*ALL* ntl Cap Discussion Here Please.

[Hans Gruber]

Originally Posted by scastle

I have to admit, I have a 1.5 (soon to be 3 I hope) Meg NTL BB connection which I am happy with, but if another supplier comes along who can beat that, I'll go to them. Sadly, despite my proximity to my local exchange, I can get at most 2 Meg at the moment.

You're lucky, I can only get 512k. Yet I'd still chose that over a 2mbit capped service.

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by Hans Gruber

You're lucky, I can only get 512k. Yet I'd still chose that over a 2mbit capped service.

The choice is yours and yours alone. Virtually every company in existance provides goods or services for a particular section of the community, not for all the community. If NTL provide a broadband service that you are happy with, at a price that suits you and with usage conditions that you are prepared to accept then you go with them. If they don't then you look elsewhere. If no company offer the service that you want then it's tough, you cannot have it.

I don't think that some people have thought this through. NTL are marketing these new speeds with usage conditions applicable to them because they want to provide a service that attracts customers not drive them away. Most users think that it is a very good deal. Some customers are waiting for full details to be announced before making their minds up. NTL will have done their research and worked their sums out and decided what is best for the company at this moment in time and for the forseeable future. They will have looked at such things as the effect of high usage customers on the network and may come up with a solution that caters for them, but we will have to wait and see if this is the case. They could have got it wrong but somehow I doubt it.

[tizer2000uk]

Originally Posted by ianathuth

I am getting rather confused now. One poster is saying that some users already have the new speeds but you are saying that NTL don't know when they will be available. You obviously know what you are talking about because you know what will happen when you reach the cap. I didn't know that anything had been released about this.

Another fact that I hadn't realised is that 8Mb ADSL is 8x faster than 3Mb cable. I must be a real . I don't know a lot about contention ratios so would appreciate you telling me the difference between contention on cable and on ADSL.

I was actually referring to my existing connection speed, although not exactly 8 times faster it certainly will seem like it due to the slowdown recently.

Some people may already have the upgrade but the idiots on the end of the phone still dont know when I might have the opportunity to upgrade.

Due to Guildford having a larger Cable user base than ADSL it makes perfect sense that there will be fewer ADSL users, in my road especially there are almost no ADSL subscribers, therefore there are fewer people to hog the bandwidth which means faster speeds for me :o)

As for the physical cap, there are only a few ways of actually efficiently controlling bandwidth usage,

1: Either cut the user off after they have used up their allocation, which wont happen.

2: Reduce the users bandwidth to dial up speed as already happens around Europe.

3: Give the user the option of paying more per mb / gb or whatever, this option will just annoy people and give them further justification to want to change to ADSL.

NTL are going the route of AOL and are trying to appeal and retain low usage customers who occasionally want the extra bandwidth for updates etc and are trying to get rid of high bandwidth users (Mostly people downloading illegal stuff)

This means that they will be left with more bandwidth to be able to offer more services on the network (VOD) and still retain the revenue, with fewer users downloading excessive amounts the service will improve for everyone (In theory).

I myself probably wont exceed the allowance its just I dont like being told that there is a limit to the service I am using, also the 400k upload will be useful for when I RDP over to my home PC from work and there are other users on the home network.

Tizer

[zitianaki]

ukonline is the best way i think how could you pass up 8Mb for so cheap with a good monthly allowance. i for one am moving straight to them in march as i am sure most users will move elsewhere to maybe not the ones who use net once a week and probably use 50MB a month and dont care. some days i download at least 10GB others 5 ish ntl is good stable isp but a 40GB cap.... no thanks
and whats better is i am 1kilometer away from exchange ill for sure get full speed and the fact about 2 ppl in my area use net makes it even better. ntl should drop the cap or at least increase it like ukonline did.

[Chrysalis]

Well it is correct a business ultimate goal is to make profit otherwise why do business, but there are different ways of looking at it. Many companies will be prepared to make a loss to satisfy customers if it means profit in the long term. The other end of the scale companies that won't accept any type of loss ever, and expect each and every customer to turn them a profit.

