*ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please

[scrotnig]

Originally Posted by phl_spector

Okay, I'll reword it. They need to ask their customers. Smarty pants.

Market research is done all the time, and most people aren't bothered.

I happen to personally think the 3gb one on the 1mb service is possibly a bit tight, but then even that isn't being objected to by the majority. And of course at that level you aren't forced onto it anyway.

People would be surprised just how many people say '300k is more than enough for me'. It's designed as an entry level service. I personally think it should be left open to new customers as well as just existing ones.

[ian@huth]

Doesn't anyone stop to think that NTL have carefully studied the internet usage of their customers before deciding on the caps? They know what their customers are using both in terms of volume and type of usage. They know how many customers are likely to be affected by the caps. They are not commencing a self destruction exercise which some on here think they are. Some people think that everyone at NTL is a fool and the company is incapable of making an intelligent business decision. There are fools, yes, but most of them are posting crap on here and by that I don't mean NTL employees.

[Nemesis]

Originally Posted by ianathuth

Doesn't anyone stop to think that NTL have carefully studied the internet usage of their customers before deciding on the caps? They know what their customers are using both in terms of volume and type of usage. They know how many customers are likely to be affected by the caps. They are not commencing a self destruction exercise which some on here think they are. Some people think that everyone at NTL is a fool and the company is incapable of making an intelligent business decision. There are fools, yes, but most of them are posting crap on here and by that I don't mean NTL employees.

The fact of the matter is .... It's a very small minority that exceed the limits on a regular basis, and if they are doing it regularly, then why should the other customers in their area suffer because of it.

In this day and age, we all have a choice. IMO if those that regularly exceed the cap limits leave, then good, it makes my life easier as a bona fide customer, and it maybe makes them search for and find something that is more appropriate for their usage.

So if you don't like the offers on the table because you won't be able to abuse the system quite so easily (ahh diddums), the please leave, I mean it, please. There are over 800,000 of us that will have an easier life if you do.

[Horace]

People have enough to worry about without having to watch their and their families bandwidth usage. The moment people start getting put down to 56k(if that is the case) or disconnected they'll leave NTL completely.
Explanation : It's damn easy to go over 30gig usage, a bit of virus infection here, a trojan or two there, spyware, kids downloading on peer to peer networks etc etc and then legitimate usage on top of that. When you have thousands of families who don't even understand the concept of a bit or byte how the hell are you going to get them to monitor their usage especially when you have many families now with networks, wired or wireless(as promoted by NTL ho ho) with PC's in kids bedrooms.
Are NTL losing money on broadband? If not then they should quit being greedy before their Indian tech support gets inundated with lots of zero-tech people complaining that their network sucks because they're getting crappy download speeds. This hasn't been thought through. If NTL can monitor bandwidth or will be able to shortly then they should only target the leeches that are downloading multiple gigs a day and leave everyone else to pay their monthly bills and not have to scream at the kids for using the PC too much. Even if people don't hit the caps, the worry of it is enough for them to stuff the service altogether, hell maybe we might be the first major economy in the world to see a decrease in broadband usage.

[Doofy]

I regularly visit people on NTL cable who simply do not have a clue. They have got 2 hopes of keeping an eye on there usage Bob hope and no hope, the first a lot of people will know about it is when the connection suddenly drops to a crawl. I sometimes not all the time go over the limit last month i hit over 30 gig and no i am not running a pirate cd business either. The bottom line is i have more than 1 comp connected (family) Some people will genuinely require higher usage levels quite legally, i dont see much provision made for such people at this time.

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by Horace

People have enough to worry about without having to watch their and their families bandwidth usage. The moment people start getting put down to 56k(if that is the case) or disconnected they'll leave NTL completely.
Explanation : It's damn easy to go over 30gig usage, a bit of virus infection here, a trojan or two there, spyware, kids downloading on peer to peer networks etc etc and then legitimate usage on top of that. When you have thousands of families who don't even understand the concept of a bit or byte how the hell are you going to get them to monitor their usage especially when you have many families now with networks, wired or wireless(as promoted by NTL ho ho) with PC's in kids bedrooms.
Are NTL losing money on broadband? If not then they should quit being greedy before their Indian tech support gets inundated with lots of zero-tech people complaining that their network sucks because they're getting crappy download speeds. This hasn't been thought through. If NTL can monitor bandwidth or will be able to shortly then they should only target the leeches that are downloading multiple gigs a day and leave everyone else to pay their monthly bills and not have to scream at the kids for using the PC too much. Even if people don't hit the caps, the worry of it is enough for them to stuff the service altogether, hell maybe we might be the first major economy in the world to see a decrease in broadband usage.

