*All* ntl Cap Discussion (part 4)

[Chris W]

Well, the situation with regard to ntl capping has changed slightly now, so it is probably time for a new thread.

The situation as it stands at the moment:
ntl offer the following packages and usage allowances/ caps (whatever you want to call them) to new customers.
1mbps - 3gig cap
2mpbs- 30gig cap
10mbps- 75gig cap

There are customers who are currently on 300kbps and according to the following email received they have the option of going to a 512k unlimited package:

Great news about your ntl Broadband service
You recently told us that the usage allowance of your Broadband service is important to you, so I'm delighted to tell you that we are increasing your service to an unlimited monthly usage allowance*. This means there are no limits to the amount of data you use every month. This is part of our ongoing commitment to provide the best choice & value Broadband service in the UK.

More speed, unlimited usage - same price!
We're also increasing the speed of your ntl Broadband service from 300K to 512K for the same monthly price! You don't have to do anything - we'll automatically upgrade your service by the end of December. Your monthly bill will also be changed to show Unlimited 512K, at the same monthly price of £17.99.

We hope you enjoy your new unlimited faster Broadband service!

Yours sincerely,

Bill Goodland
Internet Director

Customers who are currently on 3meg can/ will be able to upgrade to 10meg and the cap increases from 30gig to 75gig. For any discussion of the 10meg upgrade, please see the 10meg upgrades thread.

Now... let's let the cap discussion commence again (for the 4th time :p)

[LenMackin]

I think what must be clear by the fact that this discussion is now at part 4 is that people generally are NOT happy with the cap. I'm on 10mb and now i am expected to stay within the 75 limit (I doubt it). So what does that look like? About 2.5 gig per day! GET REAL NTL.

I have already done 20 gigs according to my router since December 1st. Watch a few film trailers, download a few bits and bobs, emails with 2mb attachments from work, kids surfing, me surfing, a bit of online gaming, it soon mounts up.

One can only hope that NTL take a realistic stance with this otherwise they will loose customers, not in the next few months because there arent that many options but i expect that before the end of 2006 ISP's will offer either much more generous data packages or go for unlimited. this could be the next intra ISP war moving from speed to data allowances. Frankly I'm sorry I just dont want nor expect to have either time or usage caps on the service, it doesnt happen on the TV service or the radio should be the same with the internet.

[Stuart]

Actually, if you look at the previous cap threads, you'll find relatively few people have posted on them. This, to me, indicates that most members either don't care about the cap, or agree with it (I suspect it's the former).

[Dobbo]

what is the upload speed for the 512k unlimited?

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by LenMackin

I think what must be clear by the fact that this discussion is now at part 4 is that people generally are NOT happy with the cap. I'm on 10mb and now i am expected to stay within the 75 limit (I doubt it). So what does that look like? About 2.5 gig per day! GET REAL NTL.

I have already done 20 gigs according to my router since December 1st. Watch a few film trailers, download a few bits and bobs, emails with 2mb attachments from work, kids surfing, me surfing, a bit of online gaming, it soon mounts up.

One can only hope that NTL take a realistic stance with this otherwise they will loose customers, not in the next few months because there arent that many options but i expect that before the end of 2006 ISP's will offer either much more generous data packages or go for unlimited. this could be the next intra ISP war moving from speed to data allowances. Frankly I'm sorry I just dont want nor expect to have either time or usage caps on the service, it doesnt happen on the TV service or the radio should be the same with the internet.

As today is the 11th you're fine having done 20GB since December 1st, on track for about 60GB this month

You'll also note that there were a lot more unlimited deals a year ago than there are now, and as the speeds go up but the costs to ISPs (specifically ADSL) don't go down, and prices consumers expect to pay don't I wouldn't expect that to change

---------- Post added at 09:23 ---------- Previous post was at 09:22 ----------

Originally Posted by Dobbo

what is the upload speed for the 512k unlimited?

64kbit/s it's a punishment service

[RoNa7dO]

i alrleady done 52GB is 6 days now i have to control 23GB for 24days
i dont see the point of upgrading 300k users to 512k because their speed is nearly the same, if they put 1meg unlimited that would b great, i think they should put back 3meg tier for £25/month and decrese 2meg price or 2meg become 3meg at the same price price but unlimited

[DieDieMyDarling]

I think most people would be happy with 2-3mb unlimited for 37.99. Or as a lot of people have suggested, keep the peak hours capped, but make the off peak hours unlimited.

