[Now Official] More ntl speed changes

[Neil]

Originally Posted by slowcoach

Given the choice I would have to choose reasonable capping as opposed to crap service due to congestion. If I had a few people on my loop hogging the bandwidth all the time I would be the first to complain, we all have to learn to respect other people and act accordingly otherwise the result will be anarchy which will benefit no-one.

I think people's main issue is the lack of choice that you refer to from ntl.

The issue (as usual) is the silence from ntl, & the lack of clarification of whether a tiered structure will exist-I.E. pay by the MB/GB when you hit your monthly allowance with these new tariffs.....

[etccarmageddon]

Originally Posted by slowcoach

...if I was NTL reading this thread I would be thinking †œwhat an ungrateful lot of *** we have as customersâ₠¬Â�, it would make me think twice before I offered any further speed increases.

I dont think NTL could view this thread as a representation of their customers as the number of BB customers is in the hundreds of thousands.

I'm think the majority of customers will be happy with the changes - some will find the bottom tier no longer offers enough GB for their usage and will upgrade to £25 a month or seek an alternative. If this becomes a problem then NTL will soon resolve it if they start losing customers.

The bottom line is, if the changes are so bad then churn will increase in which case the allowanances will be increased - unless NTL wants rid of these people.

Originally Posted by Neil

I think people's main issue is the lack of choice that you refer to from ntl.

The issue (as usual) is the silence from ntl, & the lack of clarification of whether a tiered structure will exist-I.E. pay by the MB/GB when you hit your monthly allowance with these new tariffs.....

Since, AFAIK, NTL have still to officially launch the speed increases, I don't think it is fair to criticise them for not clarifying the details - they may not even have decided themselves yet. Let's wait and see.

[etccarmageddon]

Originally Posted by ProfPete

I do, however, support a bit of flexibility, in the form of capacity-based charging. My hosting provider charge me 0.5p per megabyte over 10gig/month. That works out at 50p/gig after the initial 10. £5-£10 per extra 10gig a month? It could work

same figure I had in mind - 2GB for £1.

[DeadKenny]

I used an ntl modem in Southampton a week ago and was astonished at how fast and responsive the browsing and pings were. Both the browsing blew my 2Mbit ADSL away (this was 1Mbit cable) and the pings were nearly 10ms faster than mine.

Fair enough. My experience is totally the opposite.

I did mention in private that the issues that caused your substandard performance had been resolved and were a fault. As you've kinda brought this into the open I'll say again they are fixed.

It depends what was fixed and when. I had multiple issues. Some of it was packet loss and slow pings, the rest of it was down to signal problems on the upstream of the cable modem, which is a problem I'd had for years (ever since starting with broadband) and it was never fixed even though various people tried to fix it and said it was fixed.

Plus give you the sub-10ms pings to LINX I used to see from Hampshire?

Average about 15ms on plus. On NTL I rarely saw pings lower than 50ms, often well into 100ms on a lot of sites.

Maybe I should move to Hampshire

I'm not saying Plus are pants, I am saying they run their network to the wire, that would make me a little concerned about using them.

Maybe so, but there are a lot of other things wrong with NTL, and not just the broadband side of it, that make me very concerned about using them. I'm extremely happy with PlusNet so far. In fact I have to say I've been truly amazed at the difference in performance making me realise just how poor my NTL connection was. Customer support has been stunning too.


I don't wish to go further into a Plus vs NTL debate on an NTL forum. I do appreciate your and other's efforts, but you have to see it from my point of view where just about everything that could have gone wrong with my NTL experience did and no amount of saying things are fixed, better, have loads of investment or the best core network in the UK will really convince me.

At the end of the day the key thing is the experience for the end user. You can have the best network in the world but if the connection to a particular house is next to useless, then the ISP is of no use, especially when they can't fix it despite dozens of attempts over several years.

The other thing is though you have all the data to hand and can see everything is rosy, the customer often sees something different. The problem I have with NTL, and this applies to a lot of other companies, is that the customer is not believed when they say something is wrong.

[AndrewJ]

Well I have my 1.5mb line just a few questions over this proposed 3mb upgrade on my line.

The £25 cost will be a unneeded expense for me as I will be d/c from ntl bb in the first few month of 2005 say March Latest.

I shall then be r/c at my new home about 2mile from where I am and on the probally 2mb service until bills are settled.

Would NTL perhaps drop the £25 considering these circumstances or can I opt just to not pay it or would I be forced into either paying or dropping the service and using internet service at libary until I am sorted in my own place.

Thanks in advance

[Matth]

The admin fee adds to the problems, as unless they are going to force all existing users to pay it, and disconnect those that won't stand for it, then they will have to parallel run the two tariffs for quite some time, and I rather suspect that the 300k will also get the 5Gb cap, so staying with 1Gb/day@300k may not be an option.

