Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Just as an FYI the Advertising Standards Agency have published a report on the advertising of broadband services in terms of the speeds that operators are allowed to advertise and use of 'Unlimited'.

The advertising of speeds doesn't affect VM, however the 'unlimited' section does, and basically the Detrimental Usage Policy is against those rules, so has to change or 'unlimited' has to go from the advertising by April 2012.

Other plans afoot so all good.

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Great now we'll get crap liken"all you can eat data"

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Unfortunately I think your optimism that VM will drop it's unlimited broadband claim, or it's traffic management policies is unfounded.

You bold the term "suspension of service", yet do not highlight the equally key "legitimate user". I suspect VM would argue they don't just suspend a service. They've warned the user before hand that their use is detrimental and thus would rendered the user as "not legitimate". Regrettably the VM AUP can probably stay within this new Code of Practice :(

STM (speed throttling) might however be a little less clear cut. I suspect the lawyers will have to argue over what level of speed restriction is "moderate".

Personally I have always thought the use of the term "unlimited" to describe broadband services was misplaced and incorrect ever since way back in the days of ntl they first introduced their "cap" and yet somehow, because broadband was an always on service compared to the dial up prevalanet back then the industry has been able to argue unlimited simply meant "always available in some form". This new Code of Practice is a missed opportunity to provide proper laymans easily understood English classifications to broadband services and advertising.

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Mmmm seem to be a few words in the policy open to interpretation.

For example : 'Provider-imposed limitations that affect the speed or usage of the service are moderate only and are clearly explained'

Who defines what moderate is ?

One persons moderate is anothers severe.

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

The ASA define what moderate is.

I get you Rob but there's no real avoidance here - if a customer is 'illegitimate' they shouldn't be on the service to begin with and should be summarily disconnected so difficult to weasel out that way :)

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

this is going to be on watchdog (13/10/2011 8pm).

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Just set my tivo for this, should be interesting which direction they take it to sensationalise it to there best effect. ;)


I wonder if the outcome of this will be to force VM to say what level its detrimental user policy kicks in at, If it does then i would feel you cannot then say your unlimited :shrug:.

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Surely STM is suspension of service. If you pay for 30 meg and you get your speed dropped to 6 meg then your 30 meg service is suspended until the STM is lifted

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

I would agree, but the people at VM so far haven't otherwise they'd have had to drop "unlimited" from advertising years ago.

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

So do I. Vomit lay spun!! Virginmedias play a pun!!!

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

VM are certainly not the worst in the "unlimited" scandal. I vaguely recall seeing somebody complaining on a forum that their "unlimited" deal turned out to have a 40GB cap - I don't recall which ISP or what the penalty was for exceeding it though.

I can't see VM altering either the STM or the contractual right to tell heavy users to sling their hook because it would either lead to higher cost or more widespread abysmal performance so I guess it will be the unlimited that goes but no doubt replaced with virtually unlimited or whatever better BS the marketing twonks come up with.

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

in the Brighton area we have very slow and intermittant service !apparently it wont be fixed until 18th November, so Virgin are still advertising fast speeds but not supplying them ; numerous calls but what a waste of time it is only cancelation team that takes any notice!!!

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Watchdog :confused:

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Care to explain for those that have not watched. .

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Nothing, few folk complained about trivial things

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

So in other words nothing for some to get there teeth into :LOL:

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

No TiVo bashing and to mention of FTP lololol

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Ann Robinson said at the end of the last episode prior to tonights that they will basically do a report on both VM and Sky claiming "unlimited" services. I thought it would of been more in depth but was literally about a couple of cock ups to peoples services.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/watchdog/...ky_virgin.html

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Or they did not have the dirt to dig up on it in the first place, Watchdog can sometimes remind me of a tabloid comic trying its damndest to sensationalise its output. :rolleyes:

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

well seems detrememntal use has ended according to a post made by a member of staff on the forums on the 11th..

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/.../758779/page/3

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Excellent news.

However there has to be a reason why they have done this. That reason will no doubt rise it's ugly head at some point soon.

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

i reckon they will bring in harsher traffic management measures.

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

To be honest i would not like to bet against you on that.

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Something like if you download over 1tb you get throttled by 75% till next month?

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

More like if you use your connection for anything other than mail and surfing we will restrict you. :LOL:

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

I hope they throttle heavy downloaders at peak times.

For example on lets say 50mb if you download more than say 20GB at peak time ur throttled by 75% for 5hrs.

Also a monthly download limit would be food on the packages.
Again for example lets say on 50mb if you download more than 500GB in a month ur throttled by 75%.

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Just came across this thread, excellent news, thank you for that! Has there been a more official statement since that post, maybe on VM's website? As a lucky recipient of the letter last year, I would have appreciated another letter telling me that the policy is ending/has ended. I guess that's too much to hope for though, since they will not want people to know about it.

Or will it only become official in 2012?

