Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

what's the significance of that? :Oh: are you saying that NTL have added 6 new UBRs in order to be able to handle the speed increases?

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

'Continuous improvement'

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

If you read BBKings whole post (http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...&postcount=596) he was citing facts in response to comments that ntl invested little or no money on their network.

EDIT: want to see how much a single card for a UBR is.... linky

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

You mean NTL buy their kit on EBay!! (Sorry - couldn't resist that)

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

I haven't seen NTL's complaints figures, but I suspect a large chunk of those 600,000 users are probably quite happy with their service, and wouldn't even know about, let alone care about, NTL running their network to the wire.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

No, that's the uBR stuff that was nicked when someone raided one of the headends a few months back..... :D

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Heh that's the cheaper part of the deal, the extra fibre is naaasty cost ;)

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

and there was me thinking it was the infamous

COMING SHORTLY

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

to put this in perspective... how many UBRs exist within the NTL network? and how many were there say 12 months ago?

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

interesting no comments to my post. I will ask again.

The low usage customers are catered for.
The 24/7 leechers are dealt with.
But what about the people who want 50-100 gig a month? and is 40 gig really appropriate for a 3mbit tier.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

IMPO it is enough if you need more then I am sure NTL will arrange to charge those by the gig they want over the 40gig.

That is what I think should happen now.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

But we won't know until the 'official' announcement, so what's the point in speculating?

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Judging from some of the messages here you would think NTL was planning to reduce speeds rather than increase them, if I was NTL reading this thread I would be thinking †œwhat an ungrateful lot of *** we have as customersâ₠¬Â�, it would make me think twice before I offered any further speed increases.



Given the choice I would have to choose reasonable capping as opposed to crap service due to congestion. If I had a few people on my loop hogging the bandwidth all the time I would be the first to complain, we all have to learn to respect other people and act accordingly otherwise the result will be anarchy which will benefit no-one.

When it was PAYG for everyone we were our own bandwidth police, only being able to afford going online evenings and weekends for relatively short periods of time. With a fixed monthly fee there has to be some policy to deter everyone from hogging the bandwidth, anyone who canââ‚Âà ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢t appreciate that is living in cloud cuckoo land.

In an ideal world we would each have a 1:1 contention ratio and each driver would have the road all to themselves but until then we have to learn to live within current resources.



When my speed doubles I am not going to be downloading twice as much data as I do now, I am not going to change my on-line pattern much at all, in just the same way that I didnâ₠¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t start downloading everything in site when I moved from 512KB ADSL last month just because I could now do it 3 times faster.



For the first time in my life I will have the fastest connection available in the UK (ignoring Bulldog in Central London) and for that I have to applaud NTL, and at a price I could only have dreamed of in the past.



:hugs: ntl:

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

:clap:

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Actually, having done the calculations, 40gig is quite restrictive for a 3-meg package. Infact, if the contention is 20:1, then this is slightly less than your fair share. I'm told, however, that they work on 25:1, so its probably a bit more. 45gig would be fair for 20:1, counting a 31-day month, so they ought to round that up to 50.

Though for the price, I'm not complaining :D

Prices will come down, bandwidth allowances might go up, speed might rise again in a few years time (once they work out what to do with a million ambit modems that are incapable of more than 3meg!! :Yikes: ), and some competition might happen......................... when BT work out how to make their network capable of backhauling any more data than it does now... :rolleyes:

I do, however, support a bit of flexibility, in the form of capacity-based charging. My hosting provider charge me 0.5p per megabyte over 10gig/month. That works out at 50p/gig after the initial 10. £5-£10 per extra 10gig a month? It could work :angel:

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

I think people's main issue is the lack of choice that you refer to from ntl.

The issue (as usual) is the silence from ntl, & the lack of clarification of whether a tiered structure will exist-I.E. pay by the MB/GB when you hit your monthly allowance with these new tariffs.....

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

I dont think NTL could view this thread as a representation of their customers as the number of BB customers is in the hundreds of thousands.

I'm think the majority of customers will be happy with the changes - some will find the bottom tier no longer offers enough GB for their usage and will upgrade to £25 a month or seek an alternative. If this becomes a problem then NTL will soon resolve it if they start losing customers.

