New STM could be coming your way

[AbyssUnderground]

Originally Posted by graf_von_anonym

The business of running to OFCOM is, to my mind, just continued escalation from "I am going to cancel unless..." and "I want to talk to a manager". It's a product of frustration, because processes and procedures have not perhaps been clearly explained or understood. In the grand scheme of things I'd be overjoyed if I the thing that concerned me most was that sometimes my broadband were slower than at other times.

But Ofcom have the power to stop this, so why don't they? It would stop the amount of pathetic calls they keep getting from every man and his dog about being throttled.

In my eyes, no company should be allowed to call their service "unlimited" if they artificially change or throttle the speed to that lower than you are paying for, for ANY amount of time.

Ofcom can do it, so why don't they? I don't understand. If I was someone at Ofcom who could make this decision I would have done it a long time ago.

[Ed2020]

Originally Posted by AbyssUnderground

But Ofcom have the power to stop this, so why don't they? It would stop the amount of pathetic calls they keep getting from every man and his dog about being throttled.

In my eyes, no company should be allowed to call their service "unlimited" if they artificially change or throttle the speed to that lower than you are paying for, for ANY amount of time.

Ofcom can do it, so why don't they? I don't understand. If I was someone at Ofcom who could make this decision I would have done it a long time ago.

I agree completely with these sentiments. I tried taking it up with the Advertising Standards Agency. Didn't do me any good though.


Ed.

[psyfur]

Does STM apply for the 50Meg phatpipe?

[AbyssUnderground]

Originally Posted by psyfur

Does STM apply for the 50Meg phatpipe?

Not at the moment, but it is set to apparently. Yet another point defeating change...

[psyfur]

Originally Posted by AbyssUnderground

Not at the moment, but it is set to apparently. Yet another point defeating change...

Shame, if there was no STM I would upgrade in a second. We don't get much choice of suppliers where I live in Cambridge, all the phone exchanges are carbon dated and set to upgraded until 2012....

So that only leaves the greenbox brigade ....

[Lee]

Originally Posted by graf_von_anonym

From my lofty vantage point in Castell Anonym I can say that (in my admittedly limited experience) I have not yet seen more than about 3% of subscribers on any given CMTS traffic managed on any given day. I would say that my lofty vantage point is entirely unscientific, however, and should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Surely this is because people are aware of STM and modifying their downloads accordingly?

The only true way to know what %age would be affected, would be to tell everyone STM was no longer in force and then monitor how many would have been stm'd.

[graf_von_anonym]

Originally Posted by AbyssUnderground

In my eyes, no company should be allowed to call their service "unlimited" if they artificially change or throttle the speed to that lower than you are paying for, for ANY amount of time.

That's part of the problem - what you're paying for is an 'up to' connection, with Terms & Conditions attached. No ISP* has enough capacity to give every user their theoretical maximum simultaneously: it's a product of contention, subscription numbers, the burst model of download, and so on and so forth. There's no minimum either. At the moment there's no SLA on Virgin's broadband offering, other than "you will have a connection". If you want guarantees this is the wrong industry. Too many variables.

Originally Posted by AbyssUnderground

Ofcom can do it, so why don't they?

Well, OFCOM have it within their theoretical power, but not within their actual power. Enforcing minimum service levels would cripple most broadband providers (see note from above), and BT and Virgin would be ruined. I mean, average broadband speed in the UK is, what, 3.6Mb, multiply that by the 15 million odd subscribers and you're looking of backbone requirements of, er, 54Tb. Which is faster than the world record and about 1500 times faster than the current biggest pipe in deployment.

Given the choice between maintaining the status quo or some combination of; drastically reducing headline speeds across the board, requiring ISPs to increase their capacity by several orders of magnitude, admitting that all internet speed advertising is effectively meaningless; they'll go with the former.

Though the ASA did slap Virgin for the most recent campaign, so it's not all doom and gloom.

---------- Post added at 15:38 ---------- Previous post was at 15:34 ----------

Originally Posted by Lee

Surely this is because people are aware of STM and modifying their downloads accordingly?

Yes, and, indeed, no.

Originally Posted by OFCOM

The research also revealed that, while 91% of consumers said that speed was an important consideration when signing up with their current broadband provider, 28% of them were unaware of the headline speed package they purchased.

Caveat lector and all, but lots of people remain unaware of STM despite the fact it's been on the VM network for well over a year. You've also got to remember that (according to the bumpf) traffic management for that small number improves speeds for the majority.

Originally Posted by Lee

The only true way to know what %age would be affected, would be to tell everyone STM was no longer in force and then monitor how many would have been stm'd.

