[Now Official] More ntl speed changes

[Weeble]

Originally Posted by Incognitas

Maybe but there is already a lot of long threads on the site about capping about three pages of them.

Why not go find one of those and hijack that one?

Indeed lets get back on topic. Is there any kind of vague plan as to when we might see the speed hikes?

Weeb

[HornetUK]

As a complete BB novice who downloads a few songs a month but reads web pages for a couple of hours a day how many GB usage am I looking at?

Anyone give me an idea of what these mean :-


300K 1MB †“ £17.99. (5GB* usage) + £5 for unlimited usage
750K 2MB †“ £24.99. (30GB* usage) + £7.50 for unlimited usage
1.5MB 3MB †“ £37.99. (40GB* usage) + £10 for unlimited usage

Does 5GB cover looking at the web everyday of the month and a few downloads.

Someone explain what each 5GB, 30GB & 40GB means....thanks very much

Also do I need to consider these for xbox live?

Cheers

[DieDieMyDarling]

It's good to finally see some people against the cap. About time!

Just like the lower band Broadband users were unable to make full use of their service, because it wasn't actually fast enough to view the content on BroadbandPlus, we're gonna come to the point where 3mb users can't use their connection to view the data it's supposedly built for, ie. internet TV, Internet radio, downloading game demo's (some of which are becoming almost as big as the games themselves), Movie Rentals (coming soon), and anything else a 3mb could really take advantage of!

The maths say that a 1mb user will be able to use their connection flat out for 23 mins a day, to stay within the 5GB limit per month. I've seen it argued on here that the faster speeds will encourage people to try things they've not tried before, going from 300k to 1mb, but once they DO try these things, they'll soon realise just how small 5GB is! And, as a result they'll have to upgrade to the 2mb service to continue using all these new and wonderful internet services (which i'm sure is what Ntl had in mind). Note: the 2mb service could be used for 69 mins flat out at full speed per day, to stay in line with the 30GB cap, which is probably about the average use for a low user.

2mb will become the low speed service for people wishing to use the service for more than browsing and emails. And with a 30GB cap it isn't a bad service. It'll be good competition against other services (apart from AOL and any other uncapped services).

But the real problem i have is with the 3mb service, it's supposedly the new frontier, the highest speed in the UK, taking Ntl to the forefront of ISP's. As such it should then be in line with technology, recent and immediate future.
Ntl also mention networking and an internet service for all the family to enjoy.

Taking an average family of 2 parents and 2 kids, that gives you 4 people using the connection. With possibly an average of 2 pc's connected in that family. 40GB a month cap on the 3mb service equates to roughly 58mins flat out full speed useage per day. That's for at least 4 email accounts, 4 sets of different tastes downloading movies, music, software, games, patches etc.
It gives you 2 adults that might want to download pornographic material from subscribed services, where some of the movie clips can be as large as 300mb. When movie rentals go online that'll be even bigger files being downloaded. Not sure how that's gonna work but even if the movies are only in divx that's 700mb per movie, if they're in full DVD format then that's 3-4gb per movie, not including extra's discs.

Then there's all the internet chatting, whether it be text chat, Voice chat and even Video chats (which use up a fair amount of bandwidth). Sending and recieving photo's, and possibly home movie clips.
Internet TV.
Internet Radio.
Internet Gaming.

Suddenly 40GB doesn't seem that high.
It amounts to 58mins of flat out full speed useage per day, to stay within the 40GB limit per month. If this movie rental service uses full DVD format, that amounts to about 8-10 DVD's a month. 2-2.5 per week. Which allows for NO other use throughout the month.

I think Ntl have really missed the boat on this one. If only 5% of users use up most of the bandwidth, instead of introducing a 3mb service, they should have offered 1mb low useage, with 5GB cap. 1mb medium useage, with 20GB cap (still higher than BT). And for High users a 1mb line with either uncapped service or something like 100GB. Many people have stated they're prepared to pay extra for an uncapped service.

If when these new services begin, AOL are still an uncapped service, their advertising will play on it even more, and i can see a LOT of people moving over to ADSL. The only thing to hold them back is the fact that Ntl have a 3mb line, but without the ability to use it to it's full capacity, it's merely a number and means nothing more.