The bottom line is, if the changes are so bad then churn will increase in which case the allowanances will be increased - unless NTL wants rid of these people.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Since, AFAIK, NTL have still to officially launch the speed increases, I don't think it is fair to criticise them for not clarifying the details - they may not even have decided themselves yet. Let's wait and see.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

same figure I had in mind - 2GB for £1.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Fair enough. My experience is totally the opposite.

It depends what was fixed and when. I had multiple issues. Some of it was packet loss and slow pings, the rest of it was down to signal problems on the upstream of the cable modem, which is a problem I'd had for years (ever since starting with broadband) and it was never fixed even though various people tried to fix it and said it was fixed.


Average about 15ms on plus. On NTL I rarely saw pings lower than 50ms, often well into 100ms on a lot of sites.

Maybe I should move to Hampshire ;)


Maybe so, but there are a lot of other things wrong with NTL, and not just the broadband side of it, that make me very concerned about using them. I'm extremely happy with PlusNet so far. In fact I have to say I've been truly amazed at the difference in performance making me realise just how poor my NTL connection was. Customer support has been stunning too.


I don't wish to go further into a Plus vs NTL debate on an NTL forum. I do appreciate your and other's efforts, but you have to see it from my point of view where just about everything that could have gone wrong with my NTL experience did and no amount of saying things are fixed, better, have loads of investment or the best core network in the UK will really convince me.

At the end of the day the key thing is the experience for the end user. You can have the best network in the world but if the connection to a particular house is next to useless, then the ISP is of no use, especially when they can't fix it despite dozens of attempts over several years.

The other thing is though you have all the data to hand and can see everything is rosy, the customer often sees something different. The problem I have with NTL, and this applies to a lot of other companies, is that the customer is not believed when they say something is wrong.

Re: [Merged] BB Speed Upgrades
 

Well I have my 1.5mb line just a few questions over this proposed 3mb upgrade on my line.

The £25 cost will be a unneeded expense for me as I will be d/c from ntl bb in the first few month of 2005 say March Latest.

I shall then be r/c at my new home about 2mile from where I am and on the probally 2mb service until bills are settled.

Would NTL perhaps drop the £25 considering these circumstances or can I opt just to not pay it or would I be forced into either paying or dropping the service and using internet service at libary until I am sorted in my own place.

Thanks in advance

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

The admin fee adds to the problems, as unless they are going to force all existing users to pay it, and disconnect those that won't stand for it, then they will have to parallel run the two tariffs for quite some time, and I rather suspect that the 300k will also get the 5Gb cap, so staying with 1Gb/day@300k may not be an option.

I can see the reason for a lower cap, as otherwise the 750k users currently would have no reason NOT to downgrade to the cheapest tariff.

Anyway, I just put a monitor on for today - I think its OVER-estimating by counting the ARP traffic on the interface, and DHCP broadcast, but:
I set the alarm at 100Mb - about 3/5 of the daily total of 5Gb/month - allowing for 2Gb of additional downloads.

I estimate by the end of a total "non downloading" day, it'll be 60Mb - just 2/5 - looks like I'll be snatching 1Mbit / 5Gb cap, as I still have reasonable room for finding anything I want or need to download.

It helps if you KNOW what your current usage is, and then add some as faster generally means you'll use a bit more - some forums are 100k or more for each page, so 10 pages is a meg, and it soon adds up

This page is 70k

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Been thinking about a bandwith monitor but want something stable reliable. FREE without spyware or rubbish and one which does not give unreal reports and is accurate...

I tried one a while back and had serious issues anyone able to recommend a good monitor?

Thanks

AJW

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

The average BB user would appear to be well catered for, 2MB and 30GB being well in excess of what you would normally expect at the price, and more than most people will actually need. I admit that there is a big step from 5MB to 30MB and that the base bandwidth should probably have been 15MB but perhaps the base was set low on purpose in order to be able to advertise a high speed low cost entry product (the sprat to catch a mackerel).

