1GB Cap Letter!!!!

[Nutty]

And to think ppl only have half the upstream compared to adsl. Heaven help the ntl network if it's ever brought in line.

[Frank]

Originally Posted by cjmillsnun

Klaus, I shall remain sceptical until a member of AUP or a Tech support person says it is genuine.

I can assure you this letter is genuine, or Klaus has inside knowledge of who is who in ntl

[Florence]

Originally Posted by IanUK

Hi Guys,

I'm new to NTL, just got 1 mb broadband installed after being with Freeserve Broadband for several years, I'm quite impressed with the speed etc so far but this 1 gig issue seems very unfair and worrying to me.

I totally understand that it may be necessary to impose some level of cap to keep the service running well for all users, but the way NTL have chosen to do this seems wrong. Surely the rates of cappage should be something along the lines of:

150k connection: 1 gig
512k connection: 3 gig
1 meg connection: 5 gig

or something similar, its really ridiculous that 1 mb users are capped the same as 150k users ?, this is brought home when I see on the Register today that the BBC are considering using their own P2P network to distribute their archive programming to the public.(http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/35617.html) With the current NTL cap we would not be able to see much !!

Also NTL themselves offer 'Broadband Plus' for an extra monthly fee, How are we supposed to be able to use it properly ?
Yesterday I downloaded the Unreal 2004 Demo, today I downloaded the PainKeeper demo, both files were over 200 meg, the far Cry demo is over 400 meg I think so if I had downloaded that and then had 'Broadband Plus' (at an extra £3.99 a month) I would be frightened to use it for fear of the 'cap'.

Sorry for my first posting here to be a whinge, but I just wanted to have my say.

Cheers

Ian

Hi Ian don't worry about the post it needed to be said. I also said the same nearly 12 months ago. Shame NTL was playing the role of the three monkeys see no evil, speak no evil and hear no evil

Any way we all have a rant over this and will for years to come but at least we do talk...

[Klaus]

Trouble is Nutty, you're already a customer under the AUP which has the restriction in it. In theory you should already be monitoring your bandwidth. I doubt they're going after everyone who goes over the 1Gb limit though. Question is, what is the criteria for getting a letter. I doubt NTL will tell us.

Klaus

[Charlie_Bubble]

Thinking back, didn't someone from NTL say that they would monitor peoples usage and people who had broken the cap on consistently over a 3 day period would get letters??

[Klaus]

Ah, sorry for the double post. Replied before I reaslised there was another page, then meant to edit instead of post...

IanUK, my thoughts exactly. Your break down of the caps would seem a much more sensible way to go about things. To rub salt into the wound, I received an e-mail from NTL today trying to get me to subscribe to their 'Broadband Plus'!!!

Nutty, the upstream on the 1Mb service is 256, the same as ADSL. If it wasn't, I wouldn't have signed up in the first place!!

Keyser, thanks

Klaus

[Tricky]

Originally Posted by Klaus

Trouble is Nutty, you're already a customer under the AUP which has the restriction in it. In theory you should already be monitoring your bandwidth. I doubt they're going after everyone who goes over the 1Gb limit though. Question is, what is the criteria for getting a letter. I doubt NTL will tell us.

Klaus

Daft question number 1 - Does anyone who has received a letter monitor their usage? so that they can show an example of usage..

[Florence]

Originally Posted by Charlie_Bubble

Thinking back, didn't someone from NTL say that they would monitor peoples usage and people who had broken the cap on consistently over a 3 day period would get letters??

yes they did originally. They also got a lot of customers to register supposedly to help devise teh best way forward with the cap. Which never even got under starters orders I still have the emails from the powerusers group..

I will be cancelling Broadband plus as it would be a waste of money after these letters.

[Klaus]

I was a member of the Powerusers Group too!!! Fat lot of good that did...

Tricky, I do monitor my bandwidth usage pretty closely. If I take an average over a month, I would say I download around 8Gb and upload around 2Gb per day! I'm sure I'll get some flack for this, but as I've said, computers are one of my hobbies. I guess downloading is a big part of that hobby But broadband connections should be unlimited and if the stuff is there to download, why not download it?

