Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Can I ask if Ireland is also been Upgraded in speed? I did search but could not find anything

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

The lowest amount that I have had since Sep 2004 has been 87MB in a 24Hr period.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Me, I'm happy to wait for my free 2Meg .... 30Gig Download limit .... well ok, not been a problem before .... so why will it now :D

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Listening to which customers precisely? A tiny minority who want to max out their connections every day, just because they can?

I can assure you that the vast majority of broadband customers are not remotely concerned by any of the caps because most of them are set at a ridiculously high level that the average user would never go near.

It needs to be remembered that members of this forum constitute, in blunt terms, an insignificant minority of ntl customers. The company has well over a million broadband customers. How many ntl broadband customers are there on this site?

Those that think half a dozen people on a webforum cancelling their services because they want to exceed 40gb a day is going to worry ntl need to get back down to earth...and quick.

This isn't intended to be rude, it's just the reality of the situation.

If less people ran their pirated CD-burning businesses on their residential broadband connections, the whole cap thing would probably never have been an issue.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Okay, I'll reword it. They need to ask their customers. Smarty pants.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Market research is done all the time, and most people aren't bothered.

I happen to personally think the 3gb one on the 1mb service is possibly a bit tight, but then even that isn't being objected to by the majority. And of course at that level you aren't forced onto it anyway.

People would be surprised just how many people say '300k is more than enough for me'. It's designed as an entry level service. I personally think it should be left open to new customers as well as just existing ones.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Doesn't anyone stop to think that NTL have carefully studied the internet usage of their customers before deciding on the caps? They know what their customers are using both in terms of volume and type of usage. They know how many customers are likely to be affected by the caps. They are not commencing a self destruction exercise which some on here think they are. Some people think that everyone at NTL is a fool and the company is incapable of making an intelligent business decision. There are fools, yes, but most of them are posting crap on here and by that I don't mean NTL employees.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

The fact of the matter is .... It's a very small minority that exceed the limits on a regular basis, and if they are doing it regularly, then why should the other customers in their area suffer because of it.

In this day and age, we all have a choice. IMO if those that regularly exceed the cap limits leave, then good, it makes my life easier as a bona fide customer, and it maybe makes them search for and find something that is more appropriate for their usage.

So if you don't like the offers on the table because you won't be able to abuse the system quite so easily (ahh diddums), the please leave, I mean it, please. There are over 800,000 of us that will have an easier life if you do.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

People have enough to worry about without having to watch their and their families bandwidth usage. The moment people start getting put down to 56k(if that is the case) or disconnected they'll leave NTL completely.
Explanation : It's damn easy to go over 30gig usage, a bit of virus infection here, a trojan or two there, spyware, kids downloading on peer to peer networks etc etc and then legitimate usage on top of that. When you have thousands of families who don't even understand the concept of a bit or byte how the hell are you going to get them to monitor their usage especially when you have many families now with networks, wired or wireless(as promoted by NTL ho ho) with PC's in kids bedrooms.
Are NTL losing money on broadband? If not then they should quit being greedy before their Indian tech support gets inundated with lots of zero-tech people complaining that their network sucks because they're getting crappy download speeds. This hasn't been thought through. If NTL can monitor bandwidth or will be able to shortly then they should only target the leeches that are downloading multiple gigs a day and leave everyone else to pay their monthly bills and not have to scream at the kids for using the PC too much. Even if people don't hit the caps, the worry of it is enough for them to stuff the service altogether, hell maybe we might be the first major economy in the world to see a decrease in broadband usage.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

I regularly visit people on NTL cable who simply do not have a clue. They have got 2 hopes of keeping an eye on there usage Bob hope and no hope, the first a lot of people will know about it is when the connection suddenly drops to a crawl. I sometimes not all the time go over the limit last month i hit over 30 gig and no i am not running a pirate cd business either. The bottom line is i have more than 1 comp connected (family) Some people will genuinely require higher usage levels quite legally, i dont see much provision made for such people at this time.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