Using banks as an example, when people go bankrupt etc. and default on their debts, these are examples of loss making customer's, now if the bank were to go anal on this they could turn around and say right we are going to stop offering loans because we cannot garantuee a profit on every customer and this would be insane. Another example is walkers crisps who I have worked for before, when their customer base gets below their target they will usually either add more product free ot knock something like 50% off the price of multipacks, they have at times sold multipacks for a loss although rare it has been done, they will also refund customers £10 for each complaint regardless of the size of the complaint or investigation result.

[ian@huth]

There is a difference between making a small loss on a few customers with high usage and having to spend thousands on the network to prevent those few users from affecting other users on their UBR.

What makes me laugh is the number of posters who know the number of other users in their area using NTL and BT broadband. How do you find that out?

Distance from a BT exchange is another thing that some people get wrong as they do not know the routing that the wires follow. You can live next door to an exchange but your connection to it may have been following an old route that existed before the exchange was built and could be well outside the distance for higher speed ADSL.

[Chrysalis]

"There is a difference between making a small loss on a few customers with high usage and having to spend thousands on the network to prevent those few users from affecting other users on their UBR."

Thousands in a one off investment can be considered a small loss, these heavy users I doubt make much difference to peak time demands for NTL they probably make more of a difference to external bandwidth costs and quiet time demands, I am sure UBR's need only be upgraded to cope with peak levels of traffic.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by ianathuth

Distance from a BT exchange is another thing that some people get wrong as they do not know the routing that the wires follow. You can live next door to an exchange but your connection to it may have been following an old route that existed before the exchange was built and could be well outside the distance for higher speed ADSL.

True. It's not quite the same thing, but we used to have a small workshop near our server room and next do to one of the patch panel rooms (where the network sockets are connected to the switches, same sort of thing as an exchange). We always got a unreliable connection there. When we investigated , the reason was that despite the work room being next door to the patch room, on the network there was slightly over 100 metres of cable between them. The safe maximum cable length (from Switch to computer) is 100 Metres.

[cookie_365]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

Well it is correct a business ultimate goal is to make profit otherwise why do business, but there are different ways of looking at it. Many companies will be prepared to make a loss to satisfy customers if it means profit in the long term. The other end of the scale companies that won't accept any type of loss ever, and expect each and every customer to turn them a profit.

Using banks as an example, when people go bankrupt etc. and default on their debts, these are examples of loss making customer's, now if the bank were to go anal on this they could turn around and say right we are going to stop offering loans because we cannot garantuee a profit on every customer and this would be insane. Another example is walkers crisps who I have worked for before, when their customer base gets below their target they will usually either add more product free ot knock something like 50% off the price of multipacks, they have at times sold multipacks for a loss although rare it has been done, they will also refund customers £10 for each complaint regardless of the size of the complaint or investigation result.

Yes. All true - and I was meaning long term profit in my earlier post.

If you sell crisps, it make sense to keep people who spend big money on crisps (those who buy multipacks) happy with your brand, so that they buy enough of your brand at full price to make you a profit.

And if they're sussed, then a complaint is good news. Someone's made an effort to help you keep them as a customer. And it'll only cost you a tenner! Now they can give you £50 worth of free advertising to their friends about how well you sorted out the minor problem you had with your cheese & onions being the wrong shape.

And no bank would offer a loan to someone they expected to go bankrupt. They just know that of x thousand people who walk through the door, Y of them'll go bankrupt, (and z of them'll go into enough debt for the bank to clean up on the interest charges, but not quite enough for them to stop paying ) so they pitch their rates accordingly so that on average the punters who pay up cover the losses on those that don't. They just don't know which ones that'll be.

Have you seen that new telly ad where some lender brags about how everyone pays the same rate, regardless of their particular circumstances? Chances are that either: you won't qualify unless you're a safe bet, in which case the lender could afford to have lower rates as there'll be lower risk, but probably won't, or the rates'll have to be pitched so the safe bets subisdise the losses on the dodgy bets. And will leave in droves when they discover that a competitor which does take their circumstances into account can offer a better deal. My money's on the former.

Far more common are the 'we only sell insurance to grey-haired people who drive brown Rovers' type ads - in other words, attracting the customers that are cheap to have. This seems to be what NTL are aiming for.