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

But that's what I don't get, it is unlimited whereas BT Total Broadband isn't. Regardless of whether they slow internet speeds down at peak times or not, they still give you internet access with no usage limit whereas BT do and charge you for going over that limit.

So Virgin Media will definately find loopholes around this,

The worst one is Vodafone and Virgin Mobile advertising there 'Unlimited' free same network calls. It blatently not! its 2000 vodafone to vodafone minutes and same with Virgin Mobile.

3 has toned down the use of the 'unlimited' phrase and advertises its offerings properly, it used to say unlimited texts, now it tells you how many texts you get same with the 3 to 3 calls and data usage. It's been like this for about a year.

The other one was free cable to cable calls with NTL,Telewest,Cable and Wireless,Cable London and Eurobell. They still charged you a call connection fee! So making 10 calls in an evening would cost up to 60p! Over 10 days that's £6 and over a month it's around £18. So much for free calls!

And the best one of all time, Get UNLIMITED calls with Talk UNLIMITED, BT calls it BT Anytime Calls formerly BT Together Option 3 as they probably think like I do. Telewest was the first to launch this round 2001/2002 and it truly was unlimited even after 59 minutes of a call.

The reason why it was scrapped was because the billing system couldn't cope, but i've been told that since both NTL and Telewest merged they now use a system called Icoms and there is now no longer any need for all that hang up after 59 minutes crap, they should put it back to how it was!

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Not on their unlimited packages, they never have charged overages for them they previously throttled after hitting a certain limit. This limit was removed in April of this year and BT rely purely on traffic shaping.

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Hmm was keeping to downloading 9pm to 9am, when i first heard about the letter thingy but now there's no danger of a letter, im filling my boots while i can.....

I pay £42 a month for my internet, and for that amount you should be able to use it whenever you want for whatever YOU want to.

The removal of the word unlimited, not sure on that one, but having a limit on data each month would be the worst thing they could do in my opinion.

The comcast 100mb download speed and 300gb cap a month is an absolute joke if that kind of [Mod Edit] ever started here i would cancel asap as i think many others would

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

It entirely depends what you do with your connection of course as to how inconvenient, or otherwise, a bit cap is.

If ISPs en masse started capping there may be a struggle for those downloading a ton to find places to go. It will be interesting to see what ISPs do in response to the new regulations.

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

IMO what they should do is drop the unlimited claim. Of course they probably won't be doing that - my guess is that like BT they'll rely on shaping and the "upto" so you can't claim that limiting P2P and NNTP to speeds only slightly better than dialup is in fact a limited service. The problem with that is they can't or at least don't catch all heavy usage.

Maybe they'll go for something like a more gradual STM where speed reduces as the bits mount up. I think I may have already seen something like this but as my area is awaiting a fix as it's oversubscribed it's difficult to decide just why speeds have gone down the toilet.

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

300Gb is a lot of data! They also want each household to purchase this broadband product, imagine if you started reselling it to your neighbours via wifi, if it was unlimited you would get away with it, by capping it, you are likely to keep it to yourself and not share it! I don't always believe that whole traffic management thing is done to stop an overload of traffic, why not just create more bandwith? They don't seem to have a problem with Businesses

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Businesses pay a lot more than consumers (he says as someone who buys 100Mb and 1Gb links...).

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Never had a month where i do less than 1.7 tb!!!!.

But at the end of the day that's why i pay £42 per month!

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Geez, that's a lot of porn.

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Never have any speed issues with my connection either always get 51.4mb night or day.....

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

You're in for some fun when traffic management version 2 kicks in, being based around both congestion and personal usage. :)

You shouldn't be paying £42/month though, should be £25. Well it should be more like £420/month but that's another story!

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Is that speculation i hear???

as that's all that seems to be around at the moment, nothing concrete..

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

1.7tb?

Dear sweet merciful biscuits. What *are* you pulling down? I'd presume whole series and films, but when would you ever get time to watch it all? I've always thought I used quite a lot of bandwidth and I rarely get over 120Gb a month.

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Nope. Details to be confirmed but the overall scheme is potentially unpleasant for someone with your usage patterns.

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

And that's the whole reason why vm has traffic management/shaping during the daytime. Not because there are capacity problems, there aren't. The network is largely unused during the daytime and vm want to keep it that way so that they can utilise it for business use and make more money out of it.

I'm not against vm wanting to make as much cash as they can from their assets, but I wish they would be honest and state this clearly. As said here, if I pay a wad of cash to vm for internet use, I want to use it when I want to, not when VM want me to which is the middle of the night.

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

It's like you are psychic or something ;)

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/...cy/td-p/848899

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Can anyone confirm , are VM thinking of opening the BB network to other companies , someone told me it was mentioned in the VM presentation below around 23 mins in. Not registered so haven't listened.

http://www.media-server.com/m/p/p8sx9tmt

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

No point vm providing you with a service, can't be much profit in that

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

Well that cannot be for personal use to say the least.;)

Re: Virgin Media To Lose 'Unlimited' Or Detrimental Usage Policy
 

*Takes a bow.