I assume that the expense of updating the system was primarily to accommodate new customers with TV services. IPâ₠¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s are looking to VOD for future increases in revenue, the higher speed BB announced is probably just to attract new customers in the knowledge that most will have the TV packages as well, it just might be that NTL didn't fully consider the current BB users when working out their plans, after all they have only just completed the last increases in speed which everyone was happy to be handed.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Whilst 5Gb appears low to many people for the 1Mb service you have to remember that it is 5 times the cap that some ISPs put on their entry level services. Just because NTL have given 1Mb as the lowest tier doesn't mean that users should try to max this out at all times. Most 1Mb users will be quite happy to do what they normally do but will be glad that their odd download only takes around a seventh of the time that it used to only a couple of months ago.

What some people are saying is that they are getting much faster connections and they should use this extra speed to the full all the time.
If they were to look at it as if they still will have the same speed as they now have with a bonus of getting the same downloads as they now do in half the time, things may look a little different.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

I just think 50-100gig isn't too abusive for a 3mbit account and would be unfair to charge per gig over 40 gigs on a top tier package, the other 2 tiers I do however feel they got it right. If NTL bring out some prices for extra £/GIG I doubt we will see anything below £1 per gig, possibly if brought in bulk but certinaly not in single gig allotments. The top package is probably aimed at user's who 40 gig is too restrictive for, perhaps something like this?

1 mbit - 5 gig 17.99
2 mbit - 30 gig 24.99
3 mbit - 50 gig 37.99
3 mbit - 100 gig 44.99
3 mbit - unmetered 49.99 (to match telewest)

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

I think that 40Gb for the 3Mb tier is about right for now. Once users have reached this allowance they should either be throttled back or charged per Gb at a realistic rate which would be at least £1 per Gb. Start flaming!

I know that some people will come out with all the possible legal uses that require more than 40Gb per month, but why should the average user subsidise their need? Some will say that families with multiple computers and users will soon eat the limit up, but again why should the average user have to pay the same as four or five users sharing a connection?

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

/agree sound good to me.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

And the linux distro comes to mind. I use linux and i am not downloading updates and distros every day. 40 gig will do me fine however i would like to be able to buy more if i need it :).

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

I'll be happy with the 1gb. As I don't download that much it will be more than enough for me. :)

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

The problem is, unless you can persuade them otherwise, NTL will only run one connection (and account) per house

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Or that they discovered they had capacity to make this quantum leap in speeds as a result of the last speed increase.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

I do hope ntl go through with this I am not that bothered about when or how because I shall be d/c from ntl around December as I am moving house then I shall be r/c around April LOL so shall be nicely on the new speeds I hope by then.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Perhaps this is something NTL may want to look at as some multi user households may opt to have an ADSL line as well as the NTL broadband. This could also possibly lead to the loss of the customers telephone business and TV business.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

As far as I can understand, technically they do have the ability to do it, they just don't. Don't know why... It may help business. If

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

This discussion if starting to make me laugh. The low usage customers are rightly happy with the levels announced by NTL and cannot (or will not see) that their usage doesn't suit everyone (nothing would suit everyone unless we all had 1:1 connects :D). What the 'power users' such as myself are saying and are miffed about is that NTL seem at present (as details are sketchy) not to have factored them into the equation and provided a suitable cost effective cap level. A higher tier would solve the problem for most people but wether NTL could offer such at a profit is only for NTL to answer. I personally would like to see another 3MBit tier added with 100GB cap at say a £50 price point but thats based on my usage. I know that a 100GB cap would still upset some people as they need X not Y but I believe that 100GB would cover off most power users (apart from the serial 24/7 downloaders). I'm quite willing to pay extra for my usage but I personally don't really want a PAYG solution. I'd rather have higher tiers of service.

If, has been stated on here, 5% of users account for 67% of network utilization then those 5% are not being catered for by the proposed NTL changes. 5% is ~50K customers. If those customers take TV and telephone services from NTL then that equals quite a sum of monthly revenue that NTL is not protecting under the current proposal. Wether those 5% are cost effective is again something I cannot answer but NTL appears to be running the risk of driving those customers to alternate providers. Once a customer is lost it's usually extremely difficult to win that customer back at a later date (and a number of posts earlier in this thread validate that).

