Cap
 

Sorry couldn't resist ;)

But If this is going to feel like "Home" surely we need to get this topic underway a bit like unpacking the kettle and making a brew before you even unpack a chair to sit on.

Re: Cap
 

:rolleyes:

3 hours 24 mins it took :D

Yeah why not, let's talk about the Bible while we're at it :D ;)

What kind of cap are we talking about, baseball? Flat? ;)

It hasn't affected me so far. But now I'm starting to download music, it may start to affect me in the future.

to be honest i doubt it will unless you download lots and lots and lots, then it might :)

Cap ???? What Cap????? Since the 'cap' was announced I have gone over 2GB Downstrwam EVERYDAY and not had an email, phonecall or letter regarding it. When I phoned up to pay a bill, I asked one of the CSR's about it and they didn't know what I was on about!!!! This was as recent as last month.

OK Just to get the ball rolling again this was my last post at the .com forum:

Having just received a copy of the current flier for the 150K "Broadband" offer along with my monthly bill I note with interest that information about the "limitations" of the service inherant in the Cap is still conspicuous by its absence.

OK I accept that in the case of the 150K service this is a mute point as those on this level of service are pretty well immune from the guidelines but I'm sure this non-declaration of such a key aspect of the NTL's "Broadband" service still applies to all its advertising still.

But then as they have also continued to call the 150K service "Broadband" and also state that they are "The UK's No 1 Broadband provider", even after the decison to the contrary from the ASA, misleading potential customers appears to still be the NTL norm.

That asside does anyone have any comments on my suggested alternative wording for the AUP given in my last post?

"Users regularly found to be maximising their connection at peak times may be asked to restrict large transfers to off-peak times for the benefit of all users of the network. For the purposes of calculating such excessive use any data transfers outside peak-times will be excluded."

At least if they made that change the advertising could refer to "Unlimited" off-peak usage as I have noted the word "Unlimited" is not in the new flier.

I also have to agree to the comments under the heading "So what's good about broadband" the section ends "everything you do is much faster, easier and, if you choose our 150K Broadband, SMARTER!"

Is this at last some open admission by NTL that choosing the 600K or 1 meg service is NOT smart given the blanket 1gig a day guideline we all know is designed to be a Cap on usage for those paying extra for the faster service?

But the ASA have said they have not got a problem with ntl using the word unlimited in advertising :)

Actually that was part of the point I was making.

I think the reality is it is likely the "flier" was printed anticipating the objection to "Unlimited" would be upheld but that the one about 150k not being "Broadband" would not.

Even NTL know the reality is they have "Limited" the service even if for now at least they do not enforce that limitation strictly.

Ok,

I have 150k, Technically 256k, due to being a STB user. Downloading Various Things, I regulary download at 30-35Kb/s (Linux ISO's) ;), And Can easily surpass the Cap Every Day, And Most of the time I do.

So Yes, It does affect certain Bronze Tier Users.

Point taken and welcome to the anti-cap camp new members always appreciated ;)

I never said I was Anti cap either, well actually I am :S.. Im confused :shrug: .. to be honest, im not bothered, if NTL ring me, Il give em a earful, and be glad to move services :)

As the cap wording is in the AUP in black and white it can be enforced at any time that ntl decide use is a problem.

ntl recently told anticap that the policy was a proactive step. They were anticipating future problems. The very very few customers contacted by ntl (none have admited to being contacted) no doubt fell fould of the much more traditonal don't do anything to affect other customers service.

ntl have also said they want customers to have an "enjoyable experience". :rolleyes: I want to know how I am supposed to have enjoyment when I am constantly looking over my shoulder wondering if ntl are going to make tell me off! ? :eek:

I don't look over my shoulder at all, if they wanna contact me they are free too. Until that day i will continue as per normal :)

I with you here... I'll plod along as I have been...

And any CAP thread would not be complete without a th'engineer in it:D

Just wondering when you'd turn up. :D

Sorry I'm late. I was practicing beating my head against a brick wall. Feel much better now :D

Damn cap!

Are we turning this thread into a serious discusion, will BIll CAP change his view

Yes Please !

Nice to see all the usual suspects present and correct including myself in that .

