Re: giganews (usenet)
 

hmm.

Thats an assumption 10mbit is full of light users. ;)

3 people in my family alone are on 10mbit and use way more then I do, on 30mbit I am using under 30 gig month, and they using over 100 gig easily on 10mbit with torrents. One of them also has kids so they will be using bandwidth as well.

10mbit is quite capable and is still double the speed of the average adsl connection, even using it half the time will push 1.5tb.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

Whilst it might have come down in price lately, when i switched to the highest available, each time the cost was considerably MORE than any of their competitors, for what is now sub standard service, and pretty much on a par with the slower offerings from other suppliers.... plus i would not have to deal with thick f*****s in the off shore "tech support" !!

If early adopters are prepaired to pay the premiums for that faster service, don't cut your own throats by forcing them elsewhere.

As for the cheaper tariffs being the cash cows, i don't see it, they are not paying more per mb or whatever, because on their reduced speed service they can't shift that sort of volume, it is the sheer number of those users that makes the difference, and for what they are paying, it barely covers the install/kit/maintenance costs.

The early adopters of the top tier packages are the ones that get little or no discounts half the time, whereas the lower tarifs are discounted up the ying-yang to remain competitive with the other ISP's in the mass market speed sections.


EDIT:
LoL Chrysalis just said what i was trying to, in less words and it came across better, hahaha

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

Still the wrong way round.

Don't think 10mb are paying more per mb?

10mb = £21 = £2.10 per mb
30mb = £28.5 = £1.28 per mb
50mb = £35 = £0.70 per mb
100mb = £45 = £0.45 per mb.

10mb customers are paying three times more per mb than you are.

Early adopters may pay more for higher services but those higher services still cost far less per unit service than the existing slower services. Even when 50mb came out it was only £45, yet when compared to 10mb it should be over £100. 50mb has droppped a third off it's price whereas 10mb has had a price rise. Discounted up to the ying-yang my ass.

The vast majority of users are still on 10mb and the vast majority of them download less than 45GB a month, probably less than 10 on average. If 50mb was priced fairly you should be downloading no more than a 16GB a month download allowance on 50mb.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

One way I gauge the resource commands of the bottom tier is to realise how congested legacy is in my area compared to overlay, completely overloaded by 10mbit customers.

Of course raw price per mbit is indeed better value on the higher tiers, but these prices take into account usage doesnt increase in proportion of the burst speed, so 50mbit users arent using 5x the average of 10mbit.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

Err Chrys how exactly can you guage the resource demands of the bottom tier when you don't know how many modems are connected to the port?

It might be more congested because people are hammering it, or it might be because there's far too many modems there - you don't know.

---------- Post added at 12:39 ---------- Previous post was at 12:35 ----------

What he said. The comments about the discounted packages don't hold true either given the amount of people on 20, 30 or 50Mb who apparently have discounted packages and negotiated free upgrades.

Granny who pays her bill on time each month and checks her email every so often is still paying the bills for Mr News Freak to download his hundreds of GB a month and pay not much more.

Again, if you feel you are being robbed and your subscription is subsidising others perhaps going to a pay per GB system would be better? Only pay for what you use, no more.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

ignition I mean the demand on the infrastructure from 10mbit tier customers as a whole, if the port these customers are on is overwhelmed then its evident that the demand is more than VM are able/willing to spend on. So in the case of this argument its ultimately irrelevant how many customers are on the port. I would say its a case of VM in my area of underestimating the costs of supplying a 10mbit service.

I expect the average usage per customer on 50mbit tier is nowhere near 5 times the average usage of a 10mbit customer.

Another thing that is hardly ever taken into account on these discussions in profit margin.

Lets take an example.

ISP has baseline costs of £10 month whatever the speed, then a nomimal increase in costs depending on service supplied.

So lets say.

10mbit sold for £12 month with £10 base cost= £2 profit month per customer.
20mbit sold for £17 a month with £10 base cost and extra £1 cost, so £6 on average profit per customer.
30mbit sold for £25 month with £10 base cost and extra £2 cost, £13 profit per customer.

I see this argument with adsl providers also, people who claim automatically that low users on bottom packages are more profiteable than premium services, but forgetting the margins are very low on base packages. The saving grace for the lower tier's is the customer volume, I have no doubt per customer VM make less profit than on the top tiers.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

Chrys it's very relevant how many customers are on the port - that's what decides what most of the costs per customer are on a cable network as most of the costs are fixed infrastructure costs which have to be spread between a cohort of customers.

