*ALL* ntl Cap Discussion Here Please.

[Neil]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

An option to pay more for more.

As I've said all along-it's all about consumer choice, & ntl don't give you one, just the same as they don't give you a choice about taking their phone line when all you want is a basic DTV pack....

to ntl & the monkeys at the top who make these completely pathetic decisions on what to force on their customers-I hope Telewest get the opportunity to sack Hussain et all & put some proper management in place instead of a bunch of fakes who are more interested in how much they can cream off into their already bulging pockets than in making a genuine effort to keep their (wage paying) customers happy.....

if they have hard caps, i hope they roll over your unused gigs.. the turds.

[jtwn]

Originally Posted by Neil

hope Telewest get the opportunity to sack Hussain et all & put some proper management in place instead of a bunch of fakes who are more interested in how much they can cream off into their already bulging pockets than in making a genuine effort to keep their (wage paying) customers happy.....

Ummm, i thought A. Hussain was in charge of merging the two companies, not home? :o

[punky]

Not strictly speaking NTL, but interesting to read nonetheless...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/14/bt_upgrade/

So they are automatically having the download allowance and the customers can't opt out of it without incurring penalties. Interesting also how they up the speed at the same time as halving the cap. Reminiscient of both our government and NTL.

[AdamD]

Personally, I'll be switching to the UKOnline 8mb service when it comes out

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by Hans Gruber

There's plenty of ISPs around that do neither. With UK Online's recent product launches I can't see unmetered internet dying off anytime soon.

There may be plenty of ISPs around that do neither AT THE MOMENT, but....
With more ISPs capping or in other ways restricting downloads there is a reducing number of these around. So all the very heavy users move over to the remaining ISPs that have no restrictions and what do you get?

Think about something for a moment. How many 1Mb users can be put on a 155Mb pipe with a guarantee of no problems for any of them? Now multiply that number of users by the contention ratio to find out how many may share that pipe. Lastly, work out what each of these contended users will get if all of them try downloading at once. Anyone who has bothered to work this out will see that the more heavy users an ISP has, the more impossible it is to provide unrestricted broadband at the level some users are asking for.

There is an interesting article on BT wholesale pricing that illustrates the situation on ADSL. Have a read. http://www.crn.vnunet.com/news/1158135

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by ianathuth

There may be plenty of ISPs around that do neither AT THE MOMENT, but....
With more ISPs capping or in other ways restricting downloads there is a reducing number of these around. So all the very heavy users move over to the remaining ISPs that have no restrictions and what do you get?

Think about something for a moment. How many 1Mb users can be put on a 155Mb pipe with a guarantee of no problems for any of them? Now multiply that number of users by the contention ratio to find out how many may share that pipe. Lastly, work out what each of these contended users will get if all of them try downloading at once. Anyone who has bothered to work this out will see that the more heavy users an ISP has, the more impossible it is to provide unrestricted broadband at the level some users are asking for.

There is an interesting article on BT wholesale pricing that illustrates the situation on ADSL. Have a read. http://www.crn.vnunet.com/news/1158135

this argument you seem to be indicating that by having a cap that you are garantueed a good level of contention and good burst speeds etc.

I hope you right because if Leics burst speeds and pings dont improve after the cap is in place there will be a lot of questions to ask.

[ian@huth]

I have just found an article from Plusnet that states that the wholesale cost for Broadband is made up of £8.40 (ex VAT) per month per customer for the local loop component and £31,130 (ex VAT) per month per 155Mb segment of a 622Mb central pipe. http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1101830040.htm

[Hans Gruber]

Originally Posted by ianathuth

There may be plenty of ISPs around that do neither AT THE MOMENT, but....
With more ISPs capping or in other ways restricting downloads there is a reducing number of these around. So all the very heavy users move over to the remaining ISPs that have no restrictions and what do you get?

Think about something for a moment. How many 1Mb users can be put on a 155Mb pipe with a guarantee of no problems for any of them? Now multiply that number of users by the contention ratio to find out how many may share that pipe. Lastly, work out what each of these contended users will get if all of them try downloading at once. Anyone who has bothered to work this out will see that the more heavy users an ISP has, the more impossible it is to provide unrestricted broadband at the level some users are asking for.

There is an interesting article on BT wholesale pricing that illustrates the situation on ADSL. Have a read. http://www.crn.vnunet.com/news/1158135

Speculation does not equal fact.

When/if the time comes where all ISPs go metered people will have to deal with that as it happens. Do you honestly believe any new tarifs recently created, with major publicity campaigns, being sold with 500gb/unmetered usage plans (using UKO as an example again) are going to lower caps to anywhere near NTL's within the next 12 months?

Also, some ISPs upgrade to meet demand. They also have business plans that they strongly believe will make them profit. UKO is not some fly-by-night set up to cash-in on the broadband boom, they have been arround for years, and likely to be here for a good few more.

[Chrysalis]

Read the BT article, the problem there is BT Wholesale have moved the goalposts, their old method worked fine but then they suddenly changed things around to give less for the £.

"BT last week put forward three possible price points: £0.33, £0.45 and £0.58 per kilobit per second per month. But ISPs claim that these are all far too expensive."