That's unlikely to happen, as that action in and of itself would probably constitute a violation of terms and conditions. It's certainly possible to examine traffic usage according to time of day, so you could see if heavier downloaders were avoiding peak times, but that action is to everyone's benefit; it's like keeping lorries off the road during rush hour.


* There's probably an exception somewhere. I'm generalising wildly here.

[AbyssUnderground]

I'm not talking about enforcing minimum levels, I'm talking about banning the advertisement of "unlimited" when its being artificially limited to a much slower speed than the one you're advertised to get "upto". That in itself is false advertising because they say "upto 10Mbps" for example, but when you get STM'ed its no longer possible to get "upto 10Mbps" because they're deliberately artificially limiting it to prevent it otherwise!

I will not rest this case until Ofcom or Virgin do something about it, or BT do something about the crappy wiring in my area and allow me to switch to Be* or O2. Even if Virgin could offer 10Mbps to every person, how many of those will actually use it 24/7 week after week? I can bet virtually none.

No ISP or even any datacenter has the ability to provide 1:1 to every single customer. Its all about capacity and controlled overselling. Virgin oversell their bandwidth to stupid levels, where as other ISP's such as O2 and Be* stop when it starts to affect their customers "peak demand".

For example if you have a 100Mbps line, and you sell it to 100 people as a 10Mbps line, but 90 of those people use it just for the odd e-mail and ebay, and the other 10 use it fairly harshly, thats controlled overselling. Its rare to see the bandwidth drop for those higher use users if they all use it at once (which in itself is probably a rarity). Thats how O2 and Be* operate.

However if you have a 100Mbps line, and you sell it to 100 people as a 10Mbps line, but just 60 of those people use it for e-mail and ebay, you're selling 10Mbps to 40 people on a 100Mbps line, who are going to use it quite heavily and rarely get anywhere near the 10Mbps they're paying for. Thats how virgin appear to work, and it just doesn't work, hence the need for STM to drop that baseline 10Mbps to 2.5Mbps so everyone can essentially max out their broadband to its "new maximum speed" without affecting anyone.

I hope the maths was right there... I'm not very well so it might not be...

[Fatec]

Wigan
Blackpool

Also now under the new STM trial.

[Impz2002]

Originally Posted by graf_von_anonym

That's part of the problem - what you're paying for is an 'up to' connection, with Terms & Conditions attached. No ISP* has enough capacity to give every user their theoretical maximum simultaneously: it's a product of contention, subscription numbers, the burst model of download, and so on and so forth. There's no minimum either. At the moment there's no SLA on Virgin's broadband offering, other than "you will have a connection". If you want guarantees this is the wrong industry. Too many variables.

Bravo ! someone who talks perfect sense !

[broadbandking]

The only way they get away with the unlimited term is because there is no set limit that Virgin give that you can download i.e 20Gb and then you cant use your net anymore or charged any extra i.e per gb

---------- Post added at 17:52 ---------- Previous post was at 17:52 ----------

Originally Posted by Fatec

Wigan
Blackpool

Also now under the new STM trial.

Normal areas for trials then

[bigtoe]

It would not be as bad if VM reduced your BB cost during times you are throttled.

IE split the 20mb charge into cost per day at full speed, if you happen to be throttled have a lower rate for those minutes used.

Your total is mailed to you with your BB bill breakdown, when you hit 1 free day VM give you a refund off your bill.

Will never happen I know but I would feel a LOT better if it did. I hate paying for something just so a speed benchmark says i have it...and if I use it to much i lose it.

[bonzoe]

mmmmm...Why oh why can't VM (if they MUST have STM) apply it in a fairway, ie based on say a monthly download limit. Lots of ordinary users, who certainly are not in the top 5% of downloaders, occasionally download an ISO and get STM'd, but come nowhere near the STM limit when aggregated over a week/month/quarter.

They really like taking sledge hammers to crack a nut, no finesse, just crude (possibly easiest to implement) methods of implementation which annoys so many PAYING CUSTOMERS.

[KingDaveRa]

Those limits are far too low IMHO. It's a shame Virgin are selling what is a pretty good service, but making it brain dead in the process. I can only assume VM's network is a LOT more expensive to run than say Be's, and they save on bandwidth costs to balance it out.

Of course, I bet they'd rather do this, than raise prices.

[Rexz]

I remember the days of telewest, when they threatened you with letters or phone calls if you were downloading constantly but there were no STM's as far as I am aware. Maybe the there wern't as many customers with telewest then as there is with Virgin Media now but it shows that virgin have taken on new customers without network upgrades. Finally they decide to deploy docsis3 but then why then roll out a new STM policy for 10 and 20mbit when 20mbit was meant to be going on docsis3 leaving space for docsis2 and up to 10mbit customers? seems to me like their calculations even with docsis 3 can't cope with the current customer base. Or maybe their backbones can't cope? who knows?