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View Full Version : [Merged] NTL - New 1MB / 5GB Cap - should I subscribe @ 300k with NO CAP ?


mchu6am4
10-12-2004, 22:36
Hi,

As a new customer, I'm wondering whether to subscribe to ntl 300k service with No GB CAP or wait until new year for 1MB / 5GB Cap?

I rather have the NO CAP clause in my contract than speed? I'm interested in other forum members thoughts.

If I subscribe now, would I remain on the same conditions (ie no cap)?

Your comments welcome.

Ash

AndrewJ
10-12-2004, 22:39
If I know right the topic of caps has been dicussed to death but I will say this.


Even NTL as they are now, are using a cap of 1gb per day, this is for all tiers.

The new caps are a case of it suits some but don't suit everyone.

Shame really NTL once used to be good value but with these new caps and prospects of being charged per gb if you go over, looks like I shall be looking up a new ISP in new year.

Nemesis
10-12-2004, 22:58
Hi,

As a new customer, I'm wondering whether to subscribe to ntl 300k service with No GB CAP or wait until new year for 1MB / 5GB Cap?

I rather have the NO CAP clause in my contract than speed? I'm interested in other forum members thoughts.

If I subscribe now, would I remain on the same conditions (ie no cap)?

Your comments welcome.

Ash
Are you likely to go over the 5GB cap ????

mchu6am4
10-12-2004, 23:02
Hi,

I'm not sure how much 5GB is ? I like to download music / videos / software and general browsing ? (Does the cap include general browsing or it just the downloads ?)

Thanks, Ash

Nemesis
10-12-2004, 23:13
Hi,

I'm not sure how much 5GB is ? I like to download music / videos / software and general browsing ? (Does the cap include general browsing or it just the downloads ?)

Thanks, Ash It'll include everything ...

Is the 5GB per Day, if so I find it unlikely you will go over it.

AndrewJ
10-12-2004, 23:13
YIp everything you download, and note your pc is downloading even when just on deskop, or on a chat room or using msn.


There are programs which monitor useage, its amazing just how much you use, I myself and my GF are always online, as she moderates a Chatroom, and I am working on design and editing dvd's for a family friend so bandwith useage is maxed on 1st day of the cap :dozey:

mchu6am4
10-12-2004, 23:20
Thanks for that, I think 1GB/day cap would have been alright for me?

If I subscribe to old 300k with 1GB/day terms, would I remain on that for the 12 months or the new terms ?

What if they offered to upgrade my speed from 300k to ???, what would happen to the cap situation ?

I'm getting a bit too deep now!, sorry.

Ash

mchu6am4
10-12-2004, 23:33
It'll include everything ...

Is the 5GB per Day, if so I find it unlikely you will go over it.
Unfortunately, its 5GB / Month (would have been great had it been 5gb/day! )

I'm goint to sleep now as I had a late night last night, :sleep: :sleep: :sleep:

jtwn
11-12-2004, 00:28
Hi,

I'm not sure how much 5GB is ? I like to download music / videos / software and general browsing ? (Does the cap include general browsing or it just the downloads ?)

Thanks, Ash

You say you like to do that now, whilst you are on dial-up. Well, i'm sure you are going to have to download alot more to go over it.

vileda
11-12-2004, 02:24
Wait a minute, thats only 160Mb a day, which although probably not a problem for me atm

faster speed = higher quality video trailers/ads etc = high bandwidth = dissapointment.

punky
11-12-2004, 02:30
What the hell? 5gb /month cap for 1.5m customers? Is this the new change happening next year? is it confirmed?

daxx
11-12-2004, 03:04
See http://www.ntlworld.com/service_update.html for the latest 'official' designation on speed/caps.

There is a massive thread (reasonably current, within the last month, doing to death caps and most of the questions and the answers are in there.

punky
11-12-2004, 04:29
My appologies. I have just seen this: http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/showpost.php?p=357147&postcount=1

Got me worried there for a bit :)

Mauldor
11-12-2004, 10:57
Personally I take it all with a pinch of Salt - the Only one I saw that shocked me was Pipex I think, who say anything over the 5 GIG month is charged Per Gig - which is quite worrying to say the least.

If any company is going to provide a CAP then they need to lay down the rules as to what happens when a person goes over this - say things such as :

We will monitor you over 14 days and in 3 consecutive days you go over we May" write you a nice letter..

The reality is thus - if people in your area complain about a bad service and they look and find person X downloading 10 GIG days for 7 days a week, then of course they gonna jump on you as they are effecting the area on the whole.

BT have there Lite service which is 5 Gig Month but my mate carries on as normal (not downloading 24/7 you understand) but has easy gone over that 5 gigs already. He asked me what happens and to be honest I have no idea (as Im not a BT Low Life)..

ian@huth
11-12-2004, 12:41
There has been a lot said about caps and there has been a big assumption made about what they will be when the higher speeds are introduced next year. The assumption is that if you do not upgrade to the new speeds then you will continue to have the "soft" cap that you currently have. Have NTL said that this will be the case?

With the mention of metered broadband in NTLs timetable for next year and the "hard" caps that many think will be enforced it is almost certain that the current "soft" caps will be replaced. If anyone thinks that they will be able to stay on 1.5Mb and be free to ignore the "soft" cap then I think they will have a shock coming.

Paul
11-12-2004, 13:32
The simple answer is that none of us really know.

The new services have specific caps assigned to them, that is clear from the announcements.

We also know that ntl have plans for metered access next year - this is in their own presentation document, so they must be installing equipment to monitor your usage.

The existing services also have a limit, that is not applied much at the moment because they don't have the means to monitor and enforce it.

Put these facts together and what do you get ?

The implication is that as soon as ntl has the means to monitor your usage properly and individually, they will. What will happen if you then exceed your limit - again, no one knows, but an educated guess would be that you will have a choice of either paying for extra, or being dropped right down in speed (probably to 150k). I do not think they will ever cut people off.

I believe that by this time next year - all the ntl services will be limited, and the limits enforced. Only time will tell. :)

Earwig
11-12-2004, 18:21
I think I will be looking for a new I.S.P next year.

With more and more companies unbundling BT's exchanges we should see many high speed packeges available soon on ADSL and available to far more people than at the moment.

If you look at some of them they offer a choice of both "Capped" and "Uncapped" which at least gives you the choice.

If you are a heavy user (like myself) then I would opt for an uncapped service but pay a little extra.

For those that do not use it as much opt for the cheaper option (still utilising the same speed as me) but have to adhere to a cap.

It stuns me that NTL have not gone for an option similar to this. They seem to have a tier of a few separate speeds ALL with their own relavent caps. The caps are also so low that you could download your months worth of allowance in less than a week.

Is this really the way to go??

I am pretty sure that NTL will lose many, many customers next year if this is the way they plan to go forward.

Even NTL's rival Telewest (soon to be merged??) has no mention of a capped service......

Going back to the point made by the thread starter, is it wise to opt for NTL at all as your provider?? All depends on wether or not you are a Heavy user or not? From what I can gether you are not so perhaps a faster speed and a cap would suit you.
But on the other hand when you have this faster speed and you find out what you can really do with a fast connection you will find tha cap a killer...........

Matth
11-12-2004, 19:07
It depends - The question of 1Mbit / 5Gb per month (where the cap is clearly to avoid every current 750k user piling in to a cheap 1Mbit), 300k at £2 cheaper (and will it have the 5Gb cap, the 1Gb/day soft cap, or a lower limit than the 1 Mbit?), being forced up to the next tier (but I'd probably bail out to a currently unlimited 512K ADSL, as there is a BT line available).

By my current metering, I'd probably be ok with 5 Gb/month, but leaving little room to use broadband like broadband - to put it another way, anything I can't do with 300k now, would burn too much of the 5Gb quota too quickly, but anything I AM doing with 300k now, I could do faster.

Though I have misgivings about any cap that's within my "need to watch it" possibility, they've probably set it about right, though I'd jump at half the speed and at least twice the quota or no quota, a threshold which would then be "out of sight".



The other question, the quota includes, of course:
1. Download and upload
2. Email and newsgroups (including spam)
3. Probably the junk as well, pings, and other crap hitting your firewall with YOUR IP address on it.

The other stuff that some PC based monitor programs count are:
1. Broadcast traffic, eg. DHCP traffic to others in the same segment (your firewall sees this)
2. ARP traffic - there is a LOT, and this registers as a constant background of about 0.8Kb/s on some monitors - I believe this has been referred to as a defect in the way ARP is handled from the UBR, as if ARP results were cached, it should NOT need a constant barrage of ARP

JohnHorb
11-12-2004, 20:18
:zzz: :zzz: :zzz: :zzz:

iron25
11-12-2004, 22:21
What I suggest that people should do is cancel there ntl broadband subscription and then sign up to AOL. As far as I know, they do not have any caps and the ironic thing is they use the ntl network.