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

if 5% of the users are using more than half the network then I'd suspect that any higher tiers or additional GB bolt ons for these power users could reflect this and thus be very expensive or at least an opportunity to exploit this 'fact'!

if the 5% are using 67% of the network then they are the least profitable or loss making customers.

if these 5% are forced out by the new tiers then that (in theory) saves tons of money from the 67% of the network then freed up... which means more profits and instant free capacity for more light users to be shoved onto the network without expanding it.

assuming this 5% are using 10 times what the majority are then that means the 50,000 high users who leave can make space for 1/2 a million light users without any network expansion program.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Obviously, I don't have access to NTL's internal figures, but if those 5% are occupying 67% of network resources, I would guess it's not cost effective for NTL to keep them. After all, they would only account for a small percentage of the revenue generated, but they would incur a far higher percentage of the costs.

For example, NTL may well have to install an extra card in a UBR if someone is maxing out their 1.5 Meg connection 24/7 (which you would need to to download as much as some people do) and slowing everyone else on the same channel down.

Now, I don't know how much those cards cost retail, but they cost $8000 on eBay. That one person would pay £37.99 a month (+ possibly TV & phone). Now, what would you say is more cost effective? Losing that user or buying the card?

Now, admittedly that example would only apply if the bandwidth on the other channels was full, so NTL would possibly need to buy another card anyway, but it does illustrate what I say. I haven't taken into account upgrades possibly needed further up the network either.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

well based on the 'facts' given that 5% are using 67% of the network then they're using 10 times their 'portion' of the cake - so if the price of their broadband was relative to this... wouldnt they be charged 10 times the average subscription! how does £25 * 10 sound!

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

No lack of silence Neil ntl are just not in a position to announce details at the moment as they are still being worked out. The changes are not till Q1 2005 so there is no need to announce details months in advance is there?!? however I believe they are obliged to mention new products with results to shareholders so hardly silence IMO :)

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

The figures I stated where taken off here. I have no reason to believe they are accurate. Equally I have no reason to disbelieve them but at the same time they seem overly high to me. A more interesting metric would be how many existing customers utilize an average of more than 1GB a day (actually it's slightly more than a GB 40gb/30days) as that's the percentage of people who would be affected by NTL's proposals.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

It makes me laugh what monthly usage allowance some heavy users expect to be provided and the cost that they say this should be.

Whilst NTL have quoted usage allowances they have not said how usage will be measured nor how the user will keep track of his / her usage. Will usage be the actual throughput of the cable modem or the effective throughput where the user will not have the data involved in transmission of headers in the IP layer and lower layers counted against their usage.

Have a look at http://www.aaisp.net.uk/aa/adsl/adslother.html for a laugh and see what their charges are like. Please note the top up charge for usage above your monthly allowance which is £5.88 per GB.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Not necessarily overly high. Where I work, I saw some figures on network usage. 80% of network resources were used by around 10% of the users. I can well believe those figures scale up to 67% of national network use. Incidentally, that 67% figure appears to have come from Ignition, but he was talking about the average ISP. NTL's actual figures are probably different.

But, assuming the figures are correct, surely you have to admit that 5% of the users using 67% of resources is not economically viable for NTL (or any company)?

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Ouch :Yikes:

so 3GB per month is ample capacity for home usage at 1M and costs £27 ?
and 1M with a limit of 8GB is £50 - Hmmm - won't be using them then ;)

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Scastle, I have never disagreed that the 5% using 67% isn't ideal for any company or product. Economic viability of such I cannot comment on as I haven't got the figures but common sense says no it's not.

Ianathuth, nice page you decide to choose :). Expensive over usage charges BUT charges are only incurred during peak periods. Nice solution IMO to the whole overusage issue. At peak times you are capped but at night and during weekends DL's are unrestricted.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Not quite as bad as it seems. The usage allowance is for daytime weekday downstream usage. Uploads, night and weekend downloads are unlimited.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

I dont think I'd use them for a price comparison - all their prices are steep - I'd compare with a more 'normal' ADSL supplier like bulldog, nildram or pipex.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

This was a site that I found by accident when searching for something else and I know that prices are steep when compared to popular ISPs. The question is though, are the popular ISPs pricing their products at a long term viable rate or are they taking little profit or making a loss in order to build up market share?

