntl's costs are per GB similar to those BT have just to take traffic from ADSL exchanges and deliver them to ISPs (NOT including external bandwidth) those costs are a non-starter, unprofitable by default.

Good idea! Perhaps in the future this will be looked at!

Point re: driving forward addressed above. Newsgroups from what I've seen of them are being very well behaved. Outages once a month? Due to the size of the network outages are inevitable. To say everyone has an outage once a month is pretty unfair. AOL use BT's network for most of their ADSL service. As a comparison how many problems have you seen with the ntl operated virgin.net? If ntl are this atrocious how come despite only covering about 35% of the country they are the 2nd biggest retail ISP?

Doesn't really make much odds when people are piling up loads of stuff to download in a queue. Those really hammering their service are just as likely to be doing it in peak time, when there are at the PC queueing stuff up. I doubt that many are up in the middle of the night just to queue up. Also uploading is rarely done just overnight. Can think of at least 2 people I know who are respectively uploading 24x7 on emule to improve their credits and seeding torrents 24x7. 1 person using 1/15th-ish of an upstream that should hold 250+ people. On 3Mbit they can munch 1/10th of a downstream expected to hold several hundred happily.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

So I was either one of the 1% on an overcapacity UBR or there were other fundamental problems beyond just overcapacity that led me to finally chuck in the towel ;)

All this major investment didn't see to do a think for my unreliable connection. In fact when they started mucking about it got worse!! :(

Still, I'm sure I would have been better off with waiting for 3Mbps and have a cheap super fast connection... that is useless because the connection is unreliable.

;)

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Interesting point. Bear in mind that that one 1.5 Meg user uses the same bandwidth as 5 300K users. Which do you think is more profitable for NTL? 1x£37.9 9 or 5x£17.9 9?

Even taking in to account costs of service provision, I would say it's the 300K users who are more profitable. IIRC most NTL users are on the lower bandwidth as well.
You don't know many AOL users then... NTL do have problems, but they are not as bad as you have made out. Well, maybe the email servers are.

In my experience, people are not considerate enough to do that..

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Can some one tell me if that is what NTL said, if so I'll pay the extra £5 for unlimited bandwidth.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Other issues in your case sir, all fixed and all good last time I checked.

You have a PM.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

It isn't. 1Mbit unlimited for £22.99 a month? Not likely.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

A good few people on here would disagree. Some people just couldn't afford to get a higher speed, now they'll be forced to either upgrade to 2mb or look elsewhere, as the cap just isn't good enough for them.

On lower teirs i can understand how a lot of people wouldn't mind, if they're just getting emails etc. My real argument is with the higher teirs, 3mb mainly.

In an earlier post you stated that if these services became more common then the charges would drop, now you're saying they're a stain on the system and costing companies too much money. :rolleyes:

I still think they make much more money from the underusers than they lose with the overusers. And in return the overusers keep them ahead of the competition, wanting the fastest speeds possible, and paying enough to keep it viable, so they can use it in advertising, that they are the fastest provider in the UK.

So long as you don't mind paying premium rate for tech support, supplying your own modem, paying for engineer calls if that kit goes wrong, need I go on? There's a hell of a lot more to the costs to provide the service than just bandwidth!

Getting through to Tech Support would be nice, maybe with a premium service they'd HAVE to answer calls faster. :D But points taken.

I'm still having problems with a lot of newsgroups, i don't use them much myself, mainly because i'm put off by them not working very often. I have problems with email at least once a week, sometimes it's only for a few mins, sometimes it can be all day, sometimes it's a lot more than once a week, and judging by the posts on this forum it's not just me suffering from it.

They're one of the biggest because they aren't just an internet company. They bundle TV, Phone and Internet together. Most people prefer to simplify things by buying all 3 products from the same provider. The only reason i haven't moved to another provider when going through problems with Ntl was it would mean taking my phone to BT. So i stuck with it in hope that they'd sort it out. It's better now, but far from acceptable at times. A lot of people on this board didn't wait as long as me, as can be seen in countless posts.

It makes more sense to do your downloading at night, it doesn't get in the way of what you're doing through the day, browsing, emails etc, and also more people are on the foreign networks at night, so you get more people to share from.
THe thing is though, if that were the case, where the 5% of people overusing the service were crippling it, why have Ntl taken the speeds up so high? Whereas before most people on ntl were downloading at 30k/sec, standard, they'll be able to download at 124k/sec now. They've just put 4 times the strain on the network at any given time. When people were on the 1mb service as the highest teir, it was argued that they were at fault for slowing down other peoples service, downloading at 124k/sec constantly. Now the network is going to be flooded with people using at LEAST 124k/sec, while browsing etc. Is there less people on each UBR now to allow for that, or will people just suffer slow speeds? :confused:

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Darn it. I don't want to pay £25 a month just for the extra bandwidth, and the 2MB speed, as I don't need it. I would pay £23 for 1MB and 30-40GB bandwidth per month though.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

I didn't say they were more profitable. They help by taking the highest speed, and giving them the need for a faster speed in the first place, so they can boast of having the fastest connection in the UK.

I actually know quite a few people on AOL, and they are mostly very happy with the service. Being uncapped just makes it even sweeter.

And the Ntl service IS as bad as i think. It has been getting better, but it's by no means good enough yet. I've never had a single problem of speed, i always get my full bandwidth, on whichever connection i've been on. Even when i was downloading 24/7. But i've always had problems with email, newsgroups, complete loss of service for hours and days at a time, waiting for Tech Support to answer the phone, finding someone in Tech Support who actually knew anything (there are some that are fantastic help, all welsh in my experience, but a lot that don't know what they're talking about, instead following keyword based instructions on a screen.), etc. :Yikes:

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Sorry, like everything else pretty much you get what you pay for.

No, you were talking about people streaming DVDs, etc. I don't really think that P2P is everyone's idea of a great new service, especially as no-one makes any money out of it. When there's money to be made service providers will step up to the plate. At the momet giving the majority of your network's bandwidth away so that people can down / upload for the most part copyrighted material for free is a big revenue maker....

The point that you are missing is that the overusers AREN'T the ones paying enough to keep it 'viable' it's all the people who pay over the odds to offset these people that make it viable! Market forces inspire changes like this.

For everyone on this board with issues there are literally hundreds of thousands of happy bunnies. If it were any other way ntl would be out of business.


Less people on a uBR, loads of network upgrades, and the network won't be flooded with people pulling that rate all the time. Most people's traffic is bursty, and the usage allowances act as a disincentive to people who may want to download full pelt all the time. 1 person downloading at 180k/s 90% of the time is far worse than several people downloading at 360k/s 5% of the time...

Think we can safely agree to disagree though on this. I accept your points even though I disagree with most of them, and have as much as possible supplied evidence to that effect.