Bill C
11-12-2004, 22:32
:zzz: :zzz: :zzz: :zzz:
:LOL: me too

daxx
12-12-2004, 02:15
What I suggest that people should do is cancel there ntl broadband subscription and then sign up to AOL. As far as I know, they do not have any caps and the ironic thing is they use the ntl network.

at 512K, but read the T&C very carefully :D

cookie_365
12-12-2004, 14:05
... It stuns me that NTL have not gone for an option similar to this ...
How do you know that they haven't? They haven't ****** well announced anything yet, apart from the new speeeds themselves !



zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Paul
12-12-2004, 15:59
Now now, play nice children.

AndrewJ
12-12-2004, 18:08
Well I am appauld by this move by NTL and as I shall state when we d/c from them end of December while we move house, I wont be having there broadband because I need higher limits then what they are offering.

Mick
12-12-2004, 18:24
Well I am appauld by this move by NTL and as I shall state when we d/c from them end of December while we move house, I wont be having there broadband because I need higher limits then what they are offering.

Then why not pay for what extra you use? Metered broadband is said to be launching, sometime in 2005. If you go over your usage limit then there is that option to pay for what extra you use.

AndrewJ
12-12-2004, 18:29
I see your point there, BUT my issue would be I like to have a flat rate per month, and would prefer to pay 50pounds for a months 3mb service to include no cap, because the usage of my net varies but I need bills to stay same as money flucuates alot here.

JohnHorb
12-12-2004, 19:00
Closed/open/closed - what's going on with this ('cap') thread?

lakeybloke
12-12-2004, 19:03
The trouble with moving away from NTL if you don't like the caps, is that you can't have the TV without the phone line.

This means that if you want to go back to BT, you have to either pay for an extra line just for your internet access, or scrap the TV, telephone, AND broadband altogether or you may just end up paying loadsa money just to "escape" from NTL.

:mad:

Mick
12-12-2004, 20:10
Closed/open/closed - what's going on with this ('cap') thread?

I have re-opened it. Some people might not like capping discussions if not then do not read the thread but some people want to talk about it and cast their views particular on such issues which metered broadband coming next year has just come to light, or ask further questions and should be able to, without others entering the the thread and posting 'zzzz' etc when quite clearly they have a choice in the first place not to read the thread if it does not interest them.

JohnHorb
12-12-2004, 20:23
Point taken about ignoring this thread, rather than posting zzzzzzzz, but reading the posts, it does seem to be going over the same ground yet again. However, I'll say no more.

Mick
12-12-2004, 20:49
Point taken about ignoring this thread, rather than posting zzzzzzzz, but reading the posts, it does seem to be going over the same ground yet again. However, I'll say no more.

The same ground to you John - but its not the same ground to new members not familier with the cap, who should be allowed to ask what all this is about or cast their views when they have not had the opportunity before and with Metered broadband coming next year, this is not going over the same ground as this information is relatively new over the last few days. :cool:

ntluser
12-12-2004, 20:55
I'm currently paying £24.99 for the 750k service. When the new service comes in will I be automatically moved onto the 1MB rate (which I believe is £24.99) or will I have to organise this through Customer Services as I don't really want to pay any more?

Mick
12-12-2004, 21:01
I'm currently paying £24.99 for the 750k service. When the new service comes in will I be automatically moved onto the 1MB rate (which I believe is £24.99) or will I have to organise this through Customer Services as I don't really want to pay any more?

Current customers have a choice to stay as they are, as ntl said customers who want to upgrade to the newer speeds need to pay a £25 administration fee. If you are on the 750K service and you do want to pay for the newer speeds your connection will rise from 750K to 2MB with a 30GB per month bandwidth usage restriction.

ian@huth
12-12-2004, 21:03
I'm currently paying £24.99 for the 750k service. When the new service comes in will I be automatically moved onto the 1MB rate (which I believe is £24.99) or will I have to organise this through Customer Services as I don't really want to pay any more?

From what has been said you will have the option of staying on the 750 k service at £24.99 or paying £25 one off fee and moving to the new 2Mb service with a 30 gig per month cap (still at £24.99 pm). It is not clear yet what capping there will be if you stay on your existing speed.

Chrysalis
13-12-2004, 16:10
I read that pdf document and it compares NTL with BT Broadband,BT Yahoo,Telwest and Wannadoo, with Telewest been the only isp their with no cap. Strange how we dont see pipex,nildram,plusnet,bulldog,okonline and eclipse.

hjf288
13-12-2004, 18:22
Then why not pay for what extra you use? Metered broadband is said to be launching, sometime in 2005. If you go over your usage limit then there is that option to pay for what extra you use.
Why should we when other uses Cough Telewest enjoy theirs without capping, enjoy faster speeds sooner and as LLU is happening quite fast, most ISPs are moving to dominate with higher speed plans?

Matth
13-12-2004, 22:42
The main problem at the moment, is that we don't know...

For all the hoohah when the first introduced the "CAP" - (use more than 1Gb/day and they MAY be having words with you) - it has not been a big thing, so the current tariffs all have a theoretical 30Gb/month cap, if it were enforced agressively.

So the 750k middle tier upgrades to 2Mbit, and the cap is presumably a hardened 30Gb/month.
The current bottom tier gets an upgrade to 1Mbit, and the 5Gb/month cap is not for capacity reasons, but to stop every current 750k user piling down and saying "thanks for the price cut".

The "£15.99 / 300k" - just where does that sit?
Do current 300k users who do not upgrade get a price cut?
No cap figure was mentioned for the 300k, but I'd guess on it getting a lower one (as a pure dialup replacement), the same 5Gb as the 1Mbit, or perhaps the old style 1Gb/day limit to appease 300k users who don't fancy the "give with one hand and take with the other" upgrade/downgrade of speed and quota.

Sure NTL are not a charity, but other than the gross over users (a small percentage), they cannot afford to alienate a segment of their user base who may terminate broadband and other services.


At the moment, we are still guessing!

Rone
14-12-2004, 11:57
I'm sure its been posted, but how do business users go on?
Is there any cap atm? Might there be one if there is'nt? Are they exempt?
I'm like a few others, i dont want to get paranoid about limits, i have 2pcs networked and 1 teenager using the other pc.
If you could pay say a flat rate of £50pm for 3meg, with none, or very reasonable limits i gladly would, hence my query about a business line.
Tho i'm sure they cannot be dead cheap.
I dont really want to leave NTL, but i have an adsl enabled line here [1meg] as well, that my eldest uses, but hes moving out next year, but i bet someones going to offer no limits and sit back and watch the customers roll in.

Neil
14-12-2004, 12:16
I'm sure its been posted, but how do business users go on?
Is there any cap atm? Might there be one if there is'nt? Are they exempt?
I'm like a few others, i dont want to get paranoid about limits, i have 2pcs networked and 1 teenager using the other pc.
If you could pay say a flat rate of £50pm for 3meg, with none, or very reasonable limits i gladly would, hence my query about a business line.
Tho i'm sure they cannot be dead cheap.
I dont really want to leave NTL, but i have an adsl enabled line here [1meg] as well, that my eldest uses, but hes moving out next year, but i bet someones going to offer no limits and sit back and watch the customers roll in.

http://business.ntl.com

There's no mention of 'caps' or 'usage guidelines' on the site.

http://business.ntl.com/terms_of_use/

It seems they offer 'Broadband' & also Broadband 'Lite'... :confused:

http://business.ntl.com/product_solutions/internet_products/business_broadband/index.php?cmd=broadband_packages

andrew_wallasey
14-12-2004, 12:20
I'm sure its been posted, but how do business users go on?
Is there any cap atm? Might there be one if there is'nt? Are they exempt?
I'm like a few others, i dont want to get paranoid about limits, i have 2pcs networked and 1 teenager using the other pc.
If you could pay say a flat rate of £50pm for 3meg, with none, or very reasonable limits i gladly would, hence my query about a business line.
Tho i'm sure they cannot be dead cheap.
I dont really want to leave NTL, but i have an adsl enabled line here [1meg] as well, that my eldest uses, but hes moving out next year, but i bet someones going to offer no limits and sit back and watch the customers roll in.
With the increase in P2P usage. It is unviable for ISPs to offer unlimited services for ever.

Neil
14-12-2004, 12:35
With the increase in P2P usage. It is unviable for ISPs to offer unlimited services for ever.