Anyone know if BIll Goodlands new job has been announced

OK, firstly, why is it called a CAP?

My 'CAP' is 1M down 256k up because I am 'CAPPED' at the 'GOLD' level.

I am aware of a "Download Limit" of 1Gig per day, but choose to ignore it.

My reason for ignoring it is as follows.....

A few years ago I got a 600K CM and was told by ntl that I must not host FTP or HTTP servers. I hosted both but restricted access to usernames and passwords. NTL were fine about this (spoke to LOADS of tech support peeps about it) as they could not see any major impact on the connecton I used, or any other customers on my UBR.
They said the "no server" policy was there just so they could quickly shut someone down if they started up an "adult" site, or a site with too much traffic.

IMO, the 1Gig limit is there for similar reasons. I have frequently gone over 1G and NEVER got contacted. I imagin if I start downloading at 120k 24/7 they wll be phoning me, but as I dont, they wont.

I'm sure a lot of people would agree that it doesn't matter what we call it. I think it's the thin end of the wedge. First they introduce the 'limit' without enforcing it, then whenever it suits them they could theoretically use it as a club to beat users with. Very few people would argue that it's ok to rape your connection 24*7 on a contended service but the thing is, ntl already had measures in place that covered this kind of abuse in the old AUP. I'm worried that any of the following could happen:-

• ntl start beating non abusers with the cap
• ntl start generally enforcing the cap
• Other ISPs follow suit
• We end up with a pay per byte model across the UK

In the long run this will happen in some way or another:(

Cap in this context is a defined point at which some action may or may not apply.

Regardless of how you choose to define it everyone involved in this debate knows what we are talking about so it matters not if you choose to call it a guideline, a limit or a Cap

Yes this is a cap but maybe better defined as a speed limit rather than a cap.

That is your right but raises two issues:

First is one can only choose to ignore it if one is aware that it exisists. This is the general complaint we have about the covert nature of its introduction and absence from any of the advertising by NTL.

The existance of these restrictions in the original AUP is just one of many reasons we feel the change to add a specific cap at 1 gig was not required.

Once accepted that NTL can apply "new" restrictions (even if they don't imediately enforce them) to existing users without first gaining agreement is a very dangerous precident to set.

If you wait till NTL decide to enforce the 1 gig cap, or worse still reduce it to say 500MB, it is going to be far harder to argue your case as the general principle has already been conceeded.

not if we fight it roddy consumer power CAN make a diffarence we must stand up to these compaines :mad:

just hope they dont get drunk with power and limit us 56kers...

i cant see these retro active steps being good, or long lasting. look at how internet provisions have progressed since BBS in the UK. I remember when freeserve and those isps started with the FREE 0845 services, that was a WOW! for me, after 2 years of paying demon £40 a month for the priviledge of paying 0845 rates... it was now free! then the surgence of broadband, suddenly paying for bandwidth seems stupid.

True they'll milk more money out of us, and with a cap they'll end up losing customers, but hey... 12 months after all these ISPs do that, some entrepreneur will start a free dsl pay-as-you-go, then a limitless dsl for prices we see dialup going for now.

The biggest cost to ISPs in this country right now, is paying off for the installation of all the fibre optics (cableco's) and DSL enabling exchanges (BT+co). at the end of the day, once they recoup those costs, after 12 months of the exchange being up, BT make there cash back on a minimum of 400 users to activate the exchange. Bandwidth is pretty much cheap as chips these days, and when you consider that dialup servers need literally 1000's of modems connected in order to interact with you, and cable/dsl needs 1 per 100mbit of traffic... that cant be an issue.

To the point, Cap = Bad ;-) with more and more exchanges being DSL enabled, and if they kick you off, they're essentially terminating your contract, vis-a-vis you dont have to pay them any longer and are free to go trouble DSL exchanges at 6mbit/s with no cap. The day i get kicked off is the day i admit i won, i get to give £25 a month to a company who will let me hookup my xbox for no extra charge, and i can run NAT :(

he he i were wonderin when this swear word would pop up lol

hi all :wavey:

Hi wizardman :wavey:

Anyway to the discussion...