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

I'd expect neither. Bandwidth costs decrease the more you buy (or at least in my environment they do). Larger ISPs buy more bandwidth so the cost is lower on a Mbit by Mbit basis.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

I think everyone should really take a step back and wait until nearer the time before deciding if they think this will be a good deal or not.

Full details will undoubtedly be released nearer the time, and some wag will undoubtedly post them on here within seconds, so we need not worry on that score.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

When something new or different is announced it is bound to be discussed and speculated upon. This can be a good thing in that many angles are brought up, some of which may not have been apparant in the first place. In the case of these new speeds from NTL it may be that NTL learn something from this thread which may or may not affect the ultimate product and its AUP. Nobody will be able to make a final decision on what they will do in future until final details are available but they will have looked at various ramifications of what is proposed and be better placed to make that decision.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

I agree, but as expected this thread has been hijacked by the 'aren't caps terrible' brigade, who seem to be pre-empting what will happen.

I think every man and his dog knows about the cap issue, and the thread's doing little good while the usual suspects are just using it as a stick to beat ntl with.

I say let's hold off on the cap stuff at least, certainly until ntl come out and say exactly what will happen regarding all that, then, if it looks a poor deal, people will be justified in saying so...on the other hand, if it's a GOOD deal.....

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Nildram's Pay As You Go ADSL offers 2GB top ups at just under £4 a go.

http://www.nildram.co.uk/pdf/payg.pdf

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

NTL are increasing the speeds of the tiers and holding prices at current levels. The only way that this can be seen as bad news is that some users may be concerned that higher uncapped speeds will be taken advantage of by the 24/7 lets max out our connections brigade who could possibly affect the usage of others on their UBR. By imposing caps the aforementioned brigade will moan like hell about them. In other words, caps are the only thing left to be talked about and people will talk about them until they cease to exist, if they ever do.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Very true, and the concerns of those worried about caps should not be dismissed as irrelevant, because they ARE relevant. I just think all sides should hold their fire now until we know the outcome.:D

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

That's my ISP :)

Actually, apart from being weektime daytime only (actually it's 6am-10pm weekdays) the cap also only applies downstream, so my webserver at home is unaffected, and from the end of the month the downstream speed is 2Mb rather than 1Mb. It's not a hard cap either, it's advisory (for now). I'm moving to that when the 2Mb comes out.

Quite a few NTL guys use them, as they're very reliable* and very Unix friendly (they run http://sod.ms). I'm quite happy to pay a bit more for an ISP that knows what it's doing.

* Two recent serious outages notwithstanding, including one this morning. Was fixed by the time I got to work though, as was the last one. They do thorough outage reports plus off-network IRC and phone updates too, plus IPv6, hosting, reverse DNS and as many static IPs as you can eat. Hell, they should give me a month free for this now.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Good network too, even if it is machines running NetBSD :D :

Your link from us appears to be about 2.008194Mb/s

:D

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Fix Smiley :shocked:That comment could be seriously misconstrued. NTL guys use an ISP because the ISP knows what they are doing. Whats that say about NTL (Sorry couldn't resist :D )

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

To me it says that some NTL guys don't live in a NTL cabled area. :)

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

You're so sharp you'll cut yourself. Indeed, not all ntl people are herded into on-net areas :)

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

That's on the roadmap for 2006 isn't it next to world domination? :D

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

So it's not just "coming soon" then?

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

On the argument of subsidising, its a way of life.

Road tax is better value for those who travel hundreds of miles a day and worst value for someone who uses their car rarely, but its life.

Most internet type services work the same way, datacentre's who sell servers and allow 1TB traffic per month would obviously be in a lot of trouble if all their customers were using that kind of traffic but most of their customers use under 200gig, with just a small % using the full allocation, another example.

