Nildram introduce "Fair Usage Policy"

[Neil]

Originally Posted by Nildram

Nildram has introduced a fair usage policy as part of changes to its new broadband services, announced today1, to address the issue of heavy Internet usage and provide users with 'head-room' for downloading. To ensure that it is able to provide all of its customers with a continued high quality service, Nildram is introducing a usage limit of 50GB per month for non-business customers, which applies between 8.00am - midnight. Outside of this time, no usage limit will apply.

From July, customers that exceed the 50GB limit will still be able to continue their service at 64kb for the rest of their billing month or buy extra bandwidth at 99p per GB. Users that do not exceed their 50GB allowance will be able to carry over unused usage to the following month.

Customers on Nildram's Professional product range will remain exempt from the fair use policy and, from July, will automatically enjoy significant enhancements to their service. All lines will be upgraded to 2Mbps connection speeds, where available, during office hours (8.00am to 6.00pm) - reverting to 512kbps or 1024kpbs outside of these times.

http://www.nildram.net/news/view_article.php?id=47

Now, I'm not fond of imposed caps as you may well know, but this is a proper way to handle what is clearly a delicate situation, having a clear & precise plan that is flexible to customer's needs is definately a step in the right direction IMHO.

I expect ntl's plan will be clear to those making it - the problem with ntl (as always) is that have no clue how to communicate it clearly to users.

[Hans Gruber]

That's exactly how a cap should be imposed. 50gb is a fair cap, and it also suits the heavy downloaders, as they can set their PCs going over night. If other ISPs (we all know who) went about it like this there would be a lot less unhappy customers. Nildram are certainly high up on my list of potential DSL providers when I need to make the switch from NTL.

I should add, I emailed them earlier and it seems if you do go over the 50gb peak usage, you will not revert back to 2mbit during the off peak hours and your connection will stay at 64k till the next billing cycle. It would have been nice if they put your speed back up during the night.