[Chrysalis]

I still find ntl's handling of this very bad, in addition to the lack of a time of day cap observe the following.

They are brainwashing people into thinking speed means more then content. I can forsee a flourish of people who want speed but use less downgrading next year when all 3 tiers are upgraded losing ntl revenue and this is how it is currently.

17.99 - 3 gig or 150gig
24.99 - 30 gig
37.99 (34.99) - 75 gig

Here is how I think it should be.

This is what I think should be not actual plans

17.99 - 512kbit unmetered or 2 mbit 10 gig cap (2 gig peak)
24.99 - 1mbit unmetered or 5 mbit 50 gig cap (5 gig peak)
37.99 - 2mbit unmetered or 10 mbit 150 gig cap (15 gig peak)
49.99 - 3mbit unmetered or 10 mbit 250 gig cap (30 gig peak)

Old rule of thumb there will be people taking up unmetered who wont rape it 24/7 so there is profit to be made there, and the higher prices add revenue for upgrades, 250gig isnt that competetive compared to llu competition but it at least is offset by the speed advantage over llu. Peak I would define as 4pm to midnight weekdays and 8am to midnight weekends.

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

Peak I would define as 4pm to midnight weekdays and 8am to midnight weekends.

I would define peak as the time when most traffic exists which can be any time of night or day. Offering unlimited traffic in your off-peak hours of midnight to 4pm can severely impact on customers who need to use their connection at those times. Just think about the serious bandwidth hogs who would queue up downloads to utilize all those off-peak hours and who allow their upstream bandwidth to be used by people who are not NTL customers and don't contribute a penny to the costs of maintaining the NTL networks. The end result would probably be that your so called peak hours have lower traffic than your off-peak hours.

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by ian@huth

I would define peak as the time when most traffic exists which can be any time of night or day. Offering unlimited traffic in your off-peak hours of midnight to 4pm can severely impact on customers who need to use their connection at those times. Just think about the serious bandwidth hogs who would queue up downloads to utilize all those off-peak hours and who allow their upstream bandwidth to be used by people who are not NTL customers and don't contribute a penny to the costs of maintaining the NTL networks. The end result would probably be that your so called peak hours have lower traffic than your off-peak hours.

Really who cares though the point of a cap should be to avoid severe service affect to existing customers while not breaking the bank.

Not really the customer's problem if ntl offer more than they can afford to handle, averting congestion while controlling costs should be the aim (which is why customers are assigned x kbps) the quieter times where bandwidth is underused are wastes of this bandwidth which costs the same pretty much whatever and really should be utilised as much as is practical.

If people can be convinced to move their downloads outside the peak times, which will stay as peak times whatever your preconception as lighter users demanding responsiveness still vastly outnumber the uber leechers, that means a better service and less investment required to avoid heavy congestion at peak times.

Peak is and will always remain 4pm - midnight Monday to Friday, and pretty much all day apart from the early hours over the weekend.

Just to summarise, the bandwidth utilisation in the early hours tends to be half what it is at peak, why waste it?

If need be traffic shaping can be employed in these offpeak times to ensure that http and gaming traffic is still prioritised, so that even with what you seem to think will be rampant leeching in these times those applications that need responsiveness will still be ok.

Regarding overuse of upload - I haven't seen any 10Mbit customers complaining of poor upstream performance yet At the time of my leaving certain 'safeguards' were being considered to protect upstream, some of which had even been tested with very good results over a year ago. While none of these were live when I left who's to say they aren't now?

QoS is really the future - just look at the rise of MPLS enabled networks to offer the traffic control and classification that legacy ATM networks could provide but over a fully IP network. Bandwidth will be heavily utilised on networks but thanks to the QoS offered from MPLS and other mechanisms real time traffic that needs the responsiveness will get it while heavy file transfer protocols can eat up as much as is left over

[buba3d]

according to my NET Traffic Meter, it says that i have downloaded more than 75 gigs, the only time it was used for 3 days of streaming for most haunted live, however i don't think thats downloaded all that, or am i looking at the wrong thing. lol

[DieDieMyDarling]

I think there's two important factors in this argument.

1 - More and more people are moving to Newsgroups, people that never would have messed with them before. I myself started using newsgroups this year, having always been wary of them before that, due to it being an overcomplicated way of downloading files. But as more and more people move to newsgroups it lowers the amount of upstream used, they don't need a constant upstream max out, just to keep a steady download speed (apart from the upstream that supports the acks).