The cheapest price point above £330 per megabit which is an atrocious price, I can get bandwidth cheaper then that on a 100mbit pipe as a consumer, the fact its been offered to that price at wholesale is an example of greed in our country, BT must be selling that at a 70%+ profit margin. For wholesale level I would guess a more fair pricepoint on a 155mbit pipe would be somewhere around £125-150 per megabit, if you think thats not profitable then I can tell you now I can get a 100mbit pipe in the UK as a consumer and pay less then £200 per megabit and I know a lot of isp's pay way under that.

To summarise BT are infalating the cost of bandwidth for ADSL playing similiar game to NTL, ukonline isnt subject to this problem because it doesnt use BT centrals and thats how they can offer 500gig.

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

this argument you seem to be indicating that by having a cap that you are garantueed a good level of contention and good burst speeds etc.

I hope you right because if Leics burst speeds and pings dont improve after the cap is in place there will be a lot of questions to ask.

No guarantees can be given on any contended service, capped or not.

What I am trying to do is drill home the message that no ISP can continue to allow customers to have the very high usage levels that some users currently have and maintain prices at todays levels. Something, somewhere has to give.

[Hans Gruber]

Originally Posted by ianathuth

No guarantees can be given on any contended service, capped or not.

What I am trying to do is drill home the message that no ISP can continue to allow customers to have the very high usage levels that some users currently have and maintain prices at todays levels. Something, somewhere has to give.

Maybe you should be offering this advice to some ISPs at a professional level, a few of them seem to think otherwise. But what do they know, eh?

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

Read the BT article, the problem there is BT Wholesale have moved the goalposts, their old method worked fine but then they suddenly changed things around to give less for the £.

"BT last week put forward three possible price points: £0.33, £0.45 and £0.58 per kilobit per second per month. But ISPs claim that these are all far too expensive."

The cheapest price point above £330 per megabit which is an atrocious price, I can get bandwidth cheaper then that on a 100mbit pipe as a consumer, the fact its been offered to that price at wholesale is an example of greed in our country, BT must be selling that at a 70%+ profit margin. For wholesale level I would guess a more fair pricepoint on a 155mbit pipe would be somewhere around £125-150 per megabit, if you think thats not profitable then I can tell you now I can get a 100mbit pipe in the UK as a consumer and pay less then £200 per megabit and I know a lot of isp's pay way under that.

To summarise BT are infalating the cost of bandwidth for ADSL playing similiar game to NTL, ukonline isnt subject to this problem because it doesnt use BT centrals and thats how they can offer 500gig.

Right, say that you set up as an ISP with your "100mbit pipe that costs you £200 per megabit". You take on all the high usage customers that try to max out their connection 24/7 and give them a 2Mb service. How much do you have to charge each of them to break even and without any deterioration in their service?

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by ianathuth

No guarantees can be given on any contended service, capped or not.

What I am trying to do is drill home the message that no ISP can continue to allow customers to have the very high usage levels that some users currently have and maintain prices at todays levels. Something, somewhere has to give.

Sorry I phrased it wrong, I meant if eg. a uncapped 3mbit service is in my area from rival isp, and burst speed on that average's lets say 2.5mbit at 9pm and burst speed on NTL capped 3mbit averages say 1.2mbit wouldnt NTL look a bit stupid? So I meant they would need to garantuee better contention then the likes of AOL who are uncapped so their argument of that it improves QOS sticks.
__________________

Originally Posted by ianathuth

Right, say that you set up as an ISP with your "100mbit pipe that costs you £200 per megabit". You take on all the high usage customers that try to max out their connection 24/7 and give them a 2Mb service. How much do you have to charge each of them to break even and without any deterioration in their service?

The thing is you will never get a 100% high user base and also you would have to be a very small isp to have all your customers using 2mbit 24/7, I keep hearing the 24/7 argument which is an exaggeration of reality the truth is NTL probably have a fair few users who use above 40 gig but they dont like it and use their excuse we dont want 24/7 leechers.

But to answer your question. In the extremely unlikely event my entire customer base download's 600gig a month, it would take 50 to fill the pipe and they would be charged somewhere between £100-150 per month just for the raw bandwidth, their would be more on top obviously to factor in other costs, I dont know the full costs of providing a broadband connection, I am just arguing for bandwidth costs.

Now looking at ukonline situation they know not every customer is going to use 500gig its a great selling point so will draw in low usage customers along with high usage customer's, they will probably have a higher proportion of high usage customer's then the average isp but I already mentioned they can afford this because they dont buy their bandwidth from BT so hence its not at inflated prices.

[etccarmageddon]

Originally Posted by ianathuth

I have just found an article from Plusnet that states that the wholesale cost for Broadband is made up of £8.40 (ex VAT) per month per customer for the local loop component and £31,130 (ex VAT) per month per 155Mb segment of a 622Mb central pipe. http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1101830040.htm

that sounds about right. if it's LLU then the local loop component comes down to something like £1 to £1.50 a month per user.

£31,130 / 155 = £201

assuming you then share each 1Mb across 40 ADSL users then £201/40=£5 a month per user.