*ALL* ntl Cap Discussion Here Please.

[Ignition]

No worries, just interested in who this 4/1 ISP in the USA is.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Ignition

<snip>I could receive 8Mbit on my phoneline if my exchange were LLU'd but it isn't and never will be, so I'm stuck on 2Mbit/256k. <snip>

From talking to you (I think) in the past, I got the impression that the only people likely to get 8Mbit from an LLU'd exchange via ADSL were those living almost next door to the exchange, and even then only with good luck...

[Rone]

Well i'm about 2 miles away from the local exchange, in South Manchester, hardly next door, but probably closer than a lot.

[tomjleeds]

Originally Posted by Ignition

No worries, just interested in who this 4/1 ISP in the USA is.

Well, I may have told a slighty porky, it's in Canada. And, it seems it's 4Mbps/0.8Mbps, which was not what I was led to believe. Anyhow, it's available through Bell for $59.95CAD/month, which is just under £26/month.

Of course, the business packages get stupidly fast for ridiculously low prices. A friend of mine has an $80US/month 10Mbps/2Mbps line.

[Earwig]

@ Ignition.....

I honestly was not looking for a contraversial answer to my question, it was just honest curiosoty on my part........But having said that you kinda got me thinking......


What is your HONEST view on these caps that are to be introduced by NTL on a 3MB line?

Some of the things I would like your opinions on are as follows.....

1. Do you personally think the cap is to low?

2. With the way ADSL seems to be picking up in the last month and hopefully over the coming months (Bearing in mind many are offering "Uncapped" or vastly more usage than 40GB) do you think NTL will lose customers? As with faster speeds people will "find" more things they can do with it.

3. Dependant on your answers to 1+2 what do you feel would be a fair cap?

4. How can Telewest have "faster" download AND upload and STILL be "Uncapped"? Differing technology? Smaller area?

5. With a merger imminent (as in this year maybe) between the two companies, would NTL have to play catch up? I doubt very much that Telewest would drag there customers to a lower standard so would they offer different products north and south but under one name?

6. And lastly.......How much headroom is there in the NTL system for further upgrading?? Is it possible for NTL to keep up with these ADSL services that are coming about right now? Could they offer 8MB Down and 1Mb up on current systems? But then thinking about it by the time they do what will ADSL be offering? I think I read somewhere that 8Mb downstream and 1Mb up is the max for ADSL? I have also read about ADSL2 but cannot remeber much, but needless to say it will raise the bar higher still.

The reason I ask these is that I have been with NTL ever since I got into my PC about 2-3 years ago and have never had a problem to speak of. I would like to think that I never will have and will continue to be a valued customer to them. But like alot of people I want to be able to have the fastest speeds and the biggest download quota.....I just don't want to fall behind the compatition but that is what it seems is happening...............

[Ignition]

Good questions!

Originally Posted by Earwig

1. Do you personally think the cap is to low?

Nope, I think that the speed, 3Mbit is too low, but the cap is fine.

2. With the way ADSL seems to be picking up in the last month and hopefully over the coming months (Bearing in mind many are offering "Uncapped" or vastly more usage than 40GB) do you think NTL will lose customers? As with faster speeds people will "find" more things they can do with it.

No I don't, an ADSL ISP did something similar and quickly became the fastest growing ADSL ISP in the UK. I've little doubt that for the vast majority this will be a favourable deal and will attract many.

3. Dependant on your answers to 1+2 what do you feel would be a fair cap?

40GB is fine for me.

4. How can Telewest have "faster" download AND upload and STILL be "Uncapped"? Differing technology? Smaller area?

I could spin you a yarn but won't. Due to NDA I'm not at liberty to discuss this.

5. With a merger imminent (as in this year maybe) between the two companies, would NTL have to play catch up? I doubt very much that Telewest would drag there customers to a lower standard so would they offer different products north and south but under one name?

Sadly I haven't a clue how this would pan out, I'm not remotely qualified to answer this.

6. And lastly.......How much headroom is there in the NTL system for further upgrading?? Is it possible for NTL to keep up with these ADSL services that are coming about right now? Could they offer 8MB Down and 1Mb up on current systems? But then thinking about it by the time they do what will ADSL be offering? I think I read somewhere that 8Mb downstream and 1Mb up is the max for ADSL? I have also read about ADSL2 but cannot remeber much, but needless to say it will raise the bar higher still.

The fastest service running over a network similar to ntl's is 10Mbit downstream 1Mbit upstream as operated by Optimum Online in the states and Cogeco in Canada. Higher upload and download speeds are in theory possible. Again I'm not at liberty to discuss anything specific to the ntl network.