It's not damn easy to go over 30Gb a month. Don't blame the kids for excessive and illegal use, control them. Do you let them have free reign with your telephone, they may be racking up massive bills calling their friends mobiles. Viruses and trojans are rarely if ever going to result in massive regular bandwidth consumption. Most things in life have to be monitored, gas, electricity, water, petrol, telephone, credit card usage, cash spent, etc. etc. so why not internet usage. The internet is not free and users have to pay the cost of using it. If you want unlimited internet access on the cheap then QOS will suffer. If you want a decent service then you will eventually have to pay a much higher price or face usage restrictions.
__________________

Originally Posted by Doofy

I regularly visit people on NTL cable who simply do not have a clue. They have got 2 hopes of keeping an eye on there usage Bob hope and no hope, the first a lot of people will know about it is when the connection suddenly drops to a crawl. I sometimes not all the time go over the limit last month i hit over 30 gig and no i am not running a pirate cd business either. The bottom line is i have more than 1 comp connected (family) Some people will genuinely require higher usage levels quite legally, i dont see much provision made for such people at this time.

The old chestnut of multi PC homes. Why should a single user subsidise the multi user household? If you buy a cake you can eat it yourself or share it. If you are going to share it the shop will not give you more than one cake for the same price you each have a smaller piece.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by ianathuth

It's not damn easy to go over 30Gb a month. Don't blame the kids for excessive and illegal use, control them. Do you let them have free reign with your telephone, they may be racking up massive bills calling their friends mobiles. Viruses and trojans are rarely if ever going to result in massive regular bandwidth consumption. Most things in life have to be monitored, gas, electricity, water, petrol, telephone, credit card usage, cash spent, etc. etc. so why not internet usage. The internet is not free and users have to pay the cost of using it. If you want unlimited internet access on the cheap then QOS will suffer. If you want a decent service then you will eventually have to pay a much higher price or face usage restrictions.

It aint that difficult either with my comp and the kids on there on line gaming etc etc, the list is endless are you saying that because i sometimes hit over 30 gig i must automatically be participating in illegal activity? Just a tadge short sighted and presumptious me thinks. I know people who hammer there cable 24/7 and i do agree with capping them but to penalise the majority for the minority is a bit much IMO. I Myself tend to deal a lot with graphic art etc etc and that does go through some bandwidth, so i am to be capped for indulging in something i enjoy, on the presumption i must be breaking the law.

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by Doofy

It aint that difficult either with my comp and the kids on there on line gaming etc etc, the list is endless are you saying that because i sometimes hit over 30 gig i must automatically be participating in illegal activity? Just a tadge short sighted and presumptious me thinks. I know people who hammer there cable 24/7 and i do agree with capping them but to penalise the majority for the minority is a bit much IMO. I Myself tend to deal a lot with graphic art etc etc and that does go through some bandwidth, so i am to be capped for indulging in something i enjoy, on the presumption i must be breaking the law.

Sorry, but if you read my post the part you have quoted is my response to Horace, not yourself so I was not being presumptious about your use. In answer to your post I was suggesting that single users should not have to subsidise multi PC homes.

[Hippo]

Just a word from this very middle aged newbie, who has just gone on to the lowest 300k service from NTL. from a regular the dial up service.

I down loaded one of the many measuring tools mentioned and ran it for 48 hours.

Conclusion for me?

If you are on the 300k service don`t touch the speed increase with it`s cap while you still have the option to remain where you are!!

A very ordinary for me use gave me a figure of 0.831GB over the two days, at a faster sevice for sure than dialup but overall not much different in total to normal dial up use, it just happend faster.

We are not talking exoctic stuff here, just E mail, sending photo`s to relitives, normal windows and other sofwear updates, a little streaming radio, downloading a couple of music tunes, installed computer stuff doing routine updates and regular forum visits combined with the odd post.

Just the same pattern of use I used with dial up!!

With a 3 GB cap I would die in about 7 days!!

Hippo

[clayts]

I've been monitoring mine too - 1.2GB on two days, and that's on 750K - nothing extra special downloaded, just plain browsing, with a couple of streaming movie browsers thrown in....

