[DieDieMyDarling]

[QUOTE=Ignition]Wrong. The average broadband user on a platform wide basis of an ADSL company whose lowest bandwidth package is 512k is 6GB/month. This is not a mass-market ISP, but one more associated with 'power users'.[\QUOTE]

I was making the point that if people start using the internet more, and for more bandwidth hogging services, due to the extra speed they will now have, the 5GB will soon get stretched. It was someone else who suggested it might take place, i merely used that example.

I regard myself as a power user. I have 20:1 2Mbit Office ADSL. With the contention ratio and bandwidth available to me my share is 30GB/month. My average use is around the 20GB mark, combining upstream and downstream.

In your opinion what makes a 'power user'? How many hours a day do you spend on the internet? How often do you watch Internet TV, listen to Internet Radio, are you subscribed to any Music download services, film download services, do you play online games a lot? etc.

Wouldn't call 2Mbit low speed. Will be the equivalent of the current 750k service, the midrange product.

From what many people are saying the 1mb teir will not be a viable low speed service due to the low cap. So in my opinion 2mb will become the low teir, in many peoples minds.

Sorry. My problem is that you are only looking from your point of view where you don't care how quickly you get things you just want to download as much as possible. Most people just want a faster internet experience, that's always on. Fact is although you come up with all these uses for 3Mbit that an average family will use, although I completely disagree that any average family will use the net in that manner they would be the exception rather than the rule, the vast vast majority want 100GB+ a month for P2P / illicit FTP / binary newsgroups. I would highly expect that as these new applications become more common likewise costs of bandwidth will also drop and capping can be done at higher levels for similar prices.

I totally disagree. My average useage for the past few months has been about 35GB (including upstream). I have in the past used a lot more, but i just don't use the internet as much as i did. We're both guilty of the same thing, i'm looking at it from my perspective, and you're looking at it from yours. You want more speed, i like the idea of more speed, but can't justify it in light of the low caps. It always becomes an argument about P2P and illicit software/movies etc, but there are many legitimate uses of bandwidth that can take up just as much GB's.

You say if these services become more common that the prices will drop and capping will be done at a higher level. P2P is already very common, the numbers of people using the various P2P methods are sky high, the UK included. Yet we're seeing companies run the opposite way, choosing to take advantage of it and charge more for it. Was it you who said if the 5% of people overusing the service were to be capped, then the companies would lower their prices? If not I apoligize, but it's a very naive mindset. ISP's rely on high users, and people that will pay for the faster speeds. Ntl will use the 3mb teir as a selling point, they can boast the fastest speeds, knowing full well that not many of their customers (in comparison with those on lower teirs) could make use of the speed. Most of the people (in my opinion) who would want and make use of a 3mb service will be those who overrun the guidelines now on the 1.5 connection.

I'd be very interested in finding out just how many people thinking of getting 3mb will use it just to download the odd file, at a faster speed, and how many will be getting it so they can download a lot of files, and do it faster. I'd have thought most would be in the latter category. And that those people are valuable to Ntl, as if they leave and very few people subscribe to the 3mb teir, they won't have the funding or the drive to look towards 4mb, 5mb and 10mb for the future.

Now, my question is how much do you want to pay for this service? Would you be happy paying say £1.95 per GB, which is roughly what PAYG ADSL rates at their very cheapest are?

Considering Ntl have their own backbone and provide all the bandwidth themselves i'm sure they could do a much better deal than that. Don't you think?

The fact is ideally users would be charged for what they used, this saves someone paying £38 a month for a bit of remote administration, fast emails and browsing and the occasional update, while just down the road someone else is paying that self-same £38 a month to download 400GB a month of DVDR images, costing the ISP way way over the £38 they are paying.

It's those people paying £38 for not much use that keeps Ntl earning money. The 5% of people overusing the service cost nowhere near as much sa the money Ntl are making by charging low use customers £38, £25 and £18 a month so they can send a few emails and tallk to granny simpson across the water. I agree with your argument, you shouldn't be paying £38 for a bit of occasional browsing, emails and the odd security update. In an ideal world there would be two seperate teir systems. A speed system and a bandwidth allowance system:
Teir system 1:
1mb = £9.99 a month (5GB cap).
2mb = £14.99 a month (20GB cap)
3mb = £24.99 a month (30GB cap).

Teir system 2:
1mb = £17.99 a month (20GB cap).
2mb = £24.99 a month (50GB cap).
3mb = £37.99 a month (100GB cap).

Or something similar. That way people could choose which is more important to them, speed or cap. Or, possibly they could come up with a decent pricing system for extra GB's on top of your cap. In the same way that some mobile phone providers offer Text bolt on's etc. Maybe £1.49 for 1GB, £6.49 for 5GB, £9.99 for 10GB, £15.99 for 20GB, etc.

Regarding your comment about a mass migration to ADSL. Frankly I don't think that any ISP could care less if their top 5% of users go to another ISP, then that ISP begins to struggle to cope with the new traffic so they cap, their heavy users move on until they get stuck on an ISP with insane contention, **** poor performance, but no caps so they can pull the DVDRs down at say 56k modem speeds. But hey, it's unlimited, and the vast majority of people obviously don't care how fast it is so long as they can pull as much as they want, right?

I disagree, as i pointed out above, companies rely on the people who overuse the service, as they are the ones prepared to pay for the newer, faster speeds, so they can get MORE downloads, and keep the ISP driving towards still faster speeds. It's how Ntl advertised broadband in the first place, UNLIMITED service. It's an interesting point you make about the quality of the service, Ntl's quality has been disgraceful! Email servers that work when they want to, Newsgroups that hardly EVER work, outages at least once a month in most area's. AOL are uncapped, and i've not heard of many problems with them.

Btw, another point about contention etc. Most people who use P2P and the likes, tend to do most of their downloading at night, when the service isn't being used as much, it'll be interesting to see how the new 3mb speed will affect daytime useage, when the people who just want to download their updates faster, are doing so at the same time as peak service, when people on all the other teirs are downloading too. Compared to the 5% of users that download lots of files overnight, when most people on the other teirs aren't using their bandwidth.