The reason I ask these is that I have been with NTL ever since I got into my PC about 2-3 years ago and have never had a problem to speak of. I would like to think that I never will have and will continue to be a valued customer to them. But like alot of people I want to be able to have the fastest speeds and the biggest download quota.....I just don't want to fall behind the compatition but that is what it seems is happening...............

The most diplomatic answer I can give is that ntl is a mainstream ISP, and isn't designed to cater to the enthusiast market. I would love to see a 10Mbit/1Mbit service however those who hold the purse strings may disagree until it's absolutely necessary.

Without any illusions of generosity these services are being implemented for the sole purpose of attracting more customers and increasing profitability on the service as a whole, simple as.

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by scastle

From talking to you (I think) in the past, I got the impression that the only people likely to get 8Mbit from an LLU'd exchange via ADSL were those living almost next door to the exchange, and even then only with good luck...

I'm 800 metres from my exchange and have a good quality all underground line UKOnline reckon anyone within 2KM 'should' be ok.

BTW Leeds chap ffs don't describe Canadians or Canadian things as being American, Canadians tend to get quite upset at such things

[tomjleeds]

Originally Posted by Ignition

I'm 800 metres from my exchange and have a good quality all underground line UKOnline reckon anyone within 2KM 'should' be ok.

BTW Leeds chap ffs don't describe Canadians or Canadian things as being American, Canadians tend to get quite upset at such things

Heh, yes I've experienced that in the past, won't make that mistake again I think I'd be quite upset if someone called me American :P

Unfortunately UKOnline have chosen a frickin' weird set of exchanges to LLU in Leeds, so I don't think I'll be able to ge it at all, never mind at 8Mbps.

[ian@huth]

With all this talk of capping it's worth considering a few points.

NTL do not want to lose customers to the opposition so they will offer the highest speeds possible, both upload and download, that the infrastructure can cope with and which doesn't impact on customers performance.

Having said that, NTL would be glad to get rid of some customers and we all know why and what they do.

NTL want to ensure its customers get a good quality of service and will use capping to try to ensure that they do.

NTL infrastructure and development needs money spending on it which means they have to have a pricing structure which ensures this money is forthcoming.

The vast majority of NTL customers will get nowhere near the caps.

Doubling download speeds does not mean that customers must double the volume that they download. As an analagy, buying a new car that has a top speed double that of your current car doesn't mean that you have to travel twice as many miles.

Watching streaming video and listening to streaming audio may eat up bandwidth and make the caps easier to reach so why not try using those alternatives that give better quality and do not use any bandwidth. TV, radio, hifi, cd player, dvd player spring to mind but there are others besides.

[Rone]

BUT, these customers that NTL dont want, might ditch the phones and TV packages?
Or are they pretty worthless in the great scheme, ie they can afford to lose them?
Thing is as well, word of mouth can be a big influence, most people not on the net ask people in the know who is the "best" isp, and i used to answer ntl. Going to be impossible to say that in a while i fear.

[sherer]

i wonder if there is any way NTL or other ISPs for that matter could offer a sensible monitored CAP.

i.e if you download something from the MS website i.e SP2 then that shouldn't count towards your bandwidth for that period.

The same thing should apply for Linux distributions, AV updates, spyware updates etc.

This is maintenance on the machine that you have to download. if people aer being capped and have to download a 10 MB file from their AV each week how many would still keep doing this which would make virus and spyware worse.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by scastle

From talking to you (I think) in the past, I got the impression that the only people likely to get 8Mbit from an LLU'd exchange via ADSL were those living almost next door to the exchange, and even then only with good luck...

@Rone & Ianauth
The quote above is a joke based on a "conversation" Ignition and I had about the 8 Meg ADSL service being touted by UKOnline..

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by sherer

i wonder if there is any way NTL or other ISPs for that matter could offer a sensible monitored CAP.

i.e if you download something from the MS website i.e SP2 then that shouldn't count towards your bandwidth for that period.

The same thing should apply for Linux distributions, AV updates, spyware updates etc.

This is maintenance on the machine that you have to download. if people aer being capped and have to download a 10 MB file from their AV each week how many would still keep doing this which would make virus and spyware worse.

I think there would be privacy issues if NTL did this.

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by scastle

I think there would be privacy issues if NTL did this.

This could be got round by NTL having a mirror site for such items that is only available to NTL customers. It could be set so that customers could request a particular download which would be sent to their machine during night time hours when it should not affect other customers internet experience. Microsoft would be happy as it reduced the strain on its servers and NTL would keep all this traffic within its own infrastructure.

Whether such a scheme would be workable depends on how NTL measure bandwidth used and if exclusions can be made for certain sites.

[sherer]

yes that would be a good idea and faster to download from an NTL mirror than MS and Norten, AVG, etc.

The problem with that would be the cost of setting up the mirror and maintaining it with uptodate stuff plus the fact that all the windows OSs are configured to use the automatic updates from MS site..