2 - Most if not all of the people that i personally know, who use a lot (40+GB a month) of bandwidth, do so overnight, including myself. All the people that have already been leeching have been doing so overnight, and as Ignition says, the peak hours still use up double the bandwidth of the off peak hours. So surely the hours of midnight - 8am can handle the leeching/mass downloading? And if they still prioritise http and gaming, then most people won't realise any problems, as those downloading overnight will not be sitting there watching a byte by byte speed readout, they'll be in bed safe in the knowledge that their files will be done for the morning.

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by ian@huth

I would define peak as the time when most traffic exists which can be any time of night or day. Offering unlimited traffic in your off-peak hours of midnight to 4pm can severely impact on customers who need to use their connection at those times. Just think about the serious bandwidth hogs who would queue up downloads to utilize all those off-peak hours and who allow their upstream bandwidth to be used by people who are not NTL customers and don't contribute a penny to the costs of maintaining the NTL networks. The end result would probably be that your so called peak hours have lower traffic than your off-peak hours.

---------- Post added at 18:43 ---------- Previous post was at 18:38 ----------

Originally Posted by Ignition

Really who cares though the point of a cap should be to avoid severe service affect to existing customers while not breaking the bank.

Not really the customer's problem if ntl offer more than they can afford to handle, averting congestion while controlling costs should be the aim (which is why customers are assigned x kbps) the quieter times where bandwidth is underused are wastes of this bandwidth which costs the same pretty much whatever and really should be utilised as much as is practical.

Sorry I snipped it but agree with what you said, I got annoyed earlier I was watching a bbc stream at my sister's house and it started skipping on 256kbit, they are on the 1mbit package. I tried it again at home and was the same but slightly less skipping, I tried juggling proxies but it made no difference. If they cant stop a 256kbit stream skipping their is some clear over saturation of bandwidth which is rather annoying considering the caps are supposed to manage this problem.

---------- Post added at 18:46 ---------- Previous post was at 18:43 ----------

Originally Posted by DieDieMyDarling

2 - Most if not all of the people that i personally know, who use a lot (40+GB a month) of bandwidth, do so overnight, including myself. All the people that have already been leeching have been doing so overnight, and as Ignition says, the peak hours still use up double the bandwidth of the off peak hours.

Same I download overnight, it is pretty depressing if I attempt it during the evening. During the evening I will only do basic web browsing and email's.

[rogerdraig]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

Actually, if you look at the previous cap threads, you'll find relatively few people have posted on them. This, to me, indicates that most members either don't care about the cap, or agree with it (I suspect it's the former).

no i think you will find its more about no ones been charged more than thier standard bill yet

i know most of my friends and family switched to ntl broadband on the ( fixed bill side of their promise ) when you start getting people charged extra for exceeding these limits is when the real fun will start

i and most of them dont care about ultra fast conections just about the bill being fixed

[theNomad]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

Actually, if you look at the previous cap threads, you'll find relatively few people have posted on them. This, to me, indicates that most members either don't care about the cap, or agree with it (I suspect it's the former).

I suspect this is because theyve allready left,like I know a good 5 or so had done who spoke to me via PM's or I'd read the letters,doubtfull they'll come back here once leaving.

I also think alot of us have shut up about the cap because either like me

#1 they are waiting to leave,me personally as soon as the football season ends will look into what else is around

#2 because theyve settled with the 512k unlimited untill something better comes which ntl have stated will happen.

#3 ntl havent actually acted on what theyre getting,like I know some ntl users elsewhere havent been capped or sent letters.

I'm sure as hell people wont be happy in paying a £30+ pm package when other people they know on other isps have cheaper packages and theyre getting more use from them.And surely as net tv channels do get into streaming content which 2006 is looking likely and also more net based watch on demand services come out this will be the bulk of users who need more than 30-75gb per month.

---------- Post added at 22:44 ---------- Previous post was at 22:25 ----------

also since ntl have stopped telling customers over the phone that "NO we wont ever use that cap against you,the cap is to bring us inline with other isps and will never be used" line,and actually starting telling people its capped.Probably bought them a few subscribers but also lost respect of others.Ive stopped recommending ntl to friends and family,having got easily over 10 users for their tv/phone and net package over my 5 or so years using them.

I feel we had a great run but now if someone says "your on ntl what do you think" I tell them its currently limited in what you can use,ntl from what I and other users can make out only want people who surf.

I guess the unlimited £18 a month isnt that bad.but I'm sure users could and will find cheaper and will find faster than 512k.The other packages people will need to watch their use,and for the money theyre paying I feel theyre better elsewhere.