Quote:
Originally Posted by kar
I find that internet providers suddenly get very limited when discussing EXACTLY what they mean by 'limits' :-)
Really, if Virgin want to bring in some sort of 'traffic management' or whatever euphemism they want to give it, that's fine. But I just wish they would be upfront about it, don't couch it in BS just tell it as it is.
After all don't virgin try and market themselves as straight shooters?
If other ISPs offer crazy 'true unlimited' that's great. I'll make a value judgement when I get all the info to hand. But the way Virgin have implemented this 'network management' without any sort of customer service / marketing plan in effect has been an example of very poor management.
The problem isn't that they are capping people. It's that they aren't telling customers that they are being capped and why. That much imo is inexcusable.
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Preach it brother (or sister.
).
A lot of people will agree with you on this, VM have used the 20mb speeds to sell their product, steal off other ISPs and entice customers to stay. It sounds great, 20mb is a very high speed for the UK, it wouldn't sound so good if they were honest about the traffic shaping though, and could be used against them when comparing with ADSL and distance from the exchange. It's great being told your service is 'up to' 20mb or 16mb, but if at the end of the day all you can get in the hours you actually use the service is 5mb, it's not all that enticing!
As i'm sure most people on here would agree, there does have to be some sort of traffic shaping, but it has to be sensible and up front.
I personally am on 10mb, and i download quite a bit, sometimes 200gb a month, i do most of my downloading overnight, so it doesn't really affect me, but surely it's unfair for someone who works all day, maybe downloads 3gb a month, and only really gets the chance to do his downloading in the evening, to get his speed and latency reduced, just because he's downloading a one off movie or game update.
I think the best solution would be to have the traffic shaping only kick in for people who have a history of downloading a lot, ie 100gb a month, let mass downloaders do their damage in the early hours of the morning and be limited through the day. Let it affect all downloads for those concerned, thus not affecting the latency for gaming, where it's checking for certain packets.
Meanwhile normal users can continue to enjoy the service as normal, day and night, without suffering for other peoples useage.
VM should also have this information on the website, and share it with the CS staff too, so that if someone phones up wondering why they're on half speed through the day, they can be informed exactly why that is. They can then change their habits to downloading over night, and time and money isn't wasted on engineer visits, man hours for CS staff trying to fix the problem, etc.