Originally Posted by Incognitas

Maybe but there is already a lot of long threads on the site about capping about three pages of them.

Why not go find one of those and hijack that one?

I think we can decide if a thread is being hijacked or not.

This topic is about the new speeds and the limitations that come with them. I do not consider the thread to be hijacked as long as the discussion is relevant to the new tiers and not about capping in general.

[IanUK]

I think the caps will be enforced, why else mention them with the announcement ?
The current service only mentions caps in the small print.

I *would* be looking forward to 3mb speed, but the cap is way too small, and just adds a worry whilst surfing, towards the end of the month it may become impossible to view anything because you used up all your bandwidth earlier.

I dropped Broadband Plus because it took me way over the 1 gig limit when I was enjoying it along with my other web uses, as I've mentioned previously on here - I belong to Fileplanet and IGN, and frequently download game demo's and hi res videos, they post loads every day, 3mb speed would be ideal to get them, but then after about 10 days thats the 40 gig limit gone, and thats without any other downloads, service packs patches or Napster downloads etc, NTL need to wake up to the age they now live in, if they have to cap then make it sensible, especially on the top tier package, 5 gig a day at least is needed these days on high speed connections.

I host websites and run several dedicated server's, I pay around £60 a month for 1,000 gig (yes a *thousand* gig) of monthly bandwidth, and have done for a year or so, NTL own their own network, how can they propose to overcharge their own customers so much for bandwidth.

It doesn't add up.

Just my view.

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by DieDieMyDarling

The maths say that a 1mb user will be able to use their connection flat out for 23 mins a day, to stay within the 5GB limit per month. I've seen it argued on here that the faster speeds will encourage people to try things they've not tried before, going from 300k to 1mb, but once they DO try these things, they'll soon realise just how small 5GB is! And, as a result they'll have to upgrade to the 2mb service to continue using all these new and wonderful internet services (which i'm sure is what Ntl had in mind). Note: the 2mb service could be used for 69 mins flat out at full speed per day, to stay in line with the 30GB cap, which is probably about the average use for a low user.

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'.

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.

2mb will become the low speed service for people wishing to use the service for more than browsing and emails. And with a 30GB cap it isn't a bad service. It'll be good competition against other services (apart from AOL and any other uncapped services).

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

But the real problem i have is with the 3mb service.

I think Ntl have really missed the boat on this one. If only 5% of users use up most of the bandwidth, instead of introducing a 3mb service, they should have offered 1mb low useage, with 5GB cap. 1mb medium useage, with 20GB cap (still higher than BT). And for High users a 1mb line with either uncapped service or something like 100GB. Many people have stated they're prepared to pay extra for an uncapped service.

If when these new services begin, AOL are still an uncapped service, their advertising will play on it even more, and i can see a LOT of people moving over to ADSL. The only thing to hold them back is the fact that Ntl have a 3mb line, but without the ability to use it to it's full capacity, it's merely a number and means nothing more.

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.

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?

If people want to use their connections as if they have most of it to themselves they need to start looking at market prices of leased lines, transit bandwidth and the like.

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.

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?

By the way this isn't just an 'ntl' or UK debate:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/news,56419
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/rema...6052~mode=flat
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/rema...9044~mode=flat
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/rema...7614~mode=flat
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/rema...7637~mode=flat

Need I go on?

The packages have been laid out. They are on their way as described. Either deal with them, or vote with your wallet, simple as. Threatening the idea of the top 5% of users going to a different ISP isn't going to change any minds.

EDIT: I must emphasise again these are my opinions only.

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by IanUK

I host websites and run several dedicated server's, I pay around £60 a month for 1,000 gig (yes a *thousand* gig) of monthly bandwidth, and have done for a year or so, NTL own their own network, how can they propose to overcharge their own customers so much for bandwidth.

It doesn't add up.

Just my view.

Adds up perfectly to be honest sir. Taking data from a datacentre straight onto an already built transit line is easy and cheap. Taking it from various sites around the country, operating, maintaining those networks, paying staff to look after them etc has to be paid for. Any bandwidth charges have to take into account the fix charges regardless of usage, along with the costs of moving each GB from a customer's premises through a hybrid fibre / copper network to a uBR then the backhaul from there out to the internet.