The "Cap" ( :rolleyes: ) does not bother me one bit. I personally only think it comes into play if your area is in bad shape and your downloading big files (that being anything people down :p )

Its not a problem for me as I never go over it anyway :)

Quick questions for you as a Mod on this new board.

Does the fact it bothers some of us bother you?

Or are you and the other mods only going to support issues if they affect you personally?

Even those that have no objection to the cap itself should be concerned about how it was introduced and its longer term implications for the service as a whole once the principle of unilaterally reducing what we get for our money is accepted.

I am reminded of an old maxim: "All that is required for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing."

Sure not a problem :)

Of course it does .. Ok fair enough I personally don't have a problem with the "Cap" others do and I can understand that.

:confused: Why would we only support issues that only affect us :confused:

Reason I ask is that the "I'm not concerned because it doesn't affect me" seems to be a popular attitude as far as the cap is concerned.

I and I suspect others are watching and waiting to get a feel for the attitude of the Mods on important issues like this as an indication of how this new board will be run.

I also suspect that at least a few would have taken a different view about the Cap on the com site had it not been taken over by NTL. My question was therefore aimed at inviting the Mods to exercise their new-found freedom and speak their minds unfettered by the affiliation to NTL.

I for one respect that not all share my views on the cap and have tried throughout to carry on a dialogue with those that have different opinions in an attempt to find a workable compromise as I suspect this is the only way forward on this issue.

Hope this clarifies my post as I did not wish to imply you would behave badly in fact I rather hoped to simply get confirmation that you and the other mods would not.

Of course that will be the attitude. Why beat yourself up about something that isnt going to affect you?

Because:

A: It is often the right thing to do. I personally am not affected by the cap directly but that does not stop me seeing objecting to it is not just right but also makes sense as the cap was badly thought out and how it was introduced was inexcusable.

B: It may affect you down the line if they lower the guideline or use the same device to introduce some other "new" rule which does affect you.

To give you an example let me pose a question.

Would you object if disability benefits were halved?

It may not affect you now but I assume you might well see that defending the rights of others would be right.

Even if you can't see the right in standing up against such bad decisions even if they dont affect you it is in your own interest to do so purely on the grounds of "there but for the grace of god go you or I" or possibly because at some point in the future you will be the one affected by something and wanting support from others who are not.

I would do something if it did affect me, but the internet does not rule my life, so why should I worry about it?

If it worries people so much, change broadband provider or change to a business account.

:D its not gonna affect me neither but theres nothin in force properly that they can do coz nobody as ad a email or call yet have they
and if there is i would like to here from them :spin: :spin: :spin: :spin: :spin: :spin:

it affects me i have tryed doing somehing about it

i dont want to change provider due to NTL providing me with an excellent broadband service 99% uptime/maxspeed in a few years on broadband is excellent that 1% is maintanance :D :p

The old 'thin end of the wedge' argument comes into play here. I've used the analogy before that it's pointless running for cover under the branches of another ISP as when the rain spreads, you're still gonna get wet.

Or more simply, if people who are unhappy with it change providers, ntl will be seen to have won and all we'll get is 'heavy' users getting chased from provider to provider.

If it wasn't for 'heavy' users driving development, we probably wouldnt even have broadband.

Of course not everyone is going to want to take a stand against the cap and that's completely up to the individual :)

Realy?

No, REALY?

I would say these 'heavy' users are the ones who download films / music from KrapZaa and burn to disc to sell at boot sales!

All the "heavy" users that drove developement are usualy legitematley using the service. All the 'heavy users' that screw things up for the rest of us are just plain selfish.

As I said before, the "CAP" is only there to give ntl a reason to drop the pi$$ takers.

ntl are very poor at enforcing things.... proof being:-

Amount of STB's which have been "chipped" available. (both analogue & digital).
Amount of cable modems on-line with NO BILLING AT ALL due to incompitance.

I could also go into detail about them writing to me about my usage and quoting two totaly unconnected parts of the T&C as a reason to disconnect me, but last time I did that, everyone decided to slate me for uncapping, not read into the full reasoning. If you want details, PM me.

It'll be one hell of a fight and I don't think that it is winnable in the long run:(

right my turn for the silly question! from what i can gather you are not sopposed to go over 1gb a day, for more than 3 days in 14!! Is this any 3 days in 14, or 3 days on the trot in any 14 day period? Sorry for asking but it's the one thing i have never been sure of.