Why should residental broadband be excluded from this type of marketing? Personally my average usage is approx 30gig/month, I have peaked at 46 gig and some months I have used as low as 8 gig, but I would expect my average usage to go up. In all forms of marketing to gain market share involves having less profitable customers, even some that make a loss, what hasn't been mentioned here and taken into account is what happens if this 5% customers stop reccomending ntl to people and instead bad mouth ntl, the effect is less total customers to ntl and less turnover, the rule of business is to keep all customers happy if possible. I am sure it wouldnt be too hard for ntl to accomodate people who use more traffic at a reasonable price point. The top tier is almost 50% more expensive then the middle tier and it allows 33% more traffic. Giving that high speeds is only truly useful for file transferring you would want the extra traffic to go with it and this is why I think out the 3 tiers the top one stands out by far as the worst value.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Did any of you guys/gals see the "NTL Freedom" dial up/broadband packages being offered for BT Subscribers?
Reason I Ask is, their broadband offering is 512k and has a 5GB per month allowance/cap

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

The thing that I don't understand is the idea some people have that doubling the speed of a tier should automatically double the usage allowance. I subscribe to the idea that doubling speed means that I will get what I want in half the time. I can't see the point in thinking that I have to download twice as much simply because I have the ability to do so.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

I don't believe anybody has said they expect to download twice as much when the speed doubles? What has been said is that people want to continue downloading what they do now.

As to doubling the usage allowance I don't believe we currently have one. We have a usage guideline not an allowance. Obviously we don't yet know wether the figures so far divuldged by NTL regarding the service teirs next year wil be a guideline or a hard cap.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

on the roads you wont find 5% of all road users making 67% use of the road network! and those that use the roads most will pay the most in petrol taxes - the road tax element is a fraction of the cost to the road user.



if the stats are right then these arent less profitable customers - these are customers that are paying the same as everyone else but using 10 times as much. there's no way a set of customers who are taking that much of the service are 'less profitable'.

No service provider wants a minority such as 5% sucking out 67% of the service they offer. see this http://www.staywarm.co.uk/pages/defa... a montly rate note at the bottom "Powergen Staywarm is designed for households that do not use very large amounts of energy, some households may therefore not qualify to join." Also note that some Staywarm customers who are considered 'heavy' users have been forced to leave or pay a higher tarriff.


a drop in the ocean as you still have 95% on board and word of mouth isnt as effective as dropping leaflets through doors offering 3 months free etc...

true but not if 5% are taking up most of your resources. assuming these stats are true then if you get rid of the 5% (50,000 customers) you can replace them with another 500,000 without any network upgrading.

I think the only way to go for high users is making them pay per extra GB above 40GB and only available on the 3mb service. when they start paying it will encourage people to only download what they need.

and the middle tier is 40% more than the low tier but gives you 100% more - so the middle one is the best value. I suspect the top tier will come down to £35 and is priced so highly because they think the people who go for it are willing to pay a premium.


going back to this 'statistic' - 5% use 67%... it could simply be that the 95% is made up of people who hardly use the internet! ie. they just browse for a couple of hours a day. :p:

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Wouldn't it just be a good idea to wait & see what ntl confirm about the new caps/guidlines?

Be grateful for small mercies I say-those of you who have a good BB service from ntl have had a right result, those who don't have that have a choice....

But at the end of the day, (like the original cap scenario), there's really not that much to discuss anymore until ntl make the next announcement IMO. :)

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

You read my mind! :disturbd:

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Therefore, the variable costs associated with these customers also go up 10 times, and so the customers would be less profitable.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

And road tax for the really heavy users (HGV's, coaches etc) that are on the road more of the time is higher, they pay a business level road tax, not a personal road tax.

But dropping these 5% improves life for the other 95% so you get 95% of your customers raving and recommending, not complaining about pings etc.

Someone famous said you can keep most of the people happy most of the time, that is what this will do.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

That will only work when the ntl service actually works better. Getting rid of heavy users won't fix that. I've been very happy with the pricing of my 1.5mb connection, with only a guideline that sometimes i go over, i've never had a problem with speeds, always getting my top download speed when wanted, but the fact remains that the email servers are unreliable, the news servers are mostly unobtainable, and the tech support takes forever to get through to, probably because there are so many other people having problems. :erm:

I don't think i've ever heard of an Ntl customer raving and recommending the Ntl service! I've heard MANY slate it though, and i've seen MANY posting on here about the countless problems they've had, most of which can't be explained away as being the fault of heavy users.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

The trouble these days is that a number of people want the world, and a little bit more, for nothing. They want the biggest slice of the cake but aren't prepared to pay their fair share for it.

There are complaints with NTL about email and newsgroups not being up to scratch and long waits for assistance on the phone. These things could be remedied quite easily if enough money is thrown at them, but where is this money to come from?

