*ALL* ntl Cap Discussion Here Please. - Page 7

Stuart · 06-01-2005, 14:34

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Originally Posted by Chrysalis

I thought the best question asked to ignition was why Telewest could offer higher download/upload and have no cap and no reduced performance its a shame he couldn't answer it, I have to assume its company greed. Fact is Telewest have made NTL look like idiots and shown it is quite easily possible to offer more. COX us cable isp has recently upgraded their customs to 4mbit/768kbit free its not announced on their website yet tho. Interesting tho look into these points.

The other way to look at it is NTL is offering the upgrades to all parts of the network that can take broadband. Telewest don't.. Telewest have a smaller network to maintain (therefore lower costs). From what Neil has said in the past, they also have a habit of not upgrading areas that will be too expensive.

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1 - A good ISP actually caring about their users will upgrade them before they announce it or at least very soon after, NTL have gone the other way and announced it and we recieve the upgrades up to half a year or so later.
2 - NTL cant give without taking, the first upgrade seen the top tier have a price increase (some will claim its unrelated) and this upgrade see's a admin charge and a hard cap been added.

Can't disagree there, although AFAIK NTL haven't actually introduced a "hard" cap (I take it you mean that downloads will cut off after that point).

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3 - We keep hearing again and again from the die hard supporters of a cap that if there is no cap we all suffer from horrible speeds, funny how telewesy have no such issue, pipex have no such issues, plusnet have no such issues, aol has no such issues, nildram has no such issues and they all offer unmetered.

Do you know this? There could be thousands of Telewest users that get crap speeds. Same with all the ADSL providers. It's entirely possible people just don't complain. Remember, before becoming CableForum, this site did not really cater for other broadband users, and a lot probably don't know about it.

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4 - The top tier offers 40 gig a month, following NTL's tradition to shaft the highest paying customer's using the excuse we dont want people to download 24/7, well 24/7 on a 3mbit connection is 900 gig a month, so why not say a 150 gig limit which will do the same and no allow anything near 24/7 but give users a decent limit.

When I said 24/7, I did not mean literally 24/7..

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5 - A few people here seem to think price is everything, well it isn't quite a few people here have said they will pay more for a better product so why not offer it.

An arguement I have used many times with NTL..

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6 - The big question still unanswered, why cant NTL provide the same quality of service as telewest and yet they have more money to spend. They have a bigger network which is an "advantage" since contention is less visible on bigger pipes.

NTL are larger, they do have more cash, BUT, they also have larger costs and a larger network. IIRC what Frank said on nthw.com, the bandwidth provided by NTL networks to NTL home is more than adequate for their current and anticipated needs, BUT NTL home have had to spend a lot of money (tens of millions of pounds) upgrading their own hardware to enable the faster speeds. Obviously the Venture Capitalist who provided this money will want it back with Interest.

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7 - Why do customers have to frequently goto their local managing director to get a decent resolution to their problems, whats up with customer services attitude lately.

How do you know the customers frequently need to do this? Are you basing that on what you read on this site? Bear in mind that this site is not necessarily representative of people's experience of NTL (or any company) as a whole. It only has a few thousand users, and a lot of those may have joined specifically to complain about something.

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8 - Its 6th january and no news of upgrades starting although I am not going to switch now, when do we expect to see it starting.

Some good questions I think.

It's only the first week of the year, NTL, like a lot of companies, has probably been running with a skeleton staff over Christmas. A lot of their staff probably only worked a three day week last week, then came back to work on Tuesday. This site was offline from Tuesday evening, and was fairly unreliable last night.

In short, I would be suprised if any company would schedule what is quite a major job for the first week in the year, and even if they did, the users may not have been able to post the fact to this site.

06-01-2005, 17:49

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Originally Posted by Chrysalis

8 - Its 6th january and no news of upgrades starting although I am not going to switch now, when do we expect to see it starting.

If your are not switching to the higher speeds then why do you need to know.

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Originally Posted by Chrysalis

8 - Its 6th january and no news of upgrades starting although I am not going to switch now, when do we expect to see it starting.

Better ask Centrica and British gas then, They might know more

enjoymarcus · 06-01-2005, 17:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by scastle

Because they are a business? Wether you agree with it or not, NTL do have a responsibility to pay their debts as well as having shareholders. Obviously they need to balance these up with keeping the customer happy. Also bear in mind that with heavy downloaders they do actually make quite a large loss on the account (so if you are a 1.5 Meg user and download 24/7, you are costing NTL far more than you are paying them).

Edit: Actually, although you are costing NTL more directly, they will pass that charge on to everyone else, so indirectly, you are costing everyone else more.

I know there is no official announcement, but if the rumours on this site are true, then these "caps" are not actually cut off points, but simply the point at which NTL will start charging extra for bandwidth usage. I may get flamed for this, but I think this is fair.

Hmm, me thinks that you and Mark B have shares in NTL..

06-01-2005, 18:01

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Originally Posted by enjoymarcus

Hmm, me thinks that you and Mark B have shares in NTL..