From the wording used it is ANY three days in any rolling 14 day period.

First day you go over starts the clock so if within the next 13 days you go over again twice you have breached the guideline.

First day drops off after this so a new period will have started from the next time you went over.

Hope that clarifies the situation.

yes it does, thanks very much

Many said the same when we stuck to our guns over the price of the 1 meg service but few complained when we got NTL to agree to the £34.99 instead of £50.

User Power at its best :D

The only thing that got ntl to drop from £50 was the simple fact that it was CHEAPER to get 2X600k and it would be FASTER too.

Having said that, I do agree totaly that cusomers, when in large numbers, can have a big influence on companies. After all, just who pays who's wages???

What about all the other legitamate uses?

The way the cap is written it makes no distinction at all about what is being downloaded. Such a blunt instrument serves no use in combating that sort of abuse or would you argue it is OK to break the law long as you dont exceed the limit?

If only life was so easy :)

Truth is anyone downloading anything at peak times has an equal effect on the network.

More than that it is clear much of the initial drive behind the explosive growth of the internet was due to porn and more recently the availability of bootleg music and video.

Maybe I'm just a little cynical but I would be surprised if the money men behind NTL did not count on such use when setting up the network. If this was not so why have they always avoided taking any real action to stop either.

If this was the case the existing AUP gave them all the power they required. I think it is therefore reasonable for us to question whether NTL had any other motive in introducing the Cap.

My take on this is that someone has actually done a cost benefit analysis and worked out the cost of enforcement often outweighs the loss.

Besides that it has become increasingly clear NTL's philosophy is "hook" more fish, tie them into a nice 12 month contract then ignore them along with all the existing customers.

It is this policy of loading additional users on the network without matching the extra sales with capital investment in the network that is more to blame for dgraded services than a few people actually using the service as it was sold to them.

Actually as NTL restrict customers to one connection per houshold it is now and never was possible to have two 600k connections. This was, however, part of the arguement we put forward as the pricing structure effectively charged more per k for the faster service. Bit like selling raffle tickets 10p each or 5 for a pound. :)

As far as I know you are now allowed 2 connections in the same household. (could be wrong though :erm: )

Possibly :)

But certainly wasn't allowed at the time and would serve little use now given the curent pricing unless someone wanted 2 x 1 meg connections.

mmm Ponders would they have to share the cap in such a case :)

Hi Stuart, I've been a bit slow catching up on threads here.

I honestly don't see where you're coming from. I haven't found anyone who thinks that the 'cap' addresses any problem of network congestion at peak times or otherwise.

ntl have always had stuff in the AUP to tackle bandwidth abusers. Yes I think that downloading 24*7 is bandwidth abuse and people who do this on a busy ubr deserve to be 'capped'.

On another point, do you really not think that increases in demand for bandwidth have been one of the main factors in the development of faster (wider) broadband?

Strangely though (and I only mention this cos I think it's funny) if a user was able to download 24*7 at full speed, wouldn't it prove that the network was not congested in that area?

I dont think they ever meant to enforce it. It was just put in a a catchall get out of jail free card if they wanted to boot you off because they didn't like the smell of your pants.

I've not heard of one incident of an account being closed because of it. Is there any point in flogging the already dead and whiplashed horse. Or are you all that bored? :P

oh hello btw ;P

They always had that power anyway what is new is the concept that data transfer can be limited when it was not part of the original contract as sold. It has also set a general precedent that our contracts can be amended without notification or agreement.

Quote:

I've not heard of one incident of an account being closed because of it. Is there any point in flogging the already dead and whiplashed horse. Or are you all that bored? :P oh hello btw ;P

Not bored simply sticking to a point of principle. If we wait till they start to enforce the Cap it will be too late.

The horse is not dead by the way it is simply being held in the stable till NTL decide to take it out for a trott.

Please do not feed the NTL nag with the oats of apathy or they may decide to go for a gallop instead and trample all of us in the process.

lol.

