[Merged] Wanadoo Broadband

[ian@huth]

There are people that only want their internet connection for very occasional use but who want the speed when they do use it.

NTLs cap is not the 30 GB a month that is being regularly quoted, it is in reality two to three times that figure. Remember that you can exceed the 1 GB a day on a few days a month.

[keithwalton]

I tend to listen to shoutcast radio quite abit, which uses 128kbit/s which isnt much at the time but it would soon add up.
Really even for surfing i would at least go for 512k just so that pictures on pages load in reasnoble time.
I was on 100mbit uni connection last year and got abit to used to its speed. As afterwards i spent a week on 56k whilst waiting for the adsl to be activated.
and tbh i strugle to imagine how i / we used to cope at that speed.
A typical image from a digital camera would take 5-10mins to load and could fail / timeout. Where as on bb it takes like 5 seconds.

Caps are unfair, and if an isp tries and inflicts it on me i'll change provider and keep on changing until there isnt any left. And on that day i'll learn to live without the net at home

K

[MovedGoalPosts]

Hmm, At first glance I don't have a problem with Wanadoo having a low cost, but restricted use service. That's on the basis that the restictions are clearly understood at point of sale, and certainly they are spelling that out, on their web site far better than ntl do in respect of the ntl caps. However if there is a cap it needs to still be appropriate to the service offered. BT's 1GB a month is ludicrous for their 512k light service. I don't think Wanadoo is much better.

More significant however is Wanadoo, appear to be hiding the really bad news under cover of their rebranding from Freeserve. Their website now shows all BB use will be capped, and the thresholds are for combined upload and download. Amazingly they make ntl look generous, especially at the 512k level which is restricted to 15Gb a month.

This site and others have had many comments that the upload saturation of BB services is more of an issue than the download. So the combined data transfer does make sense. But I am not convinced any of these limits imposed are realistic. As the limits are total data transfer, albeit averaged over a month, they cold be a severe limitation. Wanadoo's site says the limits will be applied later in 2004 (they've taken a leaf out of ntl's "coming soon" policy). Crucially they say somehow the connection will be restricted for the rest of the month, if the use limit is exceeded, only to web browsing and email, but how they do that is unclear. Supposedly an upgrade path will be on offer for higher bandwidth use, but costs and availability of that are unclear.

Even more worrying is the potential development that Wanadoo are likely to do an ntl, and impose these changes on existing customers. Certainly I can find no concessions on Wanadoo's web site to say that freeserve customers will have concessions.

One wonders how informed the average BB punter is as to the differences in BB services from ISPs or if punters simply are blinded by advertising profiles. One hopes that they would choose similar cost but uncapped ISPs.

[ntl customer]

Originally Posted by MovedGoalPosts

Hmm, At first glance I don't have a problem with Wanadoo having a low cost, but restricted use service. That's on the basis that the restictions are clearly understood at point of sale, and certainly they are spelling that out, on their web site far better than ntl do in respect of the ntl caps. However if there is a cap it needs to still be appropriate to the service offered. BT's 1GB a month is ludicrous for their 512k light service. I don't think Wanadoo is much better.

More significant however is Wanadoo, appear to be hiding the really bad news under cover of their rebranding from Freeserve. Their website now shows all BB use will be capped, and the thresholds are for combined upload and download. Amazingly they make ntl look generous, especially at the 512k level which is restricted to 15Gb a month.

Well at least that's a good thing then that they make it apparent that it is capped. Sort of, anyway.

However, Tiscali, ntl, BT et al do not make it apparent in their advertising that the service is capped, only in the small print beneath the advert and terms and conditions, which to be truthful, many people probably do not bother to read before signing up and end up getting locked into a 12 month contract.

Also Tiscali refer to the cap as "surfing time" in their adverts which will confuse the customer if they do read the small print at the foot of the advert - being economical with the truth and rewording the limit will cause problems later when the customer hits the capped limit - it will come back and bite them on the arse when the irate customer calls up demanding why the service has gone down to dialup speed.

[iain_herts]

hi all i thought u just say you think ntl have a bad cap of 1 GB a day well think again Wanadoo Broadband has got a 2GB allowance per month wannadoo braodband

iain

[Paul K]

Thats the limit for the £17.99 per month 512 package,
£27.99 a month for the 512+ package is a 15GB per month limit
£34.99 a month for the 1MB package is a 30GB per month limit

[Paul K]

Just to add to the fun

Originally Posted by Wanadoo

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Nice to know that after 30 days you could theoretically add £3.98 to the bill

[OL1V3R]

2 Gig / Month is worse than NTL! .. I do just under a gig per day, just playing games! However, i suppose this depends on how much bandwith the game uses, and the time you play it.

ISP's are so lousy over here, 2 gig per month is pethetic!

[OL1V3R]

I also noticed this..

According to Wannado's statistics with 2gb, you can only play 1.5 hours per week of online games!

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by ianathuth

There are people that only want their internet connection for very occasional use but who want the speed when they do use it.

NTLs cap is not the 30 GB a month that is being regularly quoted, it is in reality two to three times that figure. Remember that you can exceed the 1 GB a day on a few days a month.

Well staying under that limit you not going to be doing much downloading, its very likely it will be just activities like web browsing and email, so why not just use dialup or even some of these sub 300kbit fake broadband packages, because unless the webpage is full of big pictures you not going to see much of a difference.

[MadGamer]

Originally Posted by willo

Why should I stay with NTL when Wanadoo UK confirmed that it is launching a new £17.99 per-month 512k broadband product with a 2 Gig a month cap, not sure what my DL usage is a month but I only surf the net.

I have 600K BB with phone line, I also have a BT phone line. Convince me to stay!

My dad picked up a CD yesterday from PC World. If this goes well we might move from Demon. Demon can be slow at times and thats not what i want.

[etccarmageddon]

Originally Posted by russellelly

Firstly, I think this is the wrong forum, should be alternatives to ntl/TW. If you only surf the net you'd notice little fifference going to ntl (soon to be) 300k. I'll bet Wanadoo will charge you for a USB ADSL modem as well at that price

no, you get a free USB modem and free connection.

[nate]

Bear in mind that I haven't heard of NTL's cap being enforced for a very long time.

[dropoffpoint]

Been using freeserve since I switched from NTL in December.

I suspect like NTL, the statement about caps is more a clause they can use to hit the really heavy users if they feel it necessary rather than an out and out "this will happen".

[Tezcatlipoca]

Originally Posted by dropoffpoint

Been using freeserve since I switched from NTL in December.

I suspect like NTL, the statement about caps is more a clause they can use to hit the really heavy users if they feel it necessary rather than an out and out "this will happen".

The Wanadoo caps seem quite low to just be aimed at heavy users though.

EDIT:

Also, if someone on the £17.99/month 512k service exceeded their paltry 2GB/month cap, I think that would be something Wanadoo would take action on - as they obviously prefer people who use more to pay more (as they have different caps for the different priced services: 2GB/month for the £17.99 512k, 15GB/month for the £27.99 512k, & 30GB/month for the top 1mb service).

Whereas NTL's "cap" is the same across all the tiers, & is v large compared to the cap on Wanadoo's bottom- & mid-level tiers.