BTW luton ubr,s show some interesting usage

enjoymarcus · 06-01-2005, 18:06

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Originally Posted by Bill C

BTW luton ubr,s show some interesting usage

lol, Luton is in Bedfordshire, i thought my nearest UBR was Hatfield. Anyway, when will the hard caps be imposed? I only have 5 months left at my student residence in Nottingham, so im wondering if it will effect me. You will also be pleased to know that i have ran out of things to download...

orangebird · 06-01-2005, 18:06

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Originally Posted by Bill C

If your are not switching to the higher speeds then why do you need to know.

Better ask Centrica and British gas then, They might know more

pmsl!

06-01-2005, 18:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by enjoymarcus

lol, Luton is in Bedfordshire, i thought my nearest UBR was Hatfield. Anyway, when will the hard caps be imposed? I only have 5 months left at my student residence in Nottingham, so im wondering if it will effect me. You will also be pleased to know that i have ran out of things to download...

what happend to Warrington. Dont tell me you have a personal transporter .

Stuart · 06-01-2005, 18:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by enjoymarcus

Hmm, me thinks that you and Mark B have shares in NTL..

Nope... Just being realistic. Where I can see NTL is being bad, I'll say so. If I think they are being fair, I'll say so.

enjoymarcus · 06-01-2005, 18:12

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Originally Posted by Bill C

what happend to Warrington. Dont tell me you have a personal transporter .

I got bored of it, internet was too slow, damn leechers.

Stuart · 06-01-2005, 18:14

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Originally Posted by enjoymarcus

I got bored of it, internet was too slow, damn leechers.

LOL

enjoymarcus · 06-01-2005, 18:15

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Originally Posted by scastle

Nope... Just being realistic. Where I can see NTL is being bad, I'll say so. If I think they are being fair, I'll say so.

Nah, in all honestly, you guys are right, people do actually really take the ****, if i was NTL i would do a similar thing, or charge more for unlimited usage, the ironic thing is, NTL (in the majority of cases) are paying for illegal activities. If this cap results in faster speeds in the future, then its a good thing.

06-01-2005, 18:17

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Originally Posted by scastle

Nope... Just being realistic. Where I can see NTL is being bad, I'll say so. If I think they are being fair, I'll say so.

Its so good to see a balanced post much better than the very few that just prefer They are dammed if they do and dammed if they don't.

06-01-2005, 18:21

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Originally Posted by enjoymarcus

Nah, in all honestly, you guys are right, people do actually really take the ****, if i was NTL i would do a similar thing, or charge more for unlimited usage, the ironic thing is, NTL (in the majority of cases) are paying for illegal activities. If this cap results in faster speeds in the future, then its a good thing.

On a personal point and nothing to do with my work for NTL.

I would pay for a unlimited option myself. We will just have to wait and see if they are watching this site and if they take notice of the points customers have made here.

tomjleeds · 06-01-2005, 18:33

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Originally Posted by ianathuth

Contention on cable is felt most at UBR card level and no matter how big the network is or how fat the pipes are after that. It is what users on a specific UBR card do that affects service most and several 24/7 leechers on the same card can be a big problem. The solution would be to add extra UBRs which are very expensive or to cap the heavy users. Why should an ISP spend thousands of pounds on upgrading just so that a very small minority of customers can continue to download the entire internet 24/7.

I do hope I haven't made myself out to be a leecher in the few posts I've made in this thread. In fact, I upload far more for my connection than I download (obviously I don't actually upload as much, but when you're uploading about 25GB per month on a 128Kbps upstream connection compared to a similar amount on a 750Kbps downstream connection, you get the impression that you're actually uploading more seeing as it's happening pretty much all the time). I guess I might be classed as an upstream leecher, I don't know.

I don't really have a problem with caps, and I think that GrahamD has quite a good idea (see below). I'd be happy with, say, a 50GB/month cap on a 2Mbps downstream connection, and when you hit it you'd drop to 300Kbps. What I'd really like is to have a 300Kbps upstream connection with the 2Mbps package and a 500Kbps upstream with the 3Mbps one.

Put it this way - I'd rather have a faster upstream and a downstream cap than a slower upstream and unlimited downstream transfer.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GrahamD

Personally, I would be much happier with the idea of a cap, if it was not a hard cut-off. If exceeding the cap meant that you were restricted to 300K for the rest of the month, you could still carry on with "essential" surfing (buying birthday presents, paying bills, webmail, etc).

Shaun · 06-01-2005, 18:33

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Originally Posted by Chrysalis

Mark B, then how are other companies making money and offering more then NTL, the question is do they want to make a profit or do they want to make a obscene profit.

Try looking at it the other way around, why are NTL not offering as much as other companies. In my experience its because of poor management and people why work at NTL (especially call centre/billing staff) not doing their job right.

And before I get flamed, yes I know there are many people at NTL that do an excellent job, so put that flame thrower down Debs