EDIT: That price is exceptionally low by the way, last time I did any serious bandwidth shopping I was quoted £40 per Mbit/s a month, 95th percentile rate. Who is that with?

[ian@huth]

There are a few members on here talking about how unfair the usage allowances will be on the new speeds. They talk about all the things that you can do with your connection that keeps it maxed out 24/7. We all know that you can do all these things but realistically who would want or need to? They want higher and higher speeds at lower and lower cost but forget that the two do not equate. Yes, it would be fairly easy for NTL to give everyone 28Mb down and 2Mb up with no cap and all for £25 per month, but would it be usable? Customer service lines would be choked with customers saying they were getting lower speeds than dialup.

What NTL, or any other ISP, have to do is to provide packages that suit the needs of the vast majority of customers and at a price that those customers are willing to pay. There will always be some who are not satisfied with this and want something faster and the ability to take more than their fair share of it. Would these customers be prepared to pay the true cost of having an unlimited service?

I cannot see how anyone can be offered twice the speed for the same price and complain about it. Twice the speed means that a two hour download may only take an hour and then leave them free to do something else. It doesn't mean that they have to find another similar sized download to fill the other hour.

It may be a good thing for all those who are complaining about the unfairness of what NTL are giving them to look around for the ISP of their dreams who they think will give them all they desire.

[DrAwesome]

My interpretation is that Unlimited means no restrictions or having to monitor your usage but to NTL it means something completely different.

NTL should come up with a fair competitive price that customers can afford without mean restrictions/limits.

IMO I think the vast majority of NTL customers that use the internet daily would be prepared to pay a decent fair price for a fast BB tier that will be tailored to their usage/addiction.

[kippa.]

Originally Posted by IanUK

I think the caps will be enforced, why else mention them with the announcement ?
The current service only mentions caps in the small print.

Because I imagine a lot of people will think that it will be strictly enforced, and try and keep below them. Its an easy way to try and make some of the people who use a lot of bandwidth think about using less I suppose.

[Weeble]

Originally Posted by ianathuth

There are a few members on here talking about how unfair the usage allowances will be on the new speeds. They talk about all the things that you can do with your connection that keeps it maxed out 24/7.

Exceeding your allocated daily limit after 23 minutes though? I thought NTL wanted to stop people using their connections 24 hours a day, not 24 minutes a day ?

Weeb

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by DrAwesome

My interpretation is that Unlimited means no restrictions or having to monitor your usage but to NTL it means something completely different.

NTL should come up with a fair competitive price that customers can afford without mean restrictions/limits.

IMO I think the vast majority of NTL customers that use the internet daily would be prepared to pay a decent fair price for a fast BB tier that will be tailored to their usage/addiction.

I see no mention in these new tiers of unlimited, quite the opposite the restrictions seem quite clear.

Your opinion is wrong. Most users use their internet regularly, generally for low bandwidth applications. I don't think it's fair or that these users would be particularly overjoyed at subsiding heavier users.

I agree about a fair price for a fast tier tailored to usage though, how does £200+ for 3Mbit unlimited sound? Probably a fair price in context of the costs involved.

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by Weeble

Exceeding your allocated daily limit after 23 minutes though? I thought NTL wanted to stop people using their connections 24 hours a day, not 24 minutes a day ?

Weeb

Anyone that says that they can use their daily allowance up in 23 minutes is talking out of the back of their head. Yes, theoretically you may be able to do so if not many of the other customers on your UBR were trying to do likewise, but get real, what do you actually do that would eat it up so fast, each and every day?

If the only choices you had were 5Mb download, 2Mb download or 1Mb download, all for the same price and all with the same upload and all wth a 1 gig per day allowance, which would you choose, and why?

[DrAwesome]

Originally Posted by Ignition

Your opinion is wrong. Most users use their internet regularly, generally for low bandwidth applications. I don't think it's fair or that these users would be particularly overjoyed at subsiding heavier users.

NTL customers are already subsiding heavy users on the present tiers, & i havent seen daily posts on this forum with regards to complaints that heavy users are hindering NTL BB customers.

Originally Posted by Ignition

I agree about a fair price for a fast tier tailored to usage though, how does £200+ for 3Mbit unlimited sound? Probably a fair price in context of the costs involved.

I also said affordable.

[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.