But the point is, many ISPs are offering that service.

ian@huth
14-12-2004, 14:05
But the point is, many ISPs are offering that service.

Many ISPs are offering uncapped (at the moment) services because they are fighting for market share in the ADSL market.

NTL may lose a number of users when they bring in the caps but will they miss the 24/7 warez merchants who jump ship?

With the new offerings that NTL have coming next year (VOD, PVR, wireless cable modems, etc) they may attract many new customers, particularly if they get the interactive sorted and multi screen Sky Sports. If these new customers are joining for the TV then they will also be getting the NTL phone line and possibly broadband. NTL are pushing bundles which are aimed at getting customers, new and old, to take multiple services.

Rone
14-12-2004, 14:40
Thanks Neil.
Broadband (multi user/network) †“ 1.5Mb for only £89.99 a month

Well im on the 1.5 atm, but thats a lot, lot more than £38 pm.
If it had been double the price i might have looked seriously, but thats quite a chunk more and a lot of it of course, extra mailboxes etc, i wouldnt need.
Nildram do unlimited [so far ;)] 2meg adsl for about £44 , but i'm going to wait on the final NTL "what happens next" before panicking.
But there are some of us who can look like "power users" without d\loading 24\7 who dont mind paying, [ its called a "teenager" i believe that causes it. :)] but do'nt want to be charged through the roof.

sheka
14-12-2004, 15:21
Interesting point to note is that with no traffic been generated to/from the Internet by my PC I would still manage to clock up 2.7GB of downloaded traffic a month.

With all the talk of caps and there more 'active' policing. Whether correct or not. I decided to investigate how much traffic I send/receive a period of time. Using tools such as MRTG/PRTG with the SNMP protocols I have managed to obtain traffic information from my SACM. This means I know exatcly how much traffic is coming in and going out from the 'cable side' of the SACM.

The observations are quite startling. They show that on average I receive 8192 bits a second. Not a great deal but if you do the maths:

8192 bits a second
8192 x 60 = 491520 bits a minute
491520 x 60 = 29491200 bits an hour (3MBytes)
29491200 x 24 = 707788800 bits a day (88MBytes)
707788800 x 31 = 21941452800 bits a month ( /8 to get 2742681600 Bytes or 2.742681600 GBytes)

Interesting that all the crud, viruses, network scanning, etc.....can amount to so much network traffic when as far as I am concerned by PC is doing nothing but polling the SACM for SNMP staistics.....

Salu
14-12-2004, 15:22
I don't mind having a cap in principle. It's just that those that are imposing caps seem to impose caps that almost defeat the point of broadband.

A bit like having a helicopter but not being allowed to fly it above 100m or more than a mile. Or like having a porche with a petrol tank that only holds a pint of petrol. Or like having a TV that only allows you to change channel once every night.

The restrictions are silly.

The reason for restrictions I sort of understand. If there is a group of "abusers" that spend all day, every day downloading P2P music/warez and that has an effect on the provision of services to others then they should either pay a premium or be capped. The problem is the cap being so small. A 5GB cap can easily be used up. Downloading a couple of game demos would soon eat up a lot of your cap. The last thing you want to be doing it counting the pennies/watching the meter as you surf. It has a "bad" feel-good factor.

I went to a resturant the other day. It was a set price for a 3 course meal with a £2.50 charge for coffee/tea afterwards. I appreciate that not everyone would want coffee after a meal but it "felt" annoying. The cost of the coffee would be next to nothing.....couldn't they just include it in the price....or even add a £1 to the cost of the meal?

Rone
14-12-2004, 15:44
Very nicely put, there cant be too many who would disagree with that.

Tho i'm sure someone will, even if its only the Hoteliers and Restaurant Association. :)

ian@huth
14-12-2004, 17:23
Interesting point to note is that with no traffic been generated to/from the Internet by my PC I would still manage to clock up 2.7GB of downloaded traffic a month.

With all the talk of caps and there more 'active' policing. Whether correct or not. I decided to investigate how much traffic I send/receive a period of time. Using tools such as MRTG/PRTG with the SNMP protocols I have managed to obtain traffic information from my SACM. This means I know exatcly how much traffic is coming in and going out from the 'cable side' of the SACM.

The observations are quite startling. They show that on average I receive 8192 bits a second. Not a great deal but if you do the maths:

8192 bits a second
8192 x 60 = 491520 bits a minute
491520 x 60 = 29491200 bits an hour (3MBytes)
29491200 x 24 = 707788800 bits a day (88MBytes)
707788800 x 31 = 21941452800 bits a month ( /8 to get 2742681600 Bytes or 2.742681600 GBytes)

Interesting that all the crud, viruses, network scanning, etc.....can amount to so much network traffic when as far as I am concerned by PC is doing nothing but polling the SACM for SNMP staistics.....

A lot depends at what level NTL measure your usage and what filters are used which could result in it being much less than your figures suggest.

rdhw
14-12-2004, 17:42
I decided to investigate how much traffic I send/receive a period of time. Using tools such as MRTG/PRTG with the SNMP protocols I have managed to obtain traffic information from my SACM. This means I know exatcly how much traffic is coming in and going out from the 'cable side' of the SACM.

They show that on average I receive 8192 bits a second. (2.7 GBytes per month)You need to distinguish between traffic received because it was addressed to you, and traffic received because it was broadcast or multicast, and received by everyone. In any scheme for volume based charging, only traffic addressed to you (or sent by you) would be accounted for.

andrew_wallasey
14-12-2004, 18:35
I don't mind having a cap in principle. It's just that those that are imposing caps seem to impose caps that almost defeat the point of broadband.

A bit like having a helicopter but not being allowed to fly it above 100m or more than a mile. Or like having a porche with a petrol tank that only holds a pint of petrol. Or like having a TV that only allows you to change channel once every night.

The restrictions are silly.

The reason for restrictions I sort of understand. If there is a group of "abusers" that spend all day, every day downloading P2P music/warez and that has an effect on the provision of services to others then they should either pay a premium or be capped. The problem is the cap being so small. A 5GB cap can easily be used up. Downloading a couple of game demos would soon eat up a lot of your cap. The last thing you want to be doing it counting the pennies/watching the meter as you surf. It has a "bad" feel-good factor.

I went to a resturant the other day. It was a set price for a 3 course meal with a £2.50 charge for coffee/tea afterwards. I appreciate that not everyone would want coffee after a meal but it "felt" annoying. The cost of the coffee would be next to nothing.....couldn't they just include it in the price....or even add a £1 to the cost of the meal?
The problem is that the broadband market has got so stupidly competatively priced, it is not possible to continue to offer un-metered services like previously. It will not be long before all ISPs (ADSL and cable modem) have capped only service, BT have been talking about it for some time.

There is companies which are making litterally pennies each month per user because they are selling it so cheap. If they get users downloading 100s of GB each month it will force them to go out of business.

I agree with what you are saying in principal but in practice it is not sustainable to offer un-metered broadband. The main reason being those few selfish users to clock up 10-20gb of data as well as uploading huge amounts (p2p users). It is something stupid like 3% of an isps users account for 90% of data transfered.

sheka
14-12-2004, 21:58
You need to distinguish between traffic received because it was addressed to you, and traffic received because it was broadcast or multicast, and received by everyone. In any scheme for volume based charging, only traffic addressed to you (or sent by you) would be accounted for. You do need to distinguish but isn't that easier said than done. That would mean that NTL 'monitoring equipment' would have to sit *in-line* of the data path for every user.

Say NTL can can do that (which they could but probably won't). How would they differentiate traffic. If someone sends me 1500 byte ping packets that my router drops. Would that count? Probably not. If a virus sends me stream upon stream of TCP SYN messages on port X would that count? They are addressed to my IP address? OK what if NTL say only 'conversations count' or established TCP sessions count as they know then that a device is talking to another device. What if I have BTs broadband telephone service (VoIP) that uses UDP and doesn't have the TCP 3 way handshake? or how about the next great application whatever that may be or the next virus that looks like a valid application.

NTL are probably going to use SNMP to gather interface statistics similar to what I have done already or netflow stats from the cisco UBRs. Netflow would allow NTL to see what IP application or ports are using the bandwidth as opposed to SNMP interface stats that only show how much bandwidth is in use and by whom. Connece the two sources together and you now know who is using all your bandwidth, how much they are using and what that usage comprises of.

Whether NTL can distinguish between 'intended traffic' and count it towards the traffic allowance and the 'un-intended' I don't know. We will all just have to wait and see.

darren
14-12-2004, 22:45
If you look at some of them they offer a choice of both "Capped" and "Uncapped" which at least gives you the choice.

