If I ran virgin media

[Billy-Bob]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

If I ran VM it would be bankrupt. I'm a decent engineer but don't know quite so much about how to run a business

Now that's the wisest thing I've read on this site for years.

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

If I ran VM it would be bankrupt. I'm a decent engineer but don't know quite so much about how to run a business

But everyone makes it sound so simple.....

[mentalis]

If you all bought VM I would chip in a monthly amount to keep it going.

[Gary L]

If I ran Virgin Media I'd make the broadband truly "unlimited" and I'd make all the prices on the site transparent enough so they're not so much misleading to not so bright people.

And how would this non-contended unlimited service be paid for, as to get a similiar service on a commercial basis costs my company a couple of thousand pounds per month per line?

[Gary L]

Originally Posted by Hugh

And how would this non-contended unlimited service be paid for

From the money that my customers pay for it.
if it's not enough to cover the costs then I'd drop the "unlimited" bit from the advertising and marketing.

Originally Posted by Gary L

From the money that my customers pay for it.
if it's not enough to cover the costs then I'd drop the "unlimited" bit from the advertising and marketing.

Typical supplier - start off promising one thing, then changing your message and backtracking almost immediately....

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by Hugh

And how would this non-contended unlimited service be paid for, as to get a similiar service on a commercial basis costs my company a couple of thousand pounds per month per line?

why does it have to be non contended?

you just contend low enough so that those who do use it heavily have capacity available for their use.

thast is a big misunderstanding in that some people think a line has to be 1:1 to allow unlimited use forgetting most people wont utilise it fully.

eg. I had a true unlimited service on my last adsl isp for £22 month.
sky broadband (LLU) and BE are near enough true unlimited as well.

But if it isn't uncontended, and you do get contention, you will get someone complaining they don't have unlimited use (which is why business lines are 1:1).....

[Gary L]

Originally Posted by Hugh

Typical supplier - start off promising one thing, then changing your message and backtracking almost immediately....

Silly me. I thought you were telling me I can't afford to provide the unlimited service I sell.

No, I was asking you how you would....

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by Hugh

But if it isn't uncontended, and you do get contention, you will get someone complaining they don't have unlimited use (which is why business lines are 1:1).....

no thats different to an isp doing things to artifically restrict such as STM, AUP letters and so on.

Of course also if congestion occurs then can reduce contention further till it stops, before you say it be just about impossible to need 1:1 to achieve that. Seems you can only think at extremes, either 1:1 or limited, its perfectly possible to sell an unlimited service on a contended service and its been done in the past many times. It got broken when talktalk etc. started breaking the price structure and isp's increased contention.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

If I ran VM it would be bankrupt. I'm a decent engineer but don't know quite so much about how to run a business

I'm not quite as good an engineer but I am taking a degree in management (particularly technology management), I'm sure we can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement

To be honest though for anyone running a media company the size of VM, broadband FUPs and contention ratios would make up a fairly small amount of their time and more likely delegated to someone lower down, CTO perhaps being the highest person who'd actually care.

---------- Post added at 14:54 ---------- Previous post was at 14:49 ----------

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

no thats different to an isp doing things to artifically restrict such as STM, AUP letters and so on.

Of course also if congestion occurs then can reduce contention further till it stops, before you say it be just about impossible to need 1:1 to achieve that. Seems you can only think at extremes, either 1:1 or limited, its perfectly possible to sell an unlimited service on a contended service and its been done in the past many times. It got broken when talktalk etc. started breaking the price structure and isp's increased contention.

Indeed correct.

By my (very approximate) reckoning a network comprised of nothing but the top 1% of heavy users would still be happy with a 10:1 to 20:1 contention ratio, that level would be sufficient that they probably won't be able to tell the difference from a 1:1. However, the pipe ratios also matter in reducing the potential for visible contention. In any case on VM's network, I'm apparently an extremely heavy user (within the top 0.1%) but 30:1 suits me just fine.

The assumption contention has to be 1:1 to sell a truly unlimited service only applies under the assumption that every single user uses 100% of their line speed, absolutely all the time.

Which I know very rarely would be true, but you can bet your bottom dollar someone one would be on here complaining to high heaven re "unlimited" if it happened......

We have 4x1GB (and a couple of 30Mb & 100Mb) pipes at work, and they normally run at around 20-30% bandwidth utilisation, but occasionally (very rarely) hit high 90s.

[qasdfdsaq]

Thing is in that case it wouldn't be the 'unlimited' downloads aspect that's being affected but rather the 'Up to X mb' speed - it would still be an 'unlimited' service, only speeds may fluctuate down to, say, 45mb instead of 50mb but they could still download as much as they want (which is not the case with VM at the moment).

If everyone *were* to download at 100% speed 100% of the time, then that area might require a close to 1:1 contention ratio, but the key here is meeting demand - a small 0.1% area might need 1:1 to meet demand but in the remainder of the country you could still make massive savings on economies of scale and provide 30:1 or worse, and still give everyone all the downloads and speeds they want.

Think of it this way, if as a consumer you could 30 times less for a connection of the same speed, where you could still download as much as you want at full speed whenever you want, on the proviso the speed might drop by 10%, 10% of the time, wouldn't you?