It's not damn easy to go over 30Gb a month. Don't blame the kids for excessive and illegal use, control them. Do you let them have free reign with your telephone, they may be racking up massive bills calling their friends mobiles. Viruses and trojans are rarely if ever going to result in massive regular bandwidth consumption. Most things in life have to be monitored, gas, electricity, water, petrol, telephone, credit card usage, cash spent, etc. etc. so why not internet usage. The internet is not free and users have to pay the cost of using it. If you want unlimited internet access on the cheap then QOS will suffer. If you want a decent service then you will eventually have to pay a much higher price or face usage restrictions.
__________________

The old chestnut of multi PC homes. Why should a single user subsidise the multi user household? If you buy a cake you can eat it yourself or share it. If you are going to share it the shop will not give you more than one cake for the same price you each have a smaller piece.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

It aint that difficult either with my comp and the kids on there on line gaming etc etc, the list is endless are you saying that because i sometimes hit over 30 gig i must automatically be participating in illegal activity? Just a tadge short sighted and presumptious me thinks. I know people who hammer there cable 24/7 and i do agree with capping them but to penalise the majority for the minority is a bit much IMO. I Myself tend to deal a lot with graphic art etc etc and that does go through some bandwidth, so i am to be capped for indulging in something i enjoy, on the presumption i must be breaking the law.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Sorry, but if you read my post the part you have quoted is my response to Horace, not yourself so I was not being presumptious about your use. In answer to your post I was suggesting that single users should not have to subsidise multi PC homes.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Just a word from this very middle aged newbie, who has just gone on to the lowest 300k service from NTL. from a regular the dial up service.

I down loaded one of the many measuring tools mentioned and ran it for 48 hours.

Conclusion for me?

If you are on the 300k service don`t touch the speed increase with it`s cap while you still have the option to remain where you are!!

A very ordinary for me use gave me a figure of 0.831GB over the two days, at a faster sevice for sure than dialup but overall not much different in total to normal dial up use, it just happend faster.

We are not talking exoctic stuff here, just E mail, sending photo`s to relitives, normal windows and other sofwear updates, a little streaming radio, downloading a couple of music tunes, installed computer stuff doing routine updates and regular forum visits combined with the odd post.

Just the same pattern of use I used with dial up!!

With a 3 GB cap I would die in about 7 days!!

Hippo

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

I've been monitoring mine too - 1.2GB on two days, and that's on 750K - nothing extra special downloaded, just plain browsing, with a couple of streaming movie browsers thrown in....

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

In that case my appologies to you :tu: I still fee that NTL are going to have a few problems with this one i personally wouldnt trust NTL to monitor my usage and get it right, they had great difficulty getting my phone bill right some months. At the end of the day we shall hve to wait and see, and take it from there.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

ntl are doing bad, blueyonders customers laughing they happy on 4Mb no limit and ukonline... the path i chose due to not being able to go with yonder... 2Mb unmeterd(29.99) i am on and its great speeds by the time all ntl reach 1/2/3Mb ill be on 8Mb laughing. cap. 500GB which is plenty leaving ntl was a good thing,plus with ukonline if you sign up and put another members name say they told you about it , then you both geta free month :) how good is that rewarding customers for just signing up with a free month invite enough u got loads of time free, check it out see how good they are.

i have a monitor going to see how much i use and even when i do nothing its downloading an duploading no way are ntls caps enough, though i see alot worse. isps with 15GB cap and if you go over then your speed gets dropped to 64kb so ntl arent the worse isp but the way its going its definatly in the top 10 worse for bad cap limits other then that ntl are fine total so far 20GB and thats for 3 days i would never have stuck to the limit though with all the heavy downloaders gone it gonna be good for the rest of you left on ntl.... good luck with it :angel: have fun complaining about sucky speeds and caps. *lurks watching*:PP:

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

.
I have no children here to control, but I do know families where the parents work and can't sit over their children 24/7 to watch how much they download, even if they knew how to monitor their usage.
When using a PC it's not particularly obvious that someone is downloading gigs worth of movies in the background when they're playing a game or whatever, remember, we live in a society where the youngest members of a family are often far more tech savvy than their bill paying parents. Do a survey of NTL customers and find out how many know what task manager is or how many megabytes are in a gigabyte.
I guess NTL want superfit parents running back and forward checking on their childrens usage by using bandwidth monitoring software with the parents pointing out what they can and can't download, calculator in hand. You really don't have a clue and need to move into the real world.
Because NTL amongst other companies grew big and fat from people using their internet in an unrestricted environment.First the carrot, now the stick. For the most part you don't find people watching the clock when using the net, we grew out of that when broadband became an affordable possiblilty and left 56k behind, now NTL want the stopwatch to start ticking again. Maybe CUT should restart their campaigning.