NTL have spent a lot of money in recent times in upgrading the network, but how much of this has been spent to ensure that the really heavy users don't impact on the average user? It is easy for a heavy user to say that they never have problems so there is nothing wrong with trying to max out their connection, but they don't know if NTL have spent an extra £8,000 or whatever a UBR card costs to eliminate the impact of their heavy use.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

True, I've given up on news (a lack of time helps here too), and use iweb for email, so don't see the poor mail service. But as a fat pipe to my house they are great.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

I dont see how there's any way to accomodate a 5% user section (if) it uses 67% of the resources. Simply because there's no way these people are going to pay around £250 a month for their usage (10 times £25). I think the answer will be a GB charge over the 40GB allowance which will make these people cut down their usage to a more realistic level - obviously if they want to use 240GB a month and are willing to pay say £100 for the extra bit then everyone's happy but it's most likely that the 'over eaters' will cut down their consumption.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

i think the problem is we don't have any way to measure our usage of the NTL network. Sometimes I download alot of data and other times over a week it will just be my e-mails and check a few news web sites. I don't know what my stats are on the NTL network and if because of the times when i have downloaded alot of data i'm a heavy user or not. If I knew then maybe i could cut back on some of it.

Until we get a way of measuring and informing the users about their usage out attitudes can't change.

Not sure if this has been mentioned before but what's happening with the uploads when these come in. Will that stay the same or get increased as well. I think the upload speeds really need to be looked into as well it's way behind what ADSL offers and doesn't always meet my needs at the moment.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

STOP, STOP, STOP, STOP, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE STOP!!!!!!!

We really are just going round and round and round in circles can't we just find some common ground and meet somewhere in the middle. No one should be using 100GB+ a month but some people do need more than 40GB and you are all just going to agree to disagree. Now lets just sit back and wait and see, nothing is even going to happen for at least six months I would of thought.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

"Coming Soon..."

With NTL that means that what was leading edge when they thought about it is 6 months to 3 years out of date by the time they actually roll it out. Maybe that's the idea behind the prices being so low in that by the time they roll it out, they'll be at the same price level as everyone else ;)

Of course, things may get interesting if NTL & Telewest merge ;)

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

*Sighs*

I'm not contributing to this thread ANY LONGER.

All I see is people complaining, argueing, etc.

Look, NTL are speeding the internet up, it's a good thing, NOW KNOCK IT OFF :(

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Sorry, but some of us are bitter and twisted from experience. Certainly a little cynical. It's something that comes with age I'm afraid :D

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

I can see it happening early 2005 as per their 'statement' simply because this will poach bucket loads of ADSL people. they'll be offering 1mb, 2mb and 3mb for peanuts relative to most ADSL offerings.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

However they have pretty much delivered on the current round of upgrades. Must try harder is now certainly good improvement.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

OK how about they half the present speeds......... Less likely to hit any "Caps"!!

Problem solved! :D :angel:

More speed does not mean you have to download more...... It's just faster.

I am happy with my NTL BB and will still be when it goes from 1.5 to 3mb. :tu:

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

Ok....

In light of anything really actively being discussed here, I am going to close this thread in a while.

It has proved to be nothing but trouble, & has led to no end of squabbles. :(

I'll leave it open for a little while longer so that no screams 'censorship'.....

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

You exaggerating, I am talking about 50-100gig a month, and a GB charge over 40 gig is not the answer because it would make using say 80gig unaffordable to most people.

I am seeing here low usage users not been prepared to compromise they just happy because they are catered for.

"95% of usersonly browse the internet a couple of hours a day"

ahh an isp's perfect customer someone who doesnt use what they pay for, the way I see this is the isp would be happy with people not using their broadband to its potential and anyone who does use it ie. power users they dont want because they less profitable.

This would do nothing to improve quality of service either you wont suddenly see a better contention ratio or anything like that, if usage went down accross the board capacity would simply be cut or the contention ratio would be increased.

Re: [Now Official] More ntl speed changes
 

I think Neil is right, there is nothing new being discussed in here now and it does seem to have caused a bit of trouble over the last day or two. Since this is my topic I am now closing it. When more information is made available about the new services, we will open a new topic.