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by ianathuth

Sorry, but if you read my post the part you have quoted is my response to Horace, not yourself so I was not being presumptious about your use. In answer to your post I was suggesting that single users should not have to subsidise multi PC homes.

In that case my appologies to you I still fee that NTL are going to have a few problems with this one i personally wouldnt trust NTL to monitor my usage and get it right, they had great difficulty getting my phone bill right some months. At the end of the day we shall hve to wait and see, and take it from there.

[zitianaki]

ntl are doing bad, blueyonders customers laughing they happy on 4Mb no limit and ukonline... the path i chose due to not being able to go with yonder... 2Mb unmeterd(29.99) i am on and its great speeds by the time all ntl reach 1/2/3Mb ill be on 8Mb laughing. cap. 500GB which is plenty leaving ntl was a good thing,plus with ukonline if you sign up and put another members name say they told you about it , then you both geta free month how good is that rewarding customers for just signing up with a free month invite enough u got loads of time free, check it out see how good they are.

i have a monitor going to see how much i use and even when i do nothing its downloading an duploading no way are ntls caps enough, though i see alot worse. isps with 15GB cap and if you go over then your speed gets dropped to 64kb so ntl arent the worse isp but the way its going its definatly in the top 10 worse for bad cap limits other then that ntl are fine total so far 20GB and thats for 3 days i would never have stuck to the limit though with all the heavy downloaders gone it gonna be good for the rest of you left on ntl.... good luck with it have fun complaining about sucky speeds and caps. *lurks watching*

[Horace]

Originally Posted by ianathuth

It's not damn easy to go over 30Gb a month. Don't blame the kids for excessive and illegal use, control them. Do you let them have free reign with your telephone, they may be racking up massive bills calling their friends mobiles

.
I have no children here to control, but I do know families where the parents work and can't sit over their children 24/7 to watch how much they download, even if they knew how to monitor their usage.
When using a PC it's not particularly obvious that someone is downloading gigs worth of movies in the background when they're playing a game or whatever, remember, we live in a society where the youngest members of a family are often far more tech savvy than their bill paying parents. Do a survey of NTL customers and find out how many know what task manager is or how many megabytes are in a gigabyte.
I guess NTL want superfit parents running back and forward checking on their childrens usage by using bandwidth monitoring software with the parents pointing out what they can and can't download, calculator in hand. You really don't have a clue and need to move into the real world.

Originally Posted by ianathuth

Viruses and trojans are rarely if ever going to result in massive regular bandwidth consumption. Most things in life have to be monitored, gas, electricity, water, petrol, telephone, credit card usage, cash spent, etc. etc. so why not internet usage.

Because NTL amongst other companies grew big and fat from people using their internet in an unrestricted environment.First the carrot, now the stick. For the most part you don't find people watching the clock when using the net, we grew out of that when broadband became an affordable possiblilty and left 56k behind, now NTL want the stopwatch to start ticking again. Maybe CUT should restart their campaigning.

Originally Posted by ianathuth

The internet is not free and users have to pay the cost of using it. If you want unlimited internet access on the cheap then QOS will suffer. If you want a decent service then you will eventually have to pay a much higher price or face usage restrictions.

I don't want an unlimited service, but I do want NTL to survive as a company. If it's making money now with all those nasty leeching pirates selling DVD's and XBox games why change things, hell scrap the speed upgrades and leave the soft caps as they are.Then put the monitoring in place and boot the 200gig per month downloaders. Problem is, NTL want headline grabbing speeds to attract people to cable away from DSL(remember to read the small print guys!) but don't want to finance the necessary network upgrades.

[garyparson]

Originally Posted by Ignition

Pot, kettle, black, no-one likes pontificating or hypocracy.

I don't really see the relevance of CR2's volume issue in this conversation either directly or in relation to the services that networks (completely different unit from those who write said software) provides.

and pointing out that i'm not on topic is on topic is it? i was replying to someone who responded to my post as no doubt you will to this.

not on topic either but neither will be my reply to you next load of drivel.

[etccarmageddon]

Originally Posted by Paul M

I must admit that as things stand, I'm considering moving to the new 2M service and saving £156 year.

I predict that a lot of customers will be choosing the 2mb product because the price difference of the 3mb option is too high and thus either the 3mb product will be increased to 4mb or the price will be dropped.