If you are a heavy user (like myself) then I would opt for an uncapped service but pay a little extra.


This reminds me of when BT used to offer dialup internet with to pricing plans:

£11.75 for unlimited dialup a month
£4~ for 3 or 4 hours dialup a month
(You still had to pay for the phone call as well)

I wasn't long before I found out about Freeserve and moved immediately. I cannot believe we are going backwards.

I moved to broadband so I didn't have to clock watch all the time, now it feels I will have to start doing it again, like I have to do with my paid news server.

What is the point of having broadband and being able to download unlimited amounts of data (compared to dialup) if they then go and limit it.

I personally download new Linux builds fairly often, personally I think I will stick with my 750K connection and 'soft cap' until they force and upgrade then I shall go else where unless everyone else has followed suit.

I just wish broadband was still like it was when I joined, UNLIMITED.

Electrolyte01
14-12-2004, 23:56
It's very unlikely I would go over that limit, I don't download much or play online much any more. There is hardly any one in my area with broadband, so I don't think going a few MB's over the limit is really going to make them send me a letter (and also I wouldn't know better due to my age).

Mauldor
15-12-2004, 00:02
It all sounds simple to me, the Infratructure they have in place (CM and ADSL) is not suited to the task in hand, much like 56K modems had a limit on that the ISP required banks of modem thus made it cost more to provide the service and someone hogging a line 24/7 meant someone, sonwhere got a busy tone.

Its a pity there was not someway of managing the users in that heavy users all got bundled onto the same UBR, then all they would effect is each other. The problem we have is much like 56K modems, if enough people saturate the avil bandwidth, everybody else on that UBR Suffers with slow browsing, bad pings in game etc.

I think the percentage of people using P2P though is not as high as has been said, its easier to cram 500 people on one UBR (if thats possible) and pretend the bandwidth is scarce then providing a proper service and having 200 say on each UBR. The good thing is, if they do bring in a Hard Cap, it will free up the space for the people on each UBR as the people in the know will move on without even thinking about it. You got to remember that in the ADSL market, there is not just ONE providor to choose from - you have a braod choice in that respect.

As already said by a few - most if not all ADSL providors offer both a LITE package and a normal package - only the LITE one has the CAP in place. I would like someone who keeps saying ADSL will have caps soon to show me a ISP that has a CAP across there entire range please as NTL do... to my mind only NTL place a CAP on the entire package range - which is a tad short sighted in my eyes.

Chrysalis
15-12-2004, 10:07
The problem is that the broadband market has got so stupidly competatively priced, it is not possible to continue to offer un-metered services like previously. It will not be long before all ISPs (ADSL and cable modem) have capped only service, BT have been talking about it for some time.

There is companies which are making litterally pennies each month per user because they are selling it so cheap. If they get users downloading 100s of GB each month it will force them to go out of business.

I agree with what you are saying in principal but in practice it is not sustainable to offer un-metered broadband. The main reason being those few selfish users to clock up 10-20gb of data as well as uploading huge amounts (p2p users). It is something stupid like 3% of an isps users account for 90% of data transfered.

20gig isn't high usage, for a 1mbit+ connection, I sense NTL are starting to be arrogant like BT and feel invincible so they can treat customers how they want, but their reputation already isnt great and word gets around.

Also I dont like anyone who uses a modest amount been called a warez user, I use 30-60 gig a month usually, NTL are effectively telling me they can no longer provide what I want.

Rone
15-12-2004, 10:27
An interesting point was made on the news media last night, really late on.
The Film industry is looking at making DVD movies, downloadable over the net, you pay to d\load, [as is done with music] and burn it yourself, and they get a share of the market they are missing out on. I'm not going to start an argument on the price of music or dvds or software etc etc.
But it seems as speeds all over are getting to a point where all this is made possible, it might not happen.
We all want cheaper stuff, so it seems due to caps or bandwidth restrictions its going to come unstuck before it gets a chance.
I really dont know why speeds are being increased, ok so you can stream a bit of video faster, but web browsings almost as good at 300k as at 1.5.
If the system cannot cope, its hardly worth the new possibilities it should be opening up.

Mick
15-12-2004, 10:58
I use 30-60 gig a month usually, NTL are effectively telling me they can no longer provide what I want.

They are not telling you that at all. You are obviously forgetting that it has been said, that you do not have to pay the administration fee (£25) to have the new speeds with the usage restrictions attached and you can stay as you are. If you are talking about the old capping debate, we already know ntl do not strictly enforce the 1GB limit so you really do not have an issue if you still want what you have now.

ian@huth
15-12-2004, 11:32
I really dont know why speeds are being increased, ok so you can stream a bit of video faster, but web browsings almost as good at 300k as at 1.5.


Speeds can be doubled to enable the user to get a download twice as fast rather than get twice as much.

20gig isn't high usage, for a 1mbit+ connection

That's a bit like saying 5,000 miles per month isn't high mileage for a Formulae 1 car. Think about it.

They are not telling you that at all. You are obviously forgetting that it has been said, that you do not have to pay the administration fee (£25) to have the new speeds with the usage restrictions attached and you can stay as you are. If you are talking about the old capping debate, we already know ntl do not strictly enforce the 1GB limit so you really do not have an issue if you still want what you have now.

It is unclear that the existing soft cap will remain when the new speeds are introduced. I doubt that it will.

th'engineer
15-12-2004, 11:57
Just an observation if you dont like the idea of a cap get another subscriber the last thing that NTL want is bandwidth hogs .

Spoiling other customers enjoyment if you dont like it there are plenty of other ISPs without a CAP .

Its so easy these days you just phone up cancel NTL and get ADSL.

Chrysalis
15-12-2004, 14:13
not easy at all, I think a good proportion of ntl's customer base is probably for reasons such as no ADSL in area,landlord restrictions, too lazy to have phone line changed.

I also thing the soft limit wont remain for long, so my problem still remains.

Rone is right that web browsing on a 3mbit connection is not much different then on a 750kbit connection, so whats the point of a 3mbit connection? its useful for those who do downloading. Some ISP's namely wannadoo BT and NTL are trying the hardsell of high speed low cap to fool people that they spending their money wisely for super fast browsing.

ian@huth
15-12-2004, 14:31
How many times has it to be said that having a fast connection, say 3 Mb/s, doesn't mean that you have to push it to its limits all the time. Many people have cars that are capable of over 100mph but never go over 70 mph and are only used for a few hours per week. NTL could possibly give all customers 3 Mb/s and it wouldn't make much difference except for the few users who want to download the entire internet in a day and then do it again the next day.

Chrysalis
15-12-2004, 16:58
who says we want to push it to its limits all the time?

you either assume there is light usage <10 gig usage or 24/7 leeching but no inbetween I am sorry but there is a inbetween and I think people grabbing 40-80gig a month on a 2mbit or 3mbit connection is not that abusive.

Neil
15-12-2004, 17:50
You're all just going round in circles now, making the same comments, & using the same replies.

I think the time has come to close this thread.....

Rone
15-12-2004, 18:40
You might be right Neil, and i'm not going to disagree.
Judging by the amount of views cap threads have had, its obviously got many people curious.
But i will say several different and valid points have been raised here, with no slagging or verbal abuse, which is nice. :)
If only some of the decision makers read the main concerns that have been voiced, and might make some sort of concession favourable to all, it really would make for a happy christmas\new year.
Apart from that, its wait and see i suppose. ;)

Neil
15-12-2004, 19:13
You might be right Neil, and i'm not going to disagree.
Judging by the amount of views cap threads have had, its obviously got many people curious.
But i will say several different and valid points have been raised here, with no slagging or verbal abuse, which is nice. :)
If only some of the decision makers read the main concerns that have been voiced, and might make some sort of concession favourable to all, it really would make for a happy christmas\new year.
Apart from that, its wait and see i suppose. ;)

The problem is these threads are identical to the ones we had when we forst broke the news of the cap years ago....

There is nothing new being said or discussed IMO.

Mauldor
15-12-2004, 19:41
Before the thread gets closed once again, I wish for somebody technical to explain this for me if they can:

ADSL - 90%+ of the providors I have checked offer Lite and PowerUser packages, Only the Lite packages come with a CAP. Now understanding the reason for a CAP is that heavy users ofd the line will take most of the Bandwidth away and leave little if any for the other users. Now how for example does ADSL Providors manage that??

Using NTL as a comparrison if I may - they chuck users on UBRS - grouping XXX together in the same area, this having so much bandwidth. The theory of all of this is that if everybody was on at a different time, then there is more than enough bandwidth to go around in a quiet area.