Spend 10k on a line card and optics for 200 customers you've rather higher 'fixed' costs per customer than spreading it between 500 - this is what the economics are based on as far as node sizes and service groups go.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

I know that, but its logical to assume a highly utilised port means the resource cost for those using it is high as they using it a lot. So in terms of cost I am simply looking at port utilisation.

If VM stick 100 or 400 users on a port, it still costs the same to run that port. So VM in my area have seemingly capped costs for 10mbit users by over contending the port (hence the service only barely useable).

My main point been is tho, there is an assumption that if someone is on a higher tier they are probably a heavier user, when that wont always be the case.

I think it would be daft to say I am less profitable to VM than my 2 sisters as I am on a higher tier package paying more money and use less bandwidth. Even worse both my sisters only tend to use their broadband at peak, so whatever they are using is 90% in peak hours when capacity is most stressed.

One thing I am happy about with VM is they still charge a premium for burst speed and thats how it should be, not the farce thats in the adsl market.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

that i think is the point, you are rightly or wrongly assuming that the higher teir users are always downloading/using that bandwidth, when in reality many are not, and are paying for the convenience of having the speed when they want it..... only to be capped, shapped and generally crippled,

as for the discounts, i would put money on that there are likely more people on 10mb connections that have a huge discount based on tv and phone joint packages (i am actually fed up with the constant phone calls regarding tv packages, so much so that i phoned the uk complaints team and told them if they didn't stop bugging me, i'd take both phones and the multiple packages on those and the BB Internet elsewhere, seems to have done the trick) ... i would hazard there are more people on the higher tiers that only have BB with them.

BT are about to hit the same problem... they are force feeding us infinity adverts right now, touting how great the 3 times speed increase is (very cleverly not actually giving you any idea of the speed you will get, just estimated 3x increase on current...... well 3x crap is still crap lol) ..... and pushing the wonderful HD content you can watch through your new connection....... I'LL GIVE IT 6 MONTHS BEFORE THEY HIT A PROBLEM, if they don't start shaping and capping from the word go !

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

Indeed, however you are spreading that cost between 100 or 400 sources of income - you've contradicted yourself a bit between the two paragraphs there.

Not always, I would hope that's very obvious, but mostly. There will be the odd leecher who pays as little as possible and downloads half the Internet but for the most part impatience gets the better of people or STM or a similar policy annoys them pushing them to higher speeds.

Regardless it's peak usage that matters - ask VM for their figures across their tiers if you still have questions they should answer them. There will, of course, be exceptions.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

They already are hitting problems ;) people getting sub 20mbit during peak on FTTC is not unusual. Also not too surprising given its using BT wholesale (which is very high cost for bandwidth) , they are also traffic shaping on infinity although I dont know the exact specifics other than the FUP is higher so throttling for heavy use kicks in later but p2p etc. will be throttled at peak like their adsl.

---------- Post added at 10:40 ---------- Previous post was at 10:38 ----------

I am never good at wording things :) but I meant a resource cost, ie the true demand per customer on unrestricted resources, is why I didnt say actual cost as I am aware VM can and do control costs by capping capacity. Ultimately 10mbit on VM is poorer value for money especially when considering its also contended higher on legacy (based on figures you provided before in an old thread).

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

Being contended higher means less bandwidth per customer proportionately being provided, so not only don't they get their fair share of resource compared with the other tiers they actually get less.

Someone has to pay the bills - let's hear it for granny paying full price and using single figures GB a month.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

I know this thread is old, but why is this argument even here?

The issue isn't with who is downloading and what is being downloaded its simple case of infrastructure and virgin top the bill as far as their backbone is concerned. Virgin, BT and others aren't investing any where near what the should be in their infrastructure to allow for the increase in download speeds. It is a simple fact, if people are willing to pay a substantial price for an Internet connection with a set speed then they should be entitled to use that speed for what ever they want providing its legal. Virgin and other companies are in competition for the speed that they can offer.

Virgin are currently testing 200 meg connections and have rolled out 100 meg to the majority of its users however their backbone realistically cannot support this upgrade, financially virgin probably cant afford the speed they are offering, as this would mean what they pay for their tier 1 connectivity would be too great, so they throttle, block or restrict connections to networks that can provide a source of illegal content, thus preventing them for being charged excessive amounts for their own traffic.

So rather blaming each other why not look at the companies that are providing internet services, BT is often mistaken for being a tier 1 provider and last time I checked they use sprint, global crossing and level 3 as their tier 1 providers, so even BT havent got the connectivity and have to pay for internet access, hence their throtteling techniques.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

They stopped doing that in April and are into 1.5Ghz tests now.