Hi Munkeh

What Sociable said

but doesnt the small print always read .. we retain the right to change this contract as and when we see fit.. etc (although I've not checked tbh)
Ahh sticking to a point of principle is an admirable trait, but this argument has been done to death, the cap IMHO will never be enforced in its present form, so I think the G-G is well and truly dead, although there may well be another horsebox hiding just out of view full of shetland ponies ;P

There's really no apathy involved from my end at all here, just rather a "Why don't you turn off the TV and go something more.." in a kids tv stylee. ( ahh nows thats given away the fact I'm an old codger) :)

Contracts can not be changed unilaterally.

It's illegal. A changed contract is a broken contract.

The Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 state :-There's a whole bunch of other stuff in there that ntl ignore on a regular basis. :2up:

Well said :)

Good example of this is the accepted fact that NTL can not enforce the 12 month contract if they change the price of a service and do not get the customers agreement to the change.

A degree of "flexibility" is allowed to be built into any agreement but any "fundamental" changes have to be agreed to.

Closest example of this that comes to mind is if your Water supplier wished to change over to metered supply. They have the right to ask for the change but would have to both notify you and gain your agreement prior to making the change.

Ahh sorry meant terms and conditions and the user policy. Which do appear to have lots of get out of jail free cards in.

But even T&Cs can be challenged as unreasonable and therefore unenforceable.

The point with that, and with the Unfair Terms Act, is that the police are not going to go knocking on Ntl's door to investigate allegations that they are abusing the law. It's up to us beleagured customers to learn what our rights are and to take them to court ourselves, if we have the time and the money for it. I suspect ntl is banking on us being too busy and too impoverished to put up a struggle. :(

So vote with your feet or do the plusses of ntls cablemodem offering outweigh the disadvantages. Anyways from what I can see ntl T&C's/User Policy are as suitably vague as any ISPs :shrug:

Caramba Stuart, are you still bleating on about being caught with your pants down and getting spanked !!!!

You did wrong, you got caught who gives a monkeys flying left breast whether or not the relevant, in your opinion IIRC the original threads correctly, sections were quoted.

I've always said that Broadband is, IMO, the best thing Ntl do. I suspect it's helping keep them afloat at the moment as well.

With no BT line in our house and no need for one (ntl Tv and phone) it would be a whole lot of hassle to get ADSL which apparently costs more anyway.

Perhaps it is something unique about the Internet but I, and I suspect many others, feel that we are not just customers or users of ISP's but actually co-owners of the first truely "free" international resource. Because of this we defend the key principles embodied by it.

The arguements we make against things like Caps and other issues apply equally to all ISP's as if we allow NTL to change a key aspect like capping without objection that cancer will spread. Better to fight our ground now than just sit back and let them get away with it as this will only encourage others to follow suit.

That said In a way I have already voted with my feet by standing still rather than making the move to the 1 meg service. I am on the original £19.99 deal as I own my own modem so there is really no advantage at all in my upgrading until NTL allow me to make full use of the extra bandwidth, Simply being able to download the same content a little faster does not make ecconomic sense.

Hear, hear! :tu:

Co-owners??? Why? You pay to receive a service.....

That's the whole problem. The internet in its very essence is an utterly democratic, international entity. The Internet is not a commercial service you pay for, like Sky Movies.

Unless you have the It resources yourself, you have to pay someone else in order to get access to the Internet. But paying someone for access to the 'net is not the same thing as paying for the 'net. The Internet is free.

Now, I'm not such an idealist that I think we should get BB access to the internet for nothing, and I know that ntl has a business to run. All I think we're saying here is that ntl should do business and provide services in a way that respects the internet.

Unmetered access respects the spirit of the internet - free, democratic, knows no boundaries or borders - while pay-per-byte or pay-per-minute attempts to turn the internet into a commodity to be retailed to a mass market by ntl and others.

Many Thanks towny :)

Thanks too for your following post that fleshed out and put into words so well the sentiment I was trying to express.

Just as a slightly off-topic comment I think the circumstances which have brought us here from .com have their roots in the same principles.

With all due respect to Frank I think he forgot that, whatever the "Legal" position, NTHELL was not his to sell. A forum is a community and as such belongs to its members far more than any one individual.