I don't want an unlimited service, but I do want NTL to survive as a company. If it's making money now with all those nasty leeching pirates selling DVD's and XBox games why change things, hell scrap the speed upgrades and leave the soft caps as they are.Then put the monitoring in place and boot the 200gig per month downloaders. Problem is, NTL want headline grabbing speeds to attract people to cable away from DSL(remember to read the small print guys!) but don't want to finance the necessary network upgrades.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

and pointing out that i'm not on topic is on topic is it? i was replying to someone who responded to my post as no doubt you will to this.

not on topic either but neither will be my reply to you next load of drivel.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

I predict that a lot of customers will be choosing the 2mb product because the price difference of the 3mb option is too high and thus either the 3mb product will be increased to 4mb or the price will be dropped.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Talking about on topic...I thought the Cap thread was like ---> Over there somewhere? Anyhow Ian post there mentioned Telepohone etc - well id like to reply to this if I may.

Water and Sewerage - i dont montior that very much, dont egt some letter telling me ive used too much. Sky - again, pay and watch as much or as little as I require. Telephones, I have a online web page where i can check my Bill and so forth to see how much it has been hammered of late. End of the day ist called progress, remember when cars could only reach astaggering 30mph?? now they can like do over 200. I would laso like to pull out the old Dial up card if i may - if the price was cheap enough per month, then there is no reason why a Lot of people (the general masses then) could not survive month after month on that but the companies are pricing the dial up close to a broadband connection to try and force people onto it - simple why cos it must cost a lot more for racks of 56k Modems then it does to provide a ADSl/CM connetion.

My last and final point if I may be so kind - Unless NTL (or BT for that matter, hell anyone) provide some way for the end user to check there useage, then its gonna be hard for a lot of us to check how much they have used up as it were. a Bandwidth program is of no use to me - im on a network, connected via a router so all traffic even to my other machines will rack up that number.. Is there any news of such a thing been put in? I cannot see how they can make people stick to this cap unless they provide some sort of Login- check your useage kinda thing !!

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

that's cos either you're on a water meter where you pay for what you consume and excrete or you pay water rates where you pay a fixed cost.

that's cos there is no different cost to sky if you want 0 hours a month or max out your connection and watch sky 24 hours a day.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Just wondering why have NTL decided to put the 2 and 3mb on the same cap level? Doesn't seem to make much sense seeing as the 3mb customers are paying a lot more than someone on 2mb, NTL I think are going to see a lot of people downgrading to the lower speeds - but then again when has good commercial business sense ever been part of NTL's vocab?

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

The Three Laws of NTL (or the NTL definition of commercial business sense)

1. the ability or werewithall to p*** off as many customers as possible without giving out any information (telephone ping-pong being a good example)
2. being able to make 'sound' (sic) business decisions whilst still adhering to point 1
3. ignoring any customer/staff feedback whilst still adhering to the previous two points

there could be many more but these spring to mind

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

OK people this thread has been reported for the amount of bickering going on - let's keep it calm please.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Just spotted this news on the PCPro site:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/69272/nt...nd-speeds.html

It appears to have been copied word for word from this site - even down to using the site's name - are they allowed to do this?

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

The definition of both ntl and Telewest at the moment:

Technology based companies owned and beholden to venture capitalists whose primary concern is as good a return as possible on their investments.

Now that Telewest's pre-bankruptcy upgrades have been pretty much used sorry to say that Telewest will be in the same kind of boat as ntl now.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

I can think of 3 good reasons. 33% extra gbs (40gbs not 30gbs). 50% more d/l speed (great if you are running a LAN, which many people do). 50% more u/l speed (great for hosting games like Halo 2 and for uploading data). All of which are reasons i will be upgrading to the top tier service.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

See plusnet are going to go with 8Mb broadband from April at £14.99, at least their caps are realistic, time dependant but useable on a monthly figure not a 1gb a day cap period.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/16/bt_plusnet/

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Agreed. We are dealing with Venture Capitalists where I work. They operate quite simply. You do what they demand (usually make as much money as possible). If you don't, then they pull their funding (which in the case of NTL is in the order of Billions) and you have to pay them back. If that happens, bye bye company.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Slightly different in ntl and Telewest's case - these people aren't funding, they actually own the company.