To me it seems very simple - ADSL can cope with "Heavy" users no problems and it seems Telewest also can cope yet NTL cannot. Would someone who is Inside NTL and technical explain why we need a CAP on all the services and how does a Business Line differ apart from the price to how it is wired up? Do they get there own UBR?

andrew_wallasey
15-12-2004, 19:45
20gig isn't high usage, for a 1mbit+ connection, I sense NTL are starting to be arrogant like BT and feel invincible so they can treat customers how they want, but their reputation already isnt great and word gets around.

Also I dont like anyone who uses a modest amount been called a warez user, I use 30-60 gig a month usually, NTL are effectively telling me they can no longer provide what I want.
I meant 10 - 20gb per day.

Chrysalis
16-12-2004, 10:13
there is something worth discussing, and it will be the case until NTL back down, close this thread and another will pop up, I got no idea why the mods hate cap discussion so much.

andrew_wallasey yep 10 gig a day certianly is high, I can see NTL are wanting to stop the 24/7 leechers which I dont blame them for but the people who use more then 40 gig but less then 100gig have got caught out with this and lose out.

AndrewJ
16-12-2004, 10:18
I am going to have to calculate just how much net I am using per month.

I am sure even with just forums, online gaming on zone.com and Yahoo games and I am maxing even 40gb per month, as I am normally online 24/7 I dont run a webserver or use p2p or torrents, but I leave my systems running apart from the laptop.

And with 3mb I thnk everyone who uses torrents will be going nuts on them and maxing it out.

So I wonder then will NTL have resources to comment to every single user who goes over it? or will they make it automated. :confused:

mcmanic
16-12-2004, 11:57
ok, so what about "what i see become the norm in the future" downloading game content, like Half-Life 2 via steam and probably pay per film subsciption downloads, are we not to be allowed to do this, defeats the object of having BB in the 1st place if you gotta pay for a piece of software then find out at the end of the month you getting charged extra from NTL for going over the Cap (if they do go this route)

seems to me that we are going backwards instead of forwards where the interent is becomes an alternative to going to the shops to buy your games, video's ect.

I'm on 1.5meg, don't plan to change, and don't wish to find suddenly enforced to a 5 gig a month cap, thats just silly, means for example - i download Half-life 2 then i'm screwed for the rest of the month!

etccarmageddon
16-12-2004, 12:16
I'm on 1.5meg, don't plan to change, and don't wish to find suddenly enforced to a 5 gig a month cap, thats just silly, means for example - i download Half-life 2 then i'm screwed for the rest of the month!

if you're currently on the 1.5mb service then you're paying £38 a month which on the 'new' options will give you 3mb and 40gb a month. you'd only end up on a 5gb cap if you downgraded to £18 a month.

th'engineer
16-12-2004, 14:02
I must agree with Neil we are going over the same areas again.:tu:

I have said, and still have the same view if you do not like the idea its simple change your provider.:D

NTL are not going to change their mind even if the reasons for not doing it are sensible. Thats past experience sure all the team here will agree:)

They have never at corporate level listened to customers concerns so do not think they will change now.

Remember Mr Bill Goodland of NTL views of customers :D

BTW note corporate level before our resident NTL workers flame me :afire:

Neil was one that has changed his provider and gets a good service.:tu:

If you wish to stay on cable unmetered there is AOL who have no limits.

Even advertise it on the TV.

ntluser
16-12-2004, 14:30
I must agree with Neil we are going over the same areas again.:tu:

I have said, and still have the same view if you do not like the idea its simple change your provider.:D

NTL are not going to change their mind even if the reasons for not doing it are sensible. Thats past experience sure all the team here will agree:)

They have never at corporate level listened to customers concerns so do not think they will change now.

Remember Mr Bill Goodland of NTL views of customers :D

BTW note corporate level before our resident NTL workers flame me :afire:

Neil was one that has changed his provider and gets a good service.:tu:

If you wish to stay on cable unmetered there is AOL who have no limits.

Even advertise it on the TV.


I think the best that forum members and customers can hope for is that NTL will review the CAP limits, say in 12 to 24 months or so, after they see what demands NTL users make on their system i.e. cable network.

They have set limits which they think the system can handle and after all if NTL goes down we all suffer irrespective of our usage.

Maybe in time with system upgrades and with the system showing that it can cope to NTL's satisfaction CAP limits may well be increased.

Let's take what they are offering for the time being and see what happens.

Mauldor
16-12-2004, 19:55
This is how I personally work with the things thats come out of NTL....

They introduced a Cap (soft) - I carried on doing whatever i was doing, my theory was quite simple, if they kick up a fuss - I can cancel and move my business elsewere. What did NTL Gain by introducing this cap? Nothing but a lot of un-happy people, for exmaple myself I went back to BT Line and Sky Box.

Next problem that came my way - upping the price of 1Mbit - again no great shakes, i call them to cancel, they offer me 3 months half price. When price comes back to normal I switched to 750/128.

When we had one problem after the next in my area - I was alreayd speaking to providors to arrange ADSL Install and looking online shops to buy ADSL Network capable modem. The problem got solved and touch wood, never came back - so I still just about hang in there with NTL.

When the new Speeds / Cap comes about - then I will assess the situtation when it is written in Black and White, if they charge extra per MB or cut your speed down, its a quick call to change to ADSL (been a lucky person who can have either or).

Personally I wish I lived in a Telewest Cabled Area, they are definatly showing the way to go forward. If NTL are that blind that they are not doing a market reserch of what the customer wants - then they deserve to go bust as far as Im concerned.

ian@huth
16-12-2004, 20:55
snip>
Personally I wish I lived in a Telewest Cabled Area, they are definatly showing the way to go forward. If NTL are that blind that they are not doing a market reserch of what the customer wants - then they deserve to go bust as far as Im concerned.

How do you know that NTL aren't doing market research? Have you ever stopped to think that NTL are giving what most customers want and are happy with, not what a very small minority of customers demand, many of which they would be better without.

Bill C
16-12-2004, 23:45
How do you know that NTL aren't doing market research? Have you ever stopped to think that NTL are giving what most customers want and are happy with, not what a very small minority of customers demand, many of which they would be better without.I could not have said that any better well said . :tu:

I am waiting to see what the final outcome is then i will make my mind up. Untill then i have better things to spend my time on.

However some info so far.

I have been monitoring my connection for the last month using mrtg and can tell you that i used 35.4 gig for the month and as i will be on the 3 meg option i think i will be ok.

I have 3 PC's connected with at least one user on most of the time. I stream video on broadband plus and download TV's ep when i need to. I have 3 teenagers in the house who do what most teens do with there connection. :)

I agree different users will use different levels but i considered myself a heavy user.:Yikes:

Looking at what some download might be that i am not a heavy user

MatTman
16-12-2004, 23:51
WHAT THE HELL!!!!!! 1mb /5gb per month....... thats F**King Rediculous, are NTL smoking crack to be coming up with such unbelieveably unreasonable bandwidth caps?

3mb /40gb... yet again truly pathetic, NTL are shafting themselves and i will take my £120 per month somewhere else.

ian@huth
17-12-2004, 00:11
WHAT THE HELL!!!!!! 1mb /5gb per month....... thats F**King Rediculous, are NTL smoking crack to be coming up with such unbelieveably unreasonable bandwidth caps?

5 Gb per month is ample for most users who want an always on connection without their phone line being tied up. They probably don't need a 1 Mb connection but have that speed available to speed up the odd download that they do. And they get that for only £17.99 per month, a price at which some of the ADSL competition only gives 1 or 2 Gb a month usage.

3mb /40gb... yet again truly pathetic, NTL are shafting themselves and i will take my £120 per month somewhere else.

40 Gb per month is a reasonable allowance even for heavy users which people such as Bill C think they are as he posted above. What would you rather have, 3Mb with a 40 Gb allowance or 1.5 Mb with a 40 Gb allowance? I know that the answer will probably be 3 Mb with no restriction, but are you willing to pay for that level of service?

Mauldor
17-12-2004, 01:50
I think tbh we are still missing the point:

A UBR has only so much Bandwidth - if enough people hog the line on lets say the 1.5mbit then it will cause the rest of the people connected to either have slower download or bad pings in gaming. Upload bandwidth is rarer than download bandwidth. Tarring the enitre UK with the same brush is not good though, for example there might well be lots of bandwidth left over in my neck of the woods while a major city (nottingham say) might have it all used up a lot of the time. This I can understand, so you would think then the last thing you want to be doing is increasing the bandwidth avail to customers if there is not enough to go around in the first place.

This was the reason for the "soft" cap, if a lot of people in the same area rang up about slow speeds etc - they can identify by whatever means a person in that area as a heavy user (maybe 10 of them lets say) and write them a nice letter.