When BB was installed I printed down the T&Cs including the USER POLICY. I am still working to the original conditions as NTL have not informed me of any changes

hmmmm, perhaps i'm just too forgiving, or perhaps i am apathy bound after all.

I've not got an issue with the cap, if it does come to a point where people are calling me to ask me to curb my browsing / leeching habits then they can cancel the service on the same call.

somehow, i just i can't ever see that happening.

as for the internet being an embodiment of free speech/information/karma(dude), well that depends on entirely what you use it for.

some free, some not so free.

but hey.. at the end of the day its just the net, and to be honest, most days i'd rather go down the pub :)

think you are playing into NTLs hands you should protest like many do and sign the petition

OK, this is EXACTLY my point.

I did wrong, I was caught.... but ntl quoted irelevant parts of the T&C. I was not even remotely worried about getting caught, it was an experiment. I am not complaining about being caught, or promoting the uncapping of CM's. I was just pointing out that the AUP team had quoted IRRELEVANT parts of the T&C.

If it "doeesn't matter" which parts are quoted, or how they are interpreted, what is the point in having T's & C's????

My point is that ntl do not know how to enforce the existing T&C, so why worry about the "cap" when they are so unlikely to enforce it properly.

There are (and were at the time) simple black and white entries in the T&C which I clearly broke. NONE of these were quoted to me however. I was just quoted on interfeering with equipment and reverse engineering ntl's software, NEITHER of which was done by, or on behalf of myself.


Now, just to get my point accross as clear as possible.....

I don't care for / about the CAP as in my opinion it will never be used to enforce ANYTHING at all.
In my expirience with the AUP team, they have quoted irelevant T&C's, breached the data protection act and represented themselves as an entirly unprofessional group of individuals.

I've never heard a word from ntl regarding the cap, i regularly download well over 1 gig per day & i dont see why i should change it either considering every other isp charges you just as much, if not less.

I'll continue as i am and should they ever mention it i'll tell them what to do with there acc & get adsl.

Where do you get off?

Frank owned the domain name, designed the site, got it into the public eye and did a whole load of customers a favour. He had every right to do with it as he wished.

A forum is a little piece of space on the internet you can have a virtual chat on. Get over it!!!! It happened over a year ago FFS, and unless you were in Franks position when he sold you won't have the knowledge to even begin to assume why he sold, or wether it was 'morally' his to sell.

I am amazed at all of you who had the nerve to say he 'sold out', or berate him for doing so - I can bet that 99.9% of you have never even met the guy to form such 'considered' opinions.... :rolleyes:

As I said in my post I respect Frank and accept selling the domain name was entirely his decision to make.

What he did not own was the membership of that forum and as time will show many will reach their own "considered" decison how to react to NTL's decison to mess with the spirit created by Frank's original idea.

This is, however, a Cap thread so please refrain from further posting to it unless you have something contructive to say about the cap itself.

So what was he supposed to do? Dump the membership into a black hole and make everyone start again?

:confused: I was replying to one of your posts - I'll stay on topic if you will.... :rolleyes:

Why worry or care about the cap?

Well just one reason would be because it sets a precedent for other ISPs to follow.

You may be right, perhaps they don't know their @rse from their elbow, but if they put the 'cap' in their T&Cs to cover themselves just in case they need it in future, I think it's only a matter of time before someone falls foul of it. If the director in charge of the AUP team changes for example, and starts tightening up their act. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day...and then it'll be a short hop, skip and a jump to enforcing it regularly.

It's worth standing up against it now rather than getting caught out later, IMO. It worries me as a principle even tho' I use 600k and have never come anywhere near cap-level usage of my service.

Well, I am regularly over the limit both upstream and downstream. When/if I get my warning I'll cancel the whole damn package:mad:

I signed up for an unlimited service as advertised. What bugs me is that any ISP can change the TOC's willy-nilly.

This capping is reminiscent of the bad old days of dial up un-metered services (redhotant, ezesurf, etc.), who had to limit their services as their networks/hardware could not handle the traffic!!

Or did maybe? Just going by this thread seems that despite the initial backlash not that many people really care. Not surprising considering that no enforcement has taken place as far as I know.
And just for info ntl are hardly setting a precedant with this, providers all over the world have set caps and enforced them, charging people per Mbyte or reducing their download rate when the quantity is used up, these caps are usually lower than 1GB/day.