Figures below taken from a post regarding potential mergers:

NTL Inc

WR Huff Personal Holding 11,077,692 12.64%

WR Huff Asset Management Holding 10,448,530 11.92%

W R Huff total assets in NTL Inc = 21,526,222 shares = 24.56% of share capital.

FMR Corporation (Fidelity Management & Research Corp) 10,846,817 12.37%
Fidelity International Ltd (Bermuda) 2,169,814 2.48%

Fidelity Corp / Int Ltd NTL Inc holding = 13,016,631 shares, 14.85% of share capital

Franklin Resources, Inc 7,756,409 shares, 8.85% of share capital
Oaktree Capital Management, LLC 7,364,235 shares, 8.4% of share capital

Total Shares Outstanding 87,657,000

W R Huff, Fidelity, Franklin Resources and Oaktree Cap. Mgmt own 56.66% of NTL Inc.

Telewest Global Inc

HUFF, WILLIAM R. Personal Holding 45,022,199 18.38%
HUFF (W.R.) Asset Management Co., L.L.C. 42,772,619 17.46%

W R HUFF total holding in Telewest = 87,794,818 shares = 35.84% of share capital.

FMR Corporation (Fidelity Management & Research Corp) 29,830,504 12.18%
Fidelity International Ltd (Bermuda) 6,919,426 2.82%

Fidelity Corp / Int Ltd Telewest Global holding = 36,749,930 shares, 15.00% of share capital.

Franklin Resources, Inc 22,621,503 9.23 $262,861,857 30-Sep-04

Oaktree Capital Management, LLC 14,131,785 5.77 $164,211,337 30-Sep-04

Shares Outstanding 245,000,000

W R Huff and Fidelity just between the two of them own 50.84% of Telewest Global Inc.

Franklin and Oaktree Cap Mgmt's shares make this combined ownership 65.84%

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

So it's doubly important that NTL or Telewest keep them happy..

Modem Upgrade
 

I still have the old surfboard modem supplied by NTL must say it as served me well but getting on for four years old or more now. With all the new speed increases coming our way will it beable to cope ? Do NTL have any plans to upgrade this modem at any point or do I have to wait till it is fried befor I get a new one ? Anyone know the expected life span of this model ?

Re: Modem Upgrade
 

The surfboard will handle the new speeds, don't worry. There is no need to upgrade them until they fail.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Not a matter of keeping them happy, they own the companies so can keep themselves happy.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

The cap levels quoted are just a reiteration of the present soft cap which will continue as a soft cap for a while after the speed upgrades have been implemented. Hard caps will follow not too long afterwards which will be different but we will have to wait and see what those hard caps will be and what happens when you reach them. Some 3Mb to be customers will drop to 2Mb to save money but the really heavy downloaders will probably stick with the 3Mb in an effort to download even more of the internet. My own feeling is that after the speed increases and whilst the caps are still soft NTL may start sending out letters to the very heavy users who have not moderated their activities.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

What would NTL consider heavy use before the letters and the caps come in? I must say that as it is at the moment i have never received anything from NTL no matter what i downloaded.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

It is a parents duty to educate their children and teach them what is right and what is wrong. If you have never had children you are not speaking from experience. I have had children and do know what I am talking about. It is possible for children to misuse the telephone and run up bills which can be astronomical at the side of what a broadband bill is. The thing there is that you won't know about the massive bill until it pops through your letterbox. It is easier to monitor broadband usage than it is telephone usage. If the kids use up your broadband allowance then you may have the inconvenience of having a lower speed for a few days or could be weeks but that is livable with unlike a telephone bill which has to be paid. I do live in the real world and have more of a clue than you seem to have.