Klaus

[Charlie_Bubble]

I reckon I probably do around 2 - 3 gig on weekend days and probably easily reach 1 gig on most days of the week. Occassionally if there is something I wanted to download I have gone up to 4gig. On a couple of days I have noticed I've gone over 6gig. I only know this because I have a log for my newsgroup usage, because on top of the inflated 1meg price I pay to NTL for a service with a flaky email service and non-existant newsgroup service, I have to pay £20 for seperate newsgroup access. I've paid NTL over 5 grand in the last 5 years. If they want to get rid of me then that's fine by me. I'll take my money elsewhere and hope they suffer financially for their stupid business decisions.

[Nutty]

Nutty, the upstream on the 1Mb service is 256, the same as ADSL. If it wasn't, I wouldn't have signed up in the first place!!

ADSL subscribers get that on the 512Kb Tier tho, and bulldog offer upto 400Kbit uploads on the 4Mb service. I'm sure theres others that offer around mid 300Kb too..

[Klaus]

There's nothing out there, believe me Nutty, I know. I'm desperate for a home user service with a faster upload than 256, but no-one does one nationally. I trawl the ISP related news sites on an almost daily basis hoping for news of a new service.

Bulldog do offer 400kb upstream, but it's on their unbundled exchanges in Central London only. I'm hoping they will unbundle in Manchester, another reason for going to them for ADSL. The only other option atm is SDSL and the cheapest I've seen that for is £165/month for 1Mb each way. About £100 over my budget

If you do know different. You might have guessed I'd be very interested to hear

[IanUK]

Thanks for the welcome Kitty

The Broadband Plus offering does seem a bit of a waste of time given the low daily cap, whats the point of paying extra for something you can't fully use ?

Klaus, I assume the powerusers group was something that was created the last time the cap issue reared its head ?

Personally in the few days since I've had the NTL connection I've averaged about 500 meg a day download, and about half that uploading, and I suspect that will be my usual type of usage, but I now feel that the reason I chose NTL 1mb Broadband (double the speed of my old DSL connection) was flawed as I should have maybe gone with the NTL 500k connection and saved myself £10 a month as the extra power of the 1mb line is wasted, as I'm now afraid to use it !

Its like buying a Ferrari and only being allowed to drive it at 10 mph for half of the day, while the bloke on the Bike next to you goes past at 20 mph the whole day.

Perhaps if NTL are sending everyone their Broadband Plus 'offer' we should all politely refuse giving the cap as the reason ?

Oh dear, my second post seems a bit whingey as well, I'll get me coat......

[Florence]

Originally Posted by IanUK

Thanks for the welcome Kitty

The Broadband Plus offering does seem a bit of a waste of time given the low daily cap, whats the point of paying extra for something you can't fully use ?

Klaus, I assume the powerusers group was something that was created the last time the cap issue reared its head ?

Personally in the few days since I've had the NTL connection I've averaged about 500 meg a day download, and about half that uploading, and I suspect that will be my usual type of usage, but I now feel that the reason I chose NTL 1mb Broadband (double the speed of my old DSL connection) was flawed as I should have maybe gone with the NTL 500k connection and saved myself £10 a month as the extra power of the 1mb line is wasted, as I'm now afraid to use it !

Its like buying a Ferrari and only being allowed to drive it at 10 mph for half of the day, while the bloke on the Bike next to you goes past at 20 mph the whole day.

Perhaps if NTL are sending everyone their Broadband Plus 'offer' we should all politely refuse giving the cap as the reason ?

Oh dear, my second post seems a bit whingey as well, I'll get me coat......

Its almost like reading the original cap thread what you are saying we all posted 12 months ago.
Most can see the unfairness of the whole situation. Just NTL managment are blinkered and cannot see.
We will carry on trying to get something better but it is hard to see.

It should be a monthly aup aswell not daily as most people will use the internet more at weekends than during the week.

[Klaus]

It's a shame you've joined the service when you have IanUK. My opinion is that only very heavy users like myself will get letters. I reckon NTL will let most people go over the limit, as long as they don't do it continuously and to massive degrees. This is just my opinion and they could very well change tactics in the future, who knows? My point being that if you had joined six months ago and used the service as much as you wanted to, I doubt you would have a letter. So now you wouldn't be put off using the service.

The Powers User Group was brought in after so many customer complained last year when the cap was brought in. They set it up so heavy users of the service could discuss with NTL how new services could be brought in with us in mind. I filled in one questionnaire on the matter and that was the last I heard.

NTL need to either confirm what levels of use equal 'abuse' or introduce a more reasonable cap system. Leaving customers in the dark will just anger them and put off future customers.