I can see the reason for a lower cap, as otherwise the 750k users currently would have no reason NOT to downgrade to the cheapest tariff.

Anyway, I just put a monitor on for today - I think its OVER-estimating by counting the ARP traffic on the interface, and DHCP broadcast, but:
I set the alarm at 100Mb - about 3/5 of the daily total of 5Gb/month - allowing for 2Gb of additional downloads.

I estimate by the end of a total "non downloading" day, it'll be 60Mb - just 2/5 - looks like I'll be snatching 1Mbit / 5Gb cap, as I still have reasonable room for finding anything I want or need to download.

It helps if you KNOW what your current usage is, and then add some as faster generally means you'll use a bit more - some forums are 100k or more for each page, so 10 pages is a meg, and it soon adds up

This page is 70k

[AndrewJ]

Been thinking about a bandwith monitor but want something stable reliable. FREE without spyware or rubbish and one which does not give unreal reports and is accurate...

I tried one a while back and had serious issues anyone able to recommend a good monitor?

Thanks

AJW

[slowcoach]

Originally Posted by Neil

I think people's main issue is the lack of choice that you refer to from ntl.

The issue (as usual) is the silence from ntl, & the lack of clarification of whether a tiered structure will exist-I.E. pay by the MB/GB when you hit your monthly allowance with these new tariffs.....

The average BB user would appear to be well catered for, 2MB and 30GB being well in excess of what you would normally expect at the price, and more than most people will actually need. I admit that there is a big step from 5MB to 30MB and that the base bandwidth should probably have been 15MB but perhaps the base was set low on purpose in order to be able to advertise a high speed low cost entry product (the sprat to catch a mackerel).

I assume that the expense of updating the system was primarily to accommodate new customers with TV services. IPâ₠¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s are looking to VOD for future increases in revenue, the higher speed BB announced is probably just to attract new customers in the knowledge that most will have the TV packages as well, it just might be that NTL didn't fully consider the current BB users when working out their plans, after all they have only just completed the last increases in speed which everyone was happy to be handed.

[ian@huth]

Whilst 5Gb appears low to many people for the 1Mb service you have to remember that it is 5 times the cap that some ISPs put on their entry level services. Just because NTL have given 1Mb as the lowest tier doesn't mean that users should try to max this out at all times. Most 1Mb users will be quite happy to do what they normally do but will be glad that their odd download only takes around a seventh of the time that it used to only a couple of months ago.

What some people are saying is that they are getting much faster connections and they should use this extra speed to the full all the time.
If they were to look at it as if they still will have the same speed as they now have with a bonus of getting the same downloads as they now do in half the time, things may look a little different.

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by Kits

IMPO it is enough if you need more then I am sure NTL will arrange to charge those by the gig they want over the 40gig.

That is what I think should happen now.

I just think 50-100gig isn't too abusive for a 3mbit account and would be unfair to charge per gig over 40 gigs on a top tier package, the other 2 tiers I do however feel they got it right. If NTL bring out some prices for extra £/GIG I doubt we will see anything below £1 per gig, possibly if brought in bulk but certinaly not in single gig allotments. The top package is probably aimed at user's who 40 gig is too restrictive for, perhaps something like this?

1 mbit - 5 gig 17.99
2 mbit - 30 gig 24.99
3 mbit - 50 gig 37.99
3 mbit - 100 gig 44.99
3 mbit - unmetered 49.99 (to match telewest)

[ian@huth]

I think that 40Gb for the 3Mb tier is about right for now. Once users have reached this allowance they should either be throttled back or charged per Gb at a realistic rate which would be at least £1 per Gb. Start flaming!

I know that some people will come out with all the possible legal uses that require more than 40Gb per month, but why should the average user subsidise their need? Some will say that families with multiple computers and users will soon eat the limit up, but again why should the average user have to pay the same as four or five users sharing a connection?

[AndrewJ]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

<snip>
1 mbit - 5 gig 17.99
2 mbit - 30 gig 24.99
3 mbit - 50 gig 37.99
3 mbit - 100 gig 44.99
3 mbit - unmetered 49.99 (to match telewest)

/agree sound good to me.

Originally Posted by ianathuth

I think that 40Gb for the 3Mb tier is about right for now. Once users have reached this allowance they should either be throttled back or charged per Gb at a realistic rate which would be at least £1 per Gb. Start flaming!

I know that some people will come out with all the possible legal uses that require more than 40Gb per month, but why should the average user subsidise their need? Some will say that families with multiple computers and users will soon eat the limit up, but again why should the average user have to pay the same as four or five users sharing a connection?

And the linux distro comes to mind. I use linux and i am not downloading updates and distros every day. 40 gig will do me fine however i would like to be able to buy more if i need it .

[allanprg]

I'll be happy with the 1gb. As I don't download that much it will be more than enough for me.