# Broadband users beware!



## Pyan (Oct 27, 2008)

> *Broadband users reach their limit *
> 
> One million UK consumers have exceeded or come close to exceeding their broadband usage limit, research from consumer group uSwitch has found.
> 
> ...




Some of the stats in this report are worrying:


6.2m customers thought they had no usage cap
7.5m did not know their download limit
One million have reached or nearly reached their limit
22% of broadband providers advertise the true limits of their packages

And it seems that some of the providers have been somewhat economical with the truth about their packages:



> WHAT THE ISPS OFFER (_extract, my emphasis_)
> 
> Tiscali - advertised as _unlimited_, has fair usage policy but with unspecified excess, *will cut off those deemed heavy users*
> Toucan - advertised as _unlimited_, with unspecified fair usage, *will cut customers off*
> Orange, advertised as _unlimited_, unspecified excess, *will remove heavy users*



So it seems that "unlimited" to an ISP means something different than to the rest of us...

BBC NEWS | Technology | Broadband users reach their limit


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## Lenny (Oct 27, 2008)

It's all in the small print, apparently. I used to be with Tiscali, until they deemed that 15gb a month was too much and thought it would be a good larf to put us on the heavy users bandwidth between 5pm and 11pm during the weekdays. :angry:

With TalkTalk we have a 40gb cap... which we regularly get close to (I seem to take up 30gb of bandwidth a month!!), but have not yet exceeded.

I seem to remember reading something at the beginning of the month about how ISPs were lagging behind. Take the iPlayer, which is an example in the article - an hour of watching programs takes about 250mb of your bandwidth. Everytime we catch up on Dr. Who, Merlin or Torchwood, we use about 190mb of our precious bandwidth!

ISPs need to get their acts together and move with the times. In the article I mentioned earlier, statistics were given about average usage. If my mind is up to scratch, then they were: in 2005, the average user used about 1-2gb a month. By the end of 2007, this had risen to 7-8gb a month. That's the _average_ user - someone who might check their e-mails every other night, have a lookee at the Beebs five-day weather forecast, and post on an internet forum. Heavens knows what we who lives on the intarwebs have gone up to!


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## Highlander II (Oct 27, 2008)

I know there are probably similar stats in the US.

And the ISPs need to catch up - with the advent of all of these 'live' gaming systems and everything else, the 'average' is going to go up past that 8gb...


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## Ursa major (Oct 27, 2008)

pyan said:


> So it seems that "unlimited" to an ISP means something different than to the rest of us...


 
So what's new. In IP, "best endeavour" means - "when there's a lot of other traffic, don't bank on getting your stuff", whereas in the real world it means "we'll try as hard as we can, so please don't sue us".


I've a limit of 10G a month (around 300M a day) and I've never got anywhere near it. Then again, the only video I download is that linked to from here or the BBC News website, and I never download music.

(Even M$ patches and service packs aren't a problem; so far.)


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## The Ace (Oct 27, 2008)

I'm lucky (?) that way.  I'm with Virgin, largely because ADSL won't work in most of Scotland.


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## Ursa major (Oct 27, 2008)

ADSL = Access Designed for Sasannach Lines

or

ADSL = Access Denied to Scottish Lines?


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## PTeppic (Oct 28, 2008)

Having weighed the market when I finally joined the broadbandwagon last year I went for one (Zen) which has this year just won its fifth "Best Broadband ISP of the Year" with PC-Pro magazine. It's more expensive than many, but I've been happy with it. A 2Gb/month limit recently was more than doubled to 5Gb/month, and only twice in 18 months have I been near that. And it's pence/Gb to extend... so hardly bank-breaking (which is lucky, given what the banks are doing). I've also consistently had 5-6Mb/s, such that when I needed to phone their tech support (later found to be twitchy router) when he "checked the line" he asked if I lived next to the exchange (no, half a mile away): I'm presuming it's a good sign...


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