NTL see a small proportion of users hoovering up most of the bandwidth. They will never make money from these people. If they recommend NTL to their friends, because of how nice NTL were about not having hard caps, chances are those people will also be heavy, unprofitable, downloaders. Why on earth would NTLwant these people as its customers? If they moan about the caps at work, most people will just shrug and say, 'well, not a problem for me, I don't download 30 linux distos every week (whatever they're supposed to be)' or whatever I'm-in-absolutely-no-doubt-it's-legal-and-I-don't-think-for-one-moment-its-copyrighted material that needs 80GB a month bandwidth.

I suspect some CF members are going to become like the reckless boy racers in cheap leather jackets that Michael Winner regards disaprovingly on e-sure ads

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

Using banks as an example, when people go bankrupt etc. and default on their debts, these are examples of loss making customer's, now if the bank were to go anal on this they could turn around and say right we are going to stop offering loans because we cannot garantuee a profit on every customer and this would be insane.

In a recession, banks have been known to do this.

[Chrysalis]

"And no bank would offer a loan to someone they expected to go bankrupt. They just know that of x thousand people who walk through the door, Y of them'll go bankrupt, (and z of them'll go into enough debt for the bank to clean up on the interest charges, but not quite enough for them to stop paying ) so they pitch their rates accordingly so that on average the punters who pay up cover the losses on those that don't. They just don't know which ones that'll be."

Very good point as like many other things the customers who pay up are subsidising the loss making customers, various businesses work like this, but however for some reason a few on broadband have decided this is unfair practice.

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

"And no bank would offer a loan to someone they expected to go bankrupt. They just know that of x thousand people who walk through the door, Y of them'll go bankrupt, (and z of them'll go into enough debt for the bank to clean up on the interest charges, but not quite enough for them to stop paying ) so they pitch their rates accordingly so that on average the punters who pay up cover the losses on those that don't. They just don't know which ones that'll be."

Very good point as like many other things the customers who pay up are subsidising the loss making customers, various businesses work like this, but however for some reason a few on broadband have decided this is unfair practice.

Banks look at loan applications and turn down those that they think are pretty bad risks. They don't think "I know they are a bad risk but they will tell everyone how easy it is to get a loan from us" and give them one for all that word of mouth advertising. If banks suspect that a potential borrower may have problems repaying a loan they will usually only offer one against the security of the borrowers home or a guarantee from an acceptable person.

Whilst NTL don't know how new customers will use their connection, they do know how their current customers use theirs and what impact speed increases will have.

NTL may have had a meeting where it was asked if it was possible to implement the proposed speed increases that have been announced for the first quarter of this year. The answer could have been that the increased speeds were possible, but not if the heavy users continued trying to max out their connections 24/7. They may then have taken the decision to implement the new speeds knowing that this would benefit over 95% of their customers from which they would get plenty of good word of mouth advertising. Caps would be introduced that would affect the really heavy users but how it will affect them is unknown to us until details are released.

Just got off the phone to NTL about business services. £25/month + VAT, 24 month minimum contract, £90 installation (even though I have residential broadband anyway). One computer only (hide the BSD router).

As for caps, there is no limit during business hours (9-5), but outside of that time it's the usual 30GB limit. Speed increases will follow residential services a few months later.

Doing the math, assuming you downloaded at maximum speed from 9-5 and used your 30GB outside of that, in a 30 day month that would be around 107GB/month maximum. For £90 installation, 2 year lock-in and an extra £4/month.

Pfffff...

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

Very good point as like many other things the customers who pay up are subsidising the loss making customers, various businesses work like this, but however for some reason a few on broadband have decided this is unfair practice.

I believe the point was made that the banks will pitch their rates so that the customers they profit from will cover the customers they lose from? I take that to mean that the interest rates go up if too many people default on their loans. Put simply, they put their prices up to cover the losses from some customers.

Applying this example to NTL, do you think broadband prices should go up to cover the losses they are making on the top 5% of their customers?

BTW, as I had it explained to me, NTL actually might a slight loss on ALL 1.5 Meg users, but that is more than covered by the profits from the 300K customers.

[DieDieMyDarling]

It would be about 320GB a month, on 3mb. :-D I don't even think i could have used that much back when i used to download a lot. I think my highest was something like 130GB one month, and that was really hammering it for all it was worth. :-O