I think that statement illustrates just who has a clue and who hasn't. NTL has not grown big and fat, quite the opposite, it is riddled with debt. You have to realise that customers have to pay the cost of the service that they are using and a little bit more to provide an income to the people who have invested in the company. Unfortunately some users regard an unlimited service as a licence to use as much of it as they can and refuse to voluntarily moderate their usage to the usage pattern that the price is modelled on so that the service can continue to operate at the cheap price that it is.



Is NTL making money now and if it is, is it making enough to finance network upgrades and maintenance? Whether it is or not, NTL is still spending money upgrading the network. Most NTL customers have a usage pattern that is within the level of the caps and will welcome the upgrade in speeds. Faster speeds don't mean that you have to download more.
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I would say anything that is in excess of their present soft caps is considered heavy use. Letters may not have been sent out in the past but I think they may be in the future. A lot may depend on how customers usage alters with the new speeds. NTL may have plans to cater for the heavier user, watch these forums as any details will probably be seen on here first.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

A new price plan for heavier users seems like a good idea to me i wouldnt object to paying a higher price for higher usage, this would be one way i would be able to stay with NTL for my ISP. :disturbd:

Ntl Broadband Upgrade
 

Hi all
having major problems with NTL in that trying to upgrade from 300k to 750 they tell me they cant find my sabs account without the account they cant upgrade my speed. They sent me 2 new install disks with new pin numbers but it wont let me generate an account as it says the mac address on the modem is already registered :mad:

Re: Ntl Broadband Upgrade
 

:welcome:
I would start a new thread on this problem if I were you, it is a specific problem and will get lost in the noise of this thread, someone like Debsy will probably sort this out in a heartbeat.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

2 things.

1 - Wannaddoo see a massive consumer burst after upgradng speeds with caps, has anyone seen the tv advert? There is no mention of a cap and if there is its in small print and I didne see it probably along with millions of others. It is the same old story it is assumed if the customer doesnt know about it then they agree with it this is simply not true. It is one of those things that work well at first then when people start seeing the downfalls then the consequences will happen.

2 - If the same group of people own both ntl and telewest how can ntl use the excuse ntl is been run like this because the owners demand it, wouldnt telewest be run the same way if that was the case? or have they simply demanded telewest is run for benefit of consumers and ntl is run for benefit of profits.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

If Ignition is to be believed, Telewest are currently reaping the benefits of a huge upgrading program they carried out before they nearly went bust. At some point, they won't have the ability to upgrade speeds any further, so will be in a similar position to NTL.

So, yes, I do think that although Telewest customers appear to have a better deal at the moment, that will stop.
__________________

This is offtopic, but bearing in mind the content of some Internet sites, I would hope that parents DO monitor how much (and what) their kids are downloading.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

I am quiet happy with the 30gig a month download limit but only if this is 30gig a month and not done on a gig a day basis. If my connection drops to 57k on any one day I think I'll be off. Will NTL be offering any tools to monitor ones own usesage ? I am not very happy about the news of the drop to 57k if this is true. I think the best solution all round would have been to charge a small amount for any usesage over your allowance. ;) :( :confused:

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

I'm currently on the 750k silver package. when the speeds change will i be able to "downgrade" to the bronze package then go up to 1 meg on that package ?? :rolleyes:

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

1 - Is made very clear by Wanadoo here in their signup pages: http://wanadoo.co.uk/time/broadbanda...nternet_access

If it weren't present and duly noted on the advertisements the ASA would have received complaints, ISPs love biatching at it each other over their ads and report one another at the drop of a hat.

2 - Telewest had (notice use of had) spare capacity, which was how they could implement their speed increases so quickly. Most of this is now gone so they have to spend serious money as ntl have had to to finance any more speed increases rather than getting them free or at very little cost.
__________________

Yup, with a lower usage allowance, but if that usage allowance suits you go for it. Weird seeing someone complain about the idea of saving money.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Regarding needing a replacement modem in order to get the Upgrade (2MB). I have a standard NTL 200 Cable Modem, is this ok or will I need an upgrade?

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

All Stand Alone Cable Modems (SACMs) on the ntl network will be able to handle the current round of upgrades without an upgrade. This includes the ntl 200. :)

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Answered lots already - no you are fine :)

Moderator types, any chance this thread could be closed and another opened due to the insane length of this thread now?

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Thanks, Im new so wasn't sure!

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Please continue here

This one is closed