ISPA tells ISPs to play fair on unlimited broadband ads.

[Stuart]

The ISPA has told it's members to stop advertising broadband as "Unlimited" unless they are explicit about any fair use policies.

Basically, they have acted because increasingly, ISPs are throttling connections, or cutting people off when they reach a certain limit, and only pointing out the fair use policy when people complain.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/02/ispa_fair_use/

Now, Virgin have been calling for more transparency, and, in fairness, they *do* state a fair use policy applies.

However, AFAIK, they don't advertise the contents of that fair use policy, or what limits they are using. It would be fairer if they had a footnote at the bottom of each ad saying something like "If you download more than 70 GB, we may introduce measures to control your download". That is, of course, assuming that the limit is 70 Gig.

Now, this post isn't specifically about Virgin (who are, as I said, quite open about using a fair use policy), it applies to all ISPs.

[Toto]

It will be interesting to see if VM and other networks clearly state what they do to manage their network, and how it will affect each customer

Their annoucement is full of words like 'recommends' and 'advises' ... I can't see anything changing unless OFCOM or the ASA saw fit to get tough on the issue, and there's no sign of that happening.

I dont think ISP will like this change

[popper]

lol, i thought this comment off the linked story was rather telling, and might wise all ISP users up?,and stop running away and act, perhaps not!.... still, its an interesting way to get your old BT line activation costs etc payed for so you can migrate off cable to ADSL+ etc....

"
By Ian
Posted Thursday 3rd May 2007 09:50 GMT
As the title says, it doesn't matter what the ASA and OFCOM think, what ISPs are doing has no legal standing.

On the contrary, I and I know others have successfully taken their ISP to the small claims court when we've been bottlenecked for breaching unpublished barriers.

Demon Internet imposed a a bandwidth cap a few months ago but refused to publicly state what it was.

When I got a letter saying I'd be limited to 128kbps speeds for a full month for imposing a 60gb cap I put in a small claims court challenge online.

I claimed for 1 months subscription, sign-up costs to a new ISP, 1 months loss of online gaming subscriptions (XBox live and World of Warcraft), loss of business due to the fact I was unable to realistically perform my web design business on the connection (they say 128kbps, but it's more like dialup 4k/s downloads etc.).

Demon settled for a few hundred quid - they know they don't have a case.

I suggest more and more people do this, perhaps when it starts costing the ISPs more to rip us off than they gain from ripping us off they'll start listening......"

[popper]

http://www.computerweekly.com/Articl...is-selling.htm
"

Technology

Networking/Telecoms

Ofcom investigates 11 for mis-selling

by Antony Savvas
Tuesday 22 May 2007
Ofcom is investigating 11 companies for mis-selling phone lines to customers and is extending its enforcement procedures to cover companies selling combined voice and broadband services.

Mis-selling covers inappropriate sales and marketing activities including “slamming“, where customers can be switched from one company to another without their express knowledge and consent.


Ofcom has announced that rules protecting consumers from the mis-selling of fixed-line voice call services will now also cover providers that offer voice and broadband services using full local loop unbundling (LLU) technology.
-------------------------------- more

From January to March 2007 alone, Ofcom received around 1,200 complaints related to mis-selling.

In addition to extending the migration rules to cover LLU services, Ofcom says it is also carrying out a review of migrations, switching and mis-selling across all telecoms services, including broadband, mobile and cable.