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AbyssUnderground · 11-02-2009, 15:52

I'm not talking about enforcing minimum levels, I'm talking about banning the advertisement of "unlimited" when its being artificially limited to a much slower speed than the one you're advertised to get "upto". That in itself is false advertising because they say "upto 10Mbps" for example, but when you get STM'ed its no longer possible to get "upto 10Mbps" because they're deliberately artificially limiting it to prevent it otherwise!

I will not rest this case until Ofcom or Virgin do something about it, or BT do something about the crappy wiring in my area and allow me to switch to Be* or O2. Even if Virgin could offer 10Mbps to every person, how many of those will actually use it 24/7 week after week? I can bet virtually none.

No ISP or even any datacenter has the ability to provide 1:1 to every single customer. Its all about capacity and controlled overselling. Virgin oversell their bandwidth to stupid levels, where as other ISP's such as O2 and Be* stop when it starts to affect their customers "peak demand".

For example if you have a 100Mbps line, and you sell it to 100 people as a 10Mbps line, but 90 of those people use it just for the odd e-mail and ebay, and the other 10 use it fairly harshly, thats controlled overselling. Its rare to see the bandwidth drop for those higher use users if they all use it at once (which in itself is probably a rarity). Thats how O2 and Be* operate.

However if you have a 100Mbps line, and you sell it to 100 people as a 10Mbps line, but just 60 of those people use it for e-mail and ebay, you're selling 10Mbps to 40 people on a 100Mbps line, who are going to use it quite heavily and rarely get anywhere near the 10Mbps they're paying for. Thats how virgin appear to work, and it just doesn't work, hence the need for STM to drop that baseline 10Mbps to 2.5Mbps so everyone can essentially max out their broadband to its "new maximum speed" without affecting anyone.

I hope the maths was right there... I'm not very well so it might not be...

11-02-2009, 15:52	#53
AbyssUnderground Inactive Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: Merseyside Age: 37 Services: BT Infinity Option 2, HH5, synced at maximum 80Mbps/20Mbps. Posts: 2,221	Re: New STM could be coming your way I'm not talking about enforcing minimum levels, I'm talking about banning the advertisement of "unlimited" when its being artificially limited to a much slower speed than the one you're advertised to get "upto". That in itself is false advertising because they say "upto 10Mbps" for example, but when you get STM'ed its no longer possible to get "upto 10Mbps" because they're deliberately artificially limiting it to prevent it otherwise! I will not rest this case until Ofcom or Virgin do something about it, or BT do something about the crappy wiring in my area and allow me to switch to Be* or O2. Even if Virgin could offer 10Mbps to every person, how many of those will actually use it 24/7 week after week? I can bet virtually none. No ISP or even any datacenter has the ability to provide 1:1 to every single customer. Its all about capacity and controlled overselling. Virgin oversell their bandwidth to stupid levels, where as other ISP's such as O2 and Be* stop when it starts to affect their customers "peak demand". For example if you have a 100Mbps line, and you sell it to 100 people as a 10Mbps line, but 90 of those people use it just for the odd e-mail and ebay, and the other 10 use it fairly harshly, thats controlled overselling. Its rare to see the bandwidth drop for those higher use users if they all use it at once (which in itself is probably a rarity). Thats how O2 and Be* operate. However if you have a 100Mbps line, and you sell it to 100 people as a 10Mbps line, but just 60 of those people use it for e-mail and ebay, you're selling 10Mbps to 40 people on a 100Mbps line, who are going to use it quite heavily and rarely get anywhere near the 10Mbps they're paying for. Thats how virgin appear to work, and it just doesn't work, hence the need for STM to drop that baseline 10Mbps to 2.5Mbps so everyone can essentially max out their broadband to its "new maximum speed" without affecting anyone. I hope the maths was right there... I'm not very well so it might not be...