Here's a thought. Maybe part of the reason the UK's internet is generally slower and possibly more expensive per Mbit than most is because UK consumers complain like hell when they:

1) Don't receive the full bandwidth of their connection all the time.
2) Can't use it as much and exactly as they wish.

We seem to be allergic to contention, when it is just that that allows providers elsewhere to offer higher bursting speeds at comparitive prices. No point offering 5Mbit if people might only get 2Mbit at peak time then flood your support desk with calls complaining about it so you spend all that revenue you gained on fielding calls from people.

RedHotAnt didn't limit their services in any way, they just ran out of modem ports to take calls on, as did the other 0800 and now dead ISPs of the time. There was no limiting involved they just didn't have the hardware in place. Broadband bandwidth and CVX capacity are 2 very different things, not least because if CVXs are full you can't use the net full stop.

Just maybe it's because companies like NTL will always get away with whatever they can when they can including selling a service on one basis then moving the goalposts later.

They actually rely on the fact that often people do not complain until and unless it affects them personally.

This time however they knew there would be a backlash and so tried to "sneak" the change in by the change in the AUP.

It was only after this was noticed that they tried to blame the need for the Cap on a few heavy users rather than their own bad planning and over selling of the service. This being confirmed by their own comments about this move having saved capital expenditure on improving the network.

The recent change of stance by NTL regarding enforcement seems to show they have accepted the arguement that the problem is largely one of over demand at peak times and that the solution is to shift some heavy use (data transfer rather than browsing) to off-peak times.

What hasn't, as yet, been accepted is that the current wording of the AUP fails to encourage such a shift to off-peak use by excluding transfers that are done in off-peak times from the cap itself.

In fact the reverse is true as the current Cap effectively limits the total time one can spend downloading to just a few hours a day it is more than likely that people would choose to do that at the most convient time which is during the evening i.e. peak time.

This is why I suggested a better wording in the AUP along the lines of:

"Users regularly found to be maximising their connection at peak times may be asked to restrict large transfers to off-peak times for the benefit of all users of the network. For the purposes of calculating excessive use any data transfers outside peak-times will be excluded."

This is of course a compromise on our part as it recognises we do accept that contention is part of the package we subscribed to originally. What we do not accept is a change in principle from unlimited to "capped" use even if this is not enforced rigidly for now.

The very fact that this thread continues to attract posts along the lines of "I don't see the need to complain but......If they ever call me I will cancel the service" sends a very clear message to NTL.

The complete lack of any posts actively supporting and agreeing to the cap as it is worded now also speaks volumes.

Seems NTL want to promote downloading large files.

This is taken from the new "Insider" site Broadband secition:

http://ese.ntlhomeinsider.com/ese/i...3,broadband.asp

"If you like to download big files such as music and movies and want an even faster connection try our 600K or 1Mb service, which is nearly 20 times faster than Dial-up Internet and essential for seasoned surfers. Both come with free installation!"

Still no mention of the "Guidelines" though. LOL

sorry....the page you were looking cannot be found, click here to go back.

Try: http://ese.ntlhomeinsider.com/ese/is...,broadband.asp

Its always the same with NTL they say one thing and do another remember the links with other companies that did not pay off.

Is it right that Goodland has been demoted

Dunno, better ask Paul Rusby:devsmoke:

Managers never get demoted. They either get sacked or they get moved sideways. :)

He now has a starring role in spouting the ntl "our service is wonderful sign up for broadband now" line on the latest Buy Ntl (channel 119) propoganda. That'll be a nice little earner if he gets the repeat fees for it's 24/7 half hourly reruns :spin:

or promoted

True. I'm speaking from memory here, but a number of years ago someone (I suspect called Peters :) ) proposed the Peters Principle. Essentially, it said that managers get promoted one step above their level of competence, with all the results that you might expect from this.

It was Peter Drucker and "The Peter Principle" is a classic :)

Sorta sums up NTL very effectively.

no more to say really is there

Well maybe not from us but just wait till the "Community" site opens methinks they may get a few requests about this topic LOL

Any replies will get copied to this thread as and when.