*ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please

[fire]

I really cant see the point in anyone paying £37.99 a month for the same usage allowance when they can pay £25 a month a still download a gig in just over an hour.The cap should be at around 47 gig a month when comparing services.

I will be downgrading to the £25 service saves £13 a month which can be spent elsewhere.

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

[tomw]

So does anybody know when us on the 300k should phone up and upgrade

I personally think its a great free gesture on behalf of ntl they didnt have to do it did they

[phl_spector]

Oh man. I hope they don't do the enforcing as 1Gb/day as indicated in that post. 30Gb/month would be better. I sometimes download more than 1Gb/day but hardly ever go over 30Gb/month. They should either allow unused gigabytes to roll-over (i.e. say I only download 400Mb one day, the unused 600Mb would go on top of the 1Gb for tomorrow), OR check the totals at the end of the month. Both would have the same affect, and also at the end of the month work out the same as checking daily - but it would give valued ntl users a little bit of headroom and make us happier overall I think. If these caps end up being 1Gb a day and they end up being enforced every day, then I'm off. Even if I end up with BT who enforce on a monthly basis. I don't want to leave ntl, they've been good to me, but this issue alone would cause me to go.

[sav112]

I donââ‚Âà ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢t download a lot if I do at all; I browse the web, buy the odd item and play games on it as well as the old e-mail.



Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢m settled on getting this upgrade from my 300K to 1M, but in all seriousness if it was uncapped Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢d have spent the extra and gone for 2M but with that cap Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢d probably download a lot more on the 2M so just keeping with the 1M is a preventative measure.

good that we now have a date for this, i would have hoped they could have e-mailed us to ask what we were doing and we could just e-mail back to upgrade.

[Matth]

If you're worried about hitting the 30Gb cap on 2Mbit, you sould be even more worried about hitting the 3Gb cap on 1Mbit.

The top tier service, given the same quota for 3Mbt as for 2Mbit, now looks like even worse value - the biggest jump in price, for only 50% more speed and no more capacity - RUBBISH! There really shouldn't be anyone left on it, as if you were on 1.5Mbit and downgrade, you're still going faster, and saving money.


One suggestion that needs taking to NTL...

Why not a 1Mbit/15Gb tariff, lets say priced as £19.99 (or some variation of) as an alternative to replacing PACE with Samsung for the 750k users when they demand their upgrade - THEY may not be marketing it, but I'm sure this and other forums will rattle the sabre.

I'd consider something with a bit more than 3Gb, priced inbetween the bottom and middle tier.

[markmarkymark]

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.

too right .. as I mentioned earlier. Move UP from 1.5 to 2.0 but move down by £13 a month. Seems to me totally obvious!!

Mark

[jtwn]

I'm all agreeing with that. At the moment the 1.5mb has that edge over the 750k being double the speed, but now only 1/2 faster it isn't as attractive.

4mb definately but 3mb - i'd have to think about that one.

[sheka]

I think if you are at all worried about the cap and lets face it in the world of Internet radio, Internet TV, Game demos approach 1GB, patches, Trial versions of software and not to mention all the background traffic that may count to your totals (not clarified). You better start looking at alternative ISPs. There are plenty of other ISPd offering comparable services for the same price. Central Point Broadband offer 2Mb DSL for £35.49 and 1Mb for £25.99. With BT trialling speeds upto 8Mb/s and moving all the BT retail customers upto 2Mb as standard (with a usage cap). It won't be long before all ther ISPs follow suit. By the end of the year 2Mb will be an entry level service with 8 or 4 being 'un capped' services being widely available.

NTL will be left behind as the users who want the quickest, fastest, latest thing won't be with NTL to jump onto the next product. What is the point of NTL offering a 6Mb/s or 8Mb/s cable service in the future. The only reason someone wants a large 'bandwidth' service is to download large files or to get larger files quicker. Latency isn't a problem. So if everyone who is fed up with all the crap and talk about CAPS then just cancel the service and move your custom elsewhere.

NTL will get left behind as when they launch the next set of bandwidth products in a few years the customers who always want that new thing will have left and already be on a fast and un restricted DSL service.

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by sheka

By the end of the year 2Mb will be an entry level service with 8 or 4 being 'un capped' services being widely available.

A true expert in the industry speaks.

Let me know when you come back down to Earth and we'll continue this discussion.

Although I'd hope that the trends from both BTWholesale and various DSL ISPs towards usage based charging rather than speed based charging would be a hint.

2Mbit being an entry level service is absurd considering 40% of people connected to DSL enabled exchanges can't get it.

PS Central Point suck, tiny VISP reselling Telefonica circuits who've had various wonderful issues with contention thanks to selling uncapped 2Mbit on the cheap.

I believe one of our members here enjoyed their service until someone else on his exchange took the service, then the fact that there was only a 2Mbit pipe between them and both could max it out began to show.

Originally Posted by Ignition

A true expert in the industry speaks.

Your being gentle tonight

[Chrysalis]

Not sure whats going on in NTL exec's heads at the moment but this is going to have a mass of people downgrading to the middle tier losing them £13 revenue monthly from each of them, there is nothing to motivate me to use the 3mbit instead of 2mbit its a maximum 33% higher burst which I am unlikely to achieve in my congested area with the same cap.

On the subject of business lite since businesses dont pay vat the product is still cheaper, but even in my case I have to pay vat I dont care I am quite willing to spend more for a better quality of service, £40-45 for whats on offer there no problem for me.

[sheka]

I have only heard good things about central point but there you have it. You can't please everyone. There are alternatives, UK Online, HomeChoice, Karoo and Bulldog all offer services higher than 512kbps. More will follow with the BT announcements.

I do think that speeds are going to increase and yes usage based charging will become commonplace. I just don't like the idea of clock watching or byte watching.

What happens when my line reduces to 56Kbps the whole quality of the internet is affected. What is the point in signing up for 'high' bandwidth services or using things like SKYPE if 3/4 of the way through the month they become problematic or un-usable due to bandwidth throttling.

What about all those new applications that are just round the corner? They will all require high bandwidth links. NTL already plan to start providing copies of just-run TV episodes with their VOD product. Last year BBC stated they wanted to put their entire TV programme archive on the Internet. There are loads of possibilities. I am not against a CAP but lets have a realistic one. What is the point in increasing the speed so you can market a product that downloads those ITUNES in half the time than it did on your 1.5Mb/s service. That plays on words implying you can get twice your ITUNES content then before. Then NTL place a cap on the service so you can't actually use the service as much as you wanted to.

the advert for 1.5Mb/s on http://www.home.ntl.com/icat/broadband states "More than 25x faster than standard Dial-up Internet. Perfect for heavy internet use, playing games and downloading music, film and software".

We have had no details on what will be counted towards the cap. Broadcast traffc, ICMP.

I monitored by cable traffic stats using SNMP for 1 day and my usage totalled 135MB in 24Hours. When no one was using the Internet. So that is over 10% of a 30GB allowance before downloading anything. Ever wondered why the lights still flash on the cable modem when your PC is switched off?

Even PLUSNet provide better allowance on their services.....

[Ignition]

Broadcast traffic will not be counted (how could you say a broadcast is directed at a particular user?), so that constant stream of DHCP and ARP spam isn't going to have any effect on usage allowances.

[sheka]

I haven't seen that announced. The broadcast traffic is still directed to a MAC address. So it may not be counted. What about the next virus that tries to propogate by scanning the network and sending TCP SYNs to every device. What happens when 100 NTL customers get infected (not many from the userbase) and start scanning to propogate. is that counted?