The Great 'Unlimited' Swindle

[pedantic]

Originally Posted by kpuk

Thinkbroadband have a new News item leading on the 'unlimited' debate, with a link to the e-petition.

See: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3...-material.html

Of course, broadband providers can easily claim unlimited or no fixed limits with their products by making use of traffic shaping to control usage

This is exactly the point I was making. Too many ISP's hide behind packages advertised as "unlimited", and then throttle users, to limit how much bandwidth they use. IMO it's wrong, personally I would much prefer a capped service, at least you know where you stand. If an ISP is going to offer an unlimited package, it should be exactly that, with no traffic shaping to con the user.

[awibble]

Originally Posted by lsainsbury

Tiscali limit my connection in normal bloddy hours but thats another thread!

Really..... my friend is on Tiscali and he hasnt had that, just in peak hours.

[dragon]

wander what bt will do to me as im uploading nearly 13fv ontop of what id usally use.

(recently upgraded my mozy account to a paid one and am backing up my pc to it)

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by lsainsbury

Yes - and?

I'm with Tiscali and peek hours are 6pm -11pm. I'm on "unlimited" downloads. I get a 40GB allowance for peek hours - this is calculated during peek hour downloads only...the rest of the time it's unlimited.

Whats so difficult to understand about that?

He is bang on right, check in a dictionary what the word unlimited means.

If there is any form of limit of what you can download within the connection speed its not unlimited. The isps are more or less relying on their ability to 'missell'.

[dragon]

Most ISPs it seems to be something on the lines of "we wont set a fixed limit on how much you can download" but if we may throttle p2p .etc etc

Yes its annoying but i can understand why its done.

Unless your mega rich and can afford to pay for a 1:1 contention ratio (and even then it would only be uncontended upto a point) your sharing the pipe with other users.

I'd much prefer getting slow P2p speeds during peak time than slow browsing/ bad ping on games becuase someone is hogging all the bandwidth for bittorent.etc

I also prefer this meathord personally as i then know im not going to get a whopping bill becuase i downloaded to much this month or whatever.

[Chrysalis]

dragon then the defenition they should use is unmetered not unlimited.

unmetered would imply no metering of use so no unexpected bill but would allow limitations to take place and still be accurate. Even flat rate would work.

[dragon]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

dragon then the defenition they should use is unmetered not unlimited.

unmetered would imply no metering of use so no unexpected bill but would allow limitations to take place and still be accurate. Even flat rate would work.

that would make perfect sence

Which is probably why they don't use it.

someone up their in marketing probably decided unlimited (even if it is wrong) sounds more attractive than unmetered.

[Chrysalis]

indeed.

[dragon]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

indeed.

kind of reminds me of this...

[Druchii]

Governments response released:
http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page12235.asp

Basically says, they can get away with whatever they want, as long as it's at least half-reasonable, and that the ASA should be contacted... blah blah.

Originally Posted by Druchii

Basically says, they can get away with whatever they want, as long as it's at least half-reasonable, and that the ASA should be contacted... blah blah.

Yep - seems to be the way with these .gov petitions...

The gov will always take the side of UK PLC...

Good old rip off Britain / consumer strikes again!

[Chrysalis]

yeah they dont want to interfere seems now both major parties have adopted the attitude of the market will run itself without intervention and effectively giving companies the right to lie to their customers.