Now what is been proposed (and yes its only that) is that you get XX per month - this in effect does not stop the problem above - For exmaple lets say Im on the new 3mbit - I can thus spend 5 days in a row (as a example) downloading my quota, people in the area ring up Support as they cannot go online as pings are so bad in games and there speeds are slow, cos me and a bunch of others are all using the bandwidth.

All I want to know - what is the end goal here? Yes we have covered this is Major detail many times with a shortage of Bandwidth yet each time we are giving more and more? Maybe Im missing the point?

ian@huth
17-12-2004, 02:07
I think tbh we are still missing the point:
<snip


Giving people more bandwidth is no problem if they continue to do what they did before they got it. Just the same as if I swap my car for one with an higher top speed doesn't mean I will drive faster or travel further.

In a way giving customers twice the speed could mean that they are only on line with the possibility of affecting others use for half the time if all they are doing is downloading a large file.

The big question is will users alter their usage pattern when they get this extra speed or not. If having twice the speed that you now have means you will download significantly more, what is this extra download?

nj2112
17-12-2004, 11:44
I've been thinking how people might alter their net habits with a hard cap in place and I think we might see a new phenomena.

Users may fall into two catagories (broadly speaking).

Type A
Use bandwidth freely at the start of a capping period until a certain proportion of the allowance is used then moderate usage for the rest of the period.

Type B
Moderate useage at the start of a capping period then as the end of the period approaches increase usage, a use it or lose scenario.

I speculate that there may be increased utilisation of network capacity around the end/start of capping periods. I wonder how well the infrastructure will cope and will we soon see regular end/start of capping period slowdowns.

Also with the soft cap there was/is some incentive to "fly under the radar" by downloading in off peak periods, if you exceed the usage guideline but don't impact on other users maybe you wont get a letter.
Conversely with a hard cap you have a set limit so there is no real incentive to use at off peak times, usage will be when most convenient, probably resulting in higher peak time usage.

I'm just speculating but couple the end/start increase and the peak time increase and maybe we'll see some quite bad times around the end/start of the month.

Just a couple of thoughts.

Mauldor
17-12-2004, 12:27
I was after really the technical arguement of a Cap, no use going over ground which has been covered about how much people download and why as this is not getting us anywhere.

Using the mobile phone market as the best example (as cars dont really compare) - they limit you to a set ammount of calls per month (like the Cap) and anything over this is charged extra. If you had 200 mins left over and nothing was carried over, then 9/10 people will use them up best way they can.
The mobile phone market though as to compete against all the others, no good one offering you 100 mins a month for £25 when your next competitor is offering 500 mins for the same price.

This is what I am trying to get at really, every single providor including Telewest Have a cap yes but not on all of there services they sell. Telewest as a good example use the same equipment yet for some reason they dont feel the need to start limiting - nor do any of the ADSL people out there.

At the end of the day its fairly simple what might happen - NTL say bring in a Hard Cap across there entire range, XX number of people will move if they can to another providor. NTL *Might* later on think they have dont the wrong thing and thus drop the cap on the top tiers but they wont get the people back. It might be a small blip in your eyes but people normally speak to each other in many means (including forums) - good example is I suggest to anybody that asks me not to go with:

AOL
BT
FreeServe

As on the whole you can get better, cheaper else where.. It might not happen overnight but give it time and it will soon come to light, which at the end of the day effect people working in NTL as this could include cutting down staff.

mcmanic
17-12-2004, 12:27
Yes some good thoughts there nj2112, i for one will wait untill last week of every month and download my full 40gig of tv shows ect,ect regardless of the time of day or having a impact on other users as i will be within my monthly quota, having a newsgroup account with 28days retention is great for that sort of thing, whereas at the moment i normally leave pc on at night where there is little impact to other users.

Don't think Ntl have really thought this through, we could hold a national download week maybe if they go for a perm cap system, lol

eshaq786
17-12-2004, 13:37
National download week? Sounds like a good idea.

Chrysalis
17-12-2004, 19:06
To answer some points made and to raise new points.

1 - It is not easy for some people to simply change provider eg. Landlord might not allow BT line(my case), could be no ADSL in area, could be out of ADSL range, might not be household owner and as such cant decide on telco provider. NTL have effective cable monopoly which I do not agree with, BT are forced to have competition I cannot see how it is fair telewest and NTL dont compete in same areas as they obviously both provide largely different levels of service.

2 - ISP's such as AAisp have caps but they are time of day triggered so you have a monthly allowance for peak time downloading but in early morning there is no limit, why can't NTL implement something similiar.

3 - Most ADSL isp's who have a cap such as metronet and plusnet have a price cap at which point the connection becomes unmetered, the only 2 ADSL isp's who dont do this are wannadoo and BT surprise surpise this is who NTL compare themselves to.

4 - Market research is bull****, fact is a lot of customers are not technically minded so as such don't use their connections to their potential for isp's this is a free gift since they are paying something they barely use. Those who do want to use it are getting labled as abusers (not talking about 24/7 talking about the people caught in the middle)

daxx
17-12-2004, 20:13
A few years ago I, along with a few others, were paying £50 for a 1m connection with NTL. Then came the price reduction down to £35, great a £15 'saving'.

I have said all along that I will pay for whatever speed I need be it capped or uncapped (if given a choice).

Given the immenent release of a couple more BW hungry offering from NTL and the new teirs offering, perhaps it is time (yet again <sigh>) that NTL top dogs get a few emails pointing them at the various 'cap' discussions here and elsewhere (if such other places exist :) ) and they take note of what the 'tech savvy' users would like. After all it is the membership of this forum, that, by helping the non techy, enable those people to become more aware of the more advanced nature of BB and what eventually is possible and indirectly point those users towards a higher costing teir.

Without the input from these forums (if they listen) then NTL would have us all on the 300 teir and just downloading emails with a bit of browsing thrown in. An ideal situation for NTL bandwidth, but a very stagnant and dying customer base as those that become more 'techy' will want 'better' offerings.

NTL are here to make a profit (get out of debt) and any company must continue to offer what its customers require at a price that is dictated by what the customer sees as a 'fair price'. We have all seen over the past couple of years various ISP's being 'bought out' or dissapearing from either being 'overpriced' or by not being 'not cost effective'.

The answers is quite simple, for those wanting an 'uncapped' service simply revert back to the pre-price reduction prices of a couple of years ago, unfortunatley the only one I can remember is the teir I was on, £50 for 1Meg. I personally have no qualms or argument with NTL charging me this price for an uncapped service, this was the amount budgeted for my 'internet access' and considering that I will (if this is adopted) be getting a 200% download speed increase for no extra cost, if NTL choose to increase my upload speed then fine something else to weigh as a plus point.

At the end of the day if I don't like what NTL are offering then I will simply 'vote with my wallet' and find a supplier who has what I require speedwise or service wise, and not waste my time forever whingeing on about what 'alternative suppliers' are offering. I'll just go and 'buy' from them

If I want it, whatever 'it' may be I'll go out and get it, simple as that.
If what I want is not available to me by reason of my locality then it's my tough luck, I'll simply have to keep on looking till I find it in my area.
If I can't afford it then that is my problem, not the suppliers. Its my money and it is up to me to decide how its spent/budgeted.

The 'if's' argument could go on forever as could the answers but what is the point, this forum has been there many times before and if their were T shirts given out for all the 'cap' related threads in this current and previous incarnations of the board then most of the membership would be wearing them, or using them for dusters :dozey: .

At the end of the day it is a 'wait and see' situation, if I'm not happy with whats offered then I'll be off, no whinging or moaning, just gone to an alternative supplier. Simple as that.

MatTman
17-12-2004, 23:29
5 Gb per month is ample for most users who want an always on connection without their phone line being tied up. They probably don't need a 1 Mb connection but have that speed available to speed up the odd download that they do. And they get that for only £17.99 per month, a price at which some of the ADSL competition only gives 1 or 2 Gb a month usage.



40 Gb per month is a reasonable allowance even for heavy users which people such as Bill C think they are as he posted above. What would you rather have, 3Mb with a 40 Gb allowance or 1.5 Mb with a 40 Gb allowance? I know that the answer will probably be 3 Mb with no restriction, but are you willing to pay for that level of service?
3mb will be used up fast, you'd be suprised how much extra Data windows likes to transfer when you have the bandwidth, spyware Ad-ware Stealth Warez that many Comp newbs dont know how to combat will feel it..

3mb should be more 50 gig to allow for the days when some alot of users likely will go over 1 gig per day, especially those on Networks.

ian@huth
18-12-2004, 00:36
3mb will be used up fast, you'd be suprised how much extra Data windows likes to transfer when you have the bandwidth, spyware Ad-ware Stealth Warez that many Comp newbs dont know how to combat will feel it..

3mb should be more 50 gig to allow for the days when some alot of users likely will go over 1 gig per day, especially those on Networks.

I don't know how you work that out? :confused:

My own feeling about networks is that they should be subject to the same allowance as a single user setup or you pay more for a higher allowance. If you go to an all you can eat diner you don't expect to be able to take a couple of friends along and all eat for the same price as one person.

Paul
18-12-2004, 00:40
I will be on the 3M service, and will get nowhere even close to 40GB a month.

homealone
18-12-2004, 01:09
I will be on the 3M service, and will get nowhere even close to 40GB a month.


I will be on the 2M & will be nowhere close to 30GB pm, well when my son moves out, anyway ;)

Mauldor
18-12-2004, 01:14
I will be on the 3M service, and will get nowhere even close to 40GB a month.
Just had a thought there Paul when you wrote that.....
You go to work for 8 hours a day, at this said work I imagine you have access to the Net for the odd Browse (work reasons of course)...Now working on a computer all day means generally when you get home, the last thing you want to do is sit for more hours in front of your own PC at home and continue browsing web sites, downloading etc..

When I worked at a certain place I had access to a 45Mbit line with only two other users on, so I def was not going to be sitting at home downloading stuff (legal I may add) when i can get it in next to no time on that line.

I def think the main bone of contention here (on the whole) is a choice, if NTL bring into practice what they are thinking of doing then even though many wont get effected really by it, they still are not happy as they have not many options (for those poor sods who can only have NTL).

Ref your post Daxx, I also dont give a Hoot myself whatever happens, as i have said, I have a BT line, I am close to a Exchange and I can get upto 2mbit ADSL. I dont swap over yet cos it is not broke as they say - once it does break (caps etc) then I will also Vote with my Wallet - no major problems there...

Last point - still see no Techies have come into the converation ref my request as to the reasons for a cap and how increasing the speed + giving you a Quota is going to help the network out with these so called Heavy Users - if they wanted to be nasty (these Wazez Monkeys) all they got to do is download between 6pm and 10pm say - peak time's - it will cripple the network if enough do it but no much NTL can do about it (or will they also slip that into the mix as well?)

Paul
18-12-2004, 01:23
Just had a thought there Paul when you wrote that.....
You go to work for 8 hours a day, at this said work I imagine you have access to the Net for the odd Browse (work reasons of course)...Now working on a computer all day means generally when you get home, the last thing you want to do is sit for more hours in front of your own PC at home and continue browsing web sites, downloading etc..Only 8 hours - I wish. :) and yes, I have web access - i support a load of internet systems :)

When at home i am always sat in front of my pc, it's in the front room on the desk i sit at. I am on almost all evenings from about 8pm to 2am. :D My kids are usually on before I get home.

etccarmageddon
18-12-2004, 02:00
I def think the main bone of contention here (on the whole) is a choice, if NTL bring into practice what they are thinking of doing then even though many wont get effected really by it, they still are not happy as they have not many options (for those poor sods who can only have NTL).

there are no poor sods who can only have NTL - you're assuming that those people who cant get ADSL only have the option to use NTL but that isnt true.

if you dont like the NTL caps then www.aol.co.uk will be happy to have your business - they offer a broadband service via cable modem or a BT phone line.

eshaq786
18-12-2004, 02:04
Two of the words companies together.:Yikes: How worse can it get?

daxx
18-12-2004, 02:42
Ref your post Daxx, I also dont give a Hoot myself whatever happens, as i have said, I have a BT line, I am close to a Exchange and I can get upto 2mbit ADSL. I dont swap over yet cos it is not broke as they say - once it does break (caps etc) then I will also Vote with my Wallet - no major problems there... from here http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/showpost.php?p=361947&postcount=3
I have a sneaky feeling that 2005 will see ADSL on my doorstep with the plan NTL have up there sleeves...Imagine that eh, 256K upload - whoa...err which one is it or haven't BT made their minds up yet :rolleyes:

Currently have 7.5M (4+2+1.5) inbound and 1M (348+348+256) outbound in this household (2 x BT + NTL BB) :dozey: because its what I can patch together, it's there, I can afford it (although some of it is still under 'blagging rights') and mainly it's my choices and, so to a certain degree, I have already voted. If NTL want to offer me 3M uncapped then one of the other services may be reduced or maybe I'll just try and download the internet or become the local 'warez monkey' :D

Chrysalis
18-12-2004, 10:18
I notice no reply to the points I made, I assume no defense.

Paul and homealone good for you, you wont reach your quota and NTL meet your needs, but that doesnt make them gods, there are many unhappy customers out there.

mchu6am4
18-12-2004, 15:34
Hi,

Earlier I was in town where I saw some NTL salesmen selling their products. They were selling the new BB speeds (ie. 1MB starter package @ £15.99/month) etc.

I asked them about the new capping (5GB/month for 1MB) in the new year to which they denied any knowledge of, though they said there is a limit of 1GB/DAY that is not really enforced. They did not believe anything I said.

Is there any truth in this as I was very interested (even at 1GB/day) ???

Comments welcome.

Ash

BackToMine
18-12-2004, 15:56
I have no problem with enforcing the limit of 30GB/month for 2Mbit service in Q1 2005 and I encourge all Broadband providers to do exactly the same.

Why would anyone who uses their Cable Broadband connection legally (no-Warez) for home use ever need more than 1GByte/day?

The unlimited home broadband usage era will end within 2005-06 due to P2P users who are nothing more than theives and communists.

I cannot wait for the days of DRM-only media and Palladium-style operating systems.

Mick
18-12-2004, 15:56
Hi,

Earlier I was in town where I saw some NTL salesmen selling their products. They were selling the new BB speeds (ie. 1MB starter package @ £15.99/month) etc.

I asked them about the new capping (5GB/month for 1MB) in the new year to which they denied any knowledge of, though they said there is a limit of 1GB/DAY that is not really enforced. They did not believe anything I said.

Is there any truth in this as I was very interested (even at 1GB/day) ???

Comments welcome.

Ash


Simon Duffy, ntl's chief executive, confirmed it for us - the usage restrictions for the new speeds.

I am led to believe that ntl will not be enforcing the new caps right away but they will probably be doing so when they launch metered broadband coming sometime next year.

See here (http://www.cableforum.co.uk/article/118/ntl-metered-broadband-in-2005) for more information. :)

dilli-theclaw
18-12-2004, 16:00
Why would anyone who uses their Cable Broadband connection legally (no-Warez) for home use ever need more than 1GByte/day?

I used far more than this in a day when I downloaded half life 2 from steam.

BackToMine
18-12-2004, 17:00
I used far more than this in a day when I downloaded half life 2 from steam.
Exactly.
You paid for 1GB/day and you've over-used the service. Therefore you must be charged for the extra data.

If you don't like it, go purchase the retail version in the shop.

I didn't say it was impossible to go over 1GB/day with only legal uses. Hell you can download that POS toy operating system called Linux a hundred times. Wouldn't change the fact that you are over-using the service and hurting civil users who use their Broadband connection reasonably.

dilli-theclaw
18-12-2004, 17:06
Exactly.
You paid for 1GB/day and you've over-used the service. Therefore you must be charged for the extra data.

If you don't like it, go purchase the retail version in the shop. Um no - if it was enforced to 1gb in a day then i'd split it over more days... obviously.

I didn't say it was impossible to go over 1GB/day with only legal uses. Hell you can download that POS toy operating system called Linux a hundred times. And the reason you'd do that is?

edit - you said WHY would someone NEED to do it... I gave you an answer.


Wouldn't change the fact that you are over-using the service and hurting civil users who use their Broadband connection reasonably. I DO use my connection reasonably.

daxx
18-12-2004, 17:06
The unlimited home broadband usage era will end within 2005-06 due to P2P users who are nothing more than theives and communists.

I cannot wait for the days of DRM-only media and Palladium-style operating systems.
Just a 'slight mis nomer somewhere in here ;) .

If you wish to make any computer usage reliant on a 'remote' and under sole control of the purveyor then you are encouraging a monopolostic state of affairs with regard to software. This 'is' communisim at its finest example where one is controlled by another person/entity. :Yikes:

Not the way I and indeed many others would wish to work.

P2P is a lot more than 'warez monkeys' or to use your phrase 'theives', their are many legitamate uses for the P2P network, as a quick trawl of any cap thread in this forum will reveal.

LostintheNW
18-12-2004, 17:07
Exactly.
You paid for 1GB/day and you've over-used the service. Therefore you must be charged for the extra data.

If you don't like it, go purchase the retail version in the shop.

I didn't say it was impossible to go over 1GB/day with only legal uses. Hell you can download that POS toy operating system called Linux a hundred times. Wouldn't change the fact that you are over-using the service and hurting civil users who use their Broadband connection reasonably.

So you think its ok for NTL to decide how we can purchase our software? If anyone wishes to purchase online software which they download, they can and should be able to - what gives NTL the right to dictate peoples shopping habits?

Could quite easily take NTL to court and state they are infringing on human rights (the HRA 1998 has been great for things like this!)

Bill C
18-12-2004, 18:19
Could quite easily take NTL to court and state they are infringing on human rights (the HRA 1998 has been great for things like this!)
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

And here was me thinking this would be a boring Saturday. Big thanks for cheering me up

mchu6am4
18-12-2004, 18:59
ANY COMMENTS ON POST #97 ?


ash

Electrolyte01
18-12-2004, 19:38
I'm going with the upgrade when they ask me, and if I get a letter from them saying I keep going over I'll ring them to get my bandwidth limit increased (or get something like that sorted) otherwise, if I get no messages from them, I'll use it the same as I was before. Probably the best option to do aswell, I don't think they will cut off my internet because I went over by a few MB ;)

jtwn
18-12-2004, 19:47
ANY COMMENTS ON POST #97 ?


ash



Usually i find salesmen to be dishonest, all they are interested in is selling their product and getting their commision as they know somebody else will have to deal with the problems when you find out what you didn't expect.

Believe the investors report and not the salesman if i were you. The service will be capped if it said so. Though what you said was interesting..i think i'll have to see if the salesmen in my town are already selling the new deal.

Chrysalis
18-12-2004, 19:56
Something else I would like to mention as well. ADSL capping that has recently came about is largely related to the BT Central change in charges that BT were forced to do to make datastream ADSL competitive basically they switched from capacity based charging to usage based charging so isp's are under pressure to cut down their bandwidth consumption or raise contention level's. For this reason we will start seeing ADSL ipstream isp's go towards metered products but LLU and datastream should be unaffected, I think NTL have piggy backed onto this and taken advantage of the situation, it is well known that with ADSL the isp's bill for BT central traffic is more then external traffic so as NTL own their own network I can only assume that the cost for their local traffic is less in proportion to what ADSL isp's have to pay, I hope what I have said isn't too confusing.

Mick
18-12-2004, 20:42
ANY COMMENTS ON POST #97 ?


ash



Look again as I replied to your post, mine is post 99 and please do not shout thanks. :)

etccarmageddon
18-12-2004, 22:01
I heard the other day that there's talk of movie studios legitimising downloading of movies in order to counter the current illegal P2Ping of movies.

They have seen what happened to napster and also the various successful ventures such as Apple's Itunes and the suggestion is that the same can happen with movies.

If/When this happens then it would become an incentive to some broadband customers to avoid metered products or seek products that dont have a low cap.

Rone
18-12-2004, 22:15
Unless i'm wrong, basically theres not enough bandwidth to go round if everyone starts d\loading Half Life 2 at exactly the same time.
Can there ever be enough bandwidth, ever? [Without NTL having to pay out stupid money to do so]
So theres little chance for those who would quite happily pay a bit more, so they dont become paranoid about limits.
Lets hope its not going to cost the earth if you go over.

MatTman
19-12-2004, 00:03
I have no problem with enforcing the limit of 30GB/month for 2Mbit service in Q1 2005 and I encourge all Broadband providers to do exactly the same.

Why would anyone who uses their Cable Broadband connection legally (no-Warez) for home use ever need more than 1GByte/day?

The unlimited home broadband usage era will end within 2005-06 due to P2P users who are nothing more than theives and communists.

I cannot wait for the days of DRM-only media and Palladium-style operating systems.eh?? ever heard of a thing called the Movies on Demand??? Demo download sites, Distros, i could go on all day.. Subcription media sites etc etc... uninformed idiots like yourself need to get with the program, were not all p2P thieves.

jtwn
19-12-2004, 00:04
I heard the other day that there's talk of movie studios legitimising downloading of movies in order to counter the current illegal P2Ping of movies.

They have seen what happened to napster and also the various successful ventures such as Apple's Itunes and the suggestion is that the same can happen with movies.

If/When this happens then it would become an incentive to some broadband customers to avoid metered products or seek products that dont have a low cap.
I too read something a while back on this. For the majority, isn't the whole point is that you don't pay. I think they are wrong if they think it is because people find it is 'convienent'.

Besides, i wouldn't use the service if they are going to compress the films to cd size. I doubt it'll lift off though anyway.

Shaun
19-12-2004, 00:36
I agree with what you are saying in principal but in practice it is not sustainable to offer un-metered broadband. The main reason being those few selfish users to clock up 10-20gb of data as well as uploading huge amounts (p2p users). It is something stupid like 3% of an isps users account for 90% of data transfered.

It's called the free market economy, its the world we live in and to honest its nice to find it working in the consumers interest for a change.

SMHarman
19-12-2004, 00:43
I heard the other day that there's talk of movie studios legitimising downloading of movies in order to counter the current illegal P2Ping of movies.

They have seen what happened to napster and also the various successful ventures such as Apple's Itunes and the suggestion is that the same can happen with movies.

If/When this happens then it would become an incentive to some broadband customers to avoid metered products or seek products that dont have a low cap.
Read an interesting article in the online Chicago Herald Tribune last week on this. Covering Blockbuster dropping late fees (well kinda) , principally to compete with the netflix/screenselects of this world.
Went on to examine how the whole rental industry is falling apart in a market where you can buy many dvds for $10 (so why rent for $4).
Then went on to the future and the potential colaberation between the movie houses / tivo and netflix cutting out the postal system and delivering your next rental to the HDD of your Tivo box.
Certainly woudn't want to be on metered BB if I was getting an 8GB movie delivered once a week!

Mauldor
19-12-2004, 01:12
When the first CAP thread came up a LOT of people agrued to death with the Pros and the cons and how in the end anyhow nobody was CAPPED and the whole network somehow managed to carry on running regardless of the fact that there is not real CAP in place at all - just something written down as a guide line. In fact if you go back to them posts it sounded like the whole NTL network was in a state of collapse and anything greater than 1mbit was def not possible considering how bad the network was with all these Leechers using up all the bandwidth. Now we move on - NTL upped the Speed to 1.5mbit - Network still running fine. Soon it seems we shall have 3mbit but how can this be - the bandwidth is not enough the people say, cable was never designed for this - pure TV only surely..

ALso regarding any cap thread - there is those who are against (the End users) and those who cannot wait till we have 1 gig month cap on a 10mbit connection....do these same people also work at NTL I wonder?

My needs can change on a day by day basis, i dont wake up and think right, Ill download 10 GIG today do I.... Today for example I have not downloaded anything at all, just web browsing and Playing a couple games. Yesterday I was grabbing maps for CoD, Halo and BF1942. I downloaded a Game demo a few day earlier, only a mere 503Meg (the Proper Game comes on a DVD) - thats One game... All as you can see quite legeal and also nothing that the average Person might do if they are into gaming.

But what the "Lets have a CAP" brigade are saying is this is not normal at all - I am overusing my connection - what do you suggest I do? Not try any demos of games or patch the games I have bought up - while Im at it - lets not patch My OS or send any large email - Im abusing the network and costing NTL Money surley...

SMHarman
19-12-2004, 01:30
<snip>But what the "Lets have a CAP" brigade are saying is this is not normal at all - I am overusing my connection - what do you suggest I do? Not try any demos of games or patch the games I have bought up - while Im at it - lets not patch My OS or send any large email - Im abusing the network and costing NTL Money surley...No they are not, they are saying that the 1Mb/64k/5GB contract is not for you and you should be on the 2Mb/128k/30GB contract. on that even downloading the 530Mb game demo only takes you to half your (averaged) daily usage. The new 30Gb a month works better with your usage patterns, so if you spend a day downloading games and maps and download 3Gb then the next couple surfing, then a weekend playing, on the current process you broke guidance once, on the new one it all averages.

The problem that this site is already showing is people will see a 1Mb contract for not too much £ and jump on it when realistically the bronze tier is no more suitable for them now than it was when it was a 300k contract.

buba3d
19-12-2004, 01:42
Cap or No cap, we are being screwed either way, since the uk is Is the capital of Rip off.

Roll on 3MB

Chrysalis
19-12-2004, 11:08
None of my points have been answered because I assume the NTL defenders know I am right, When the changes happen I will just carry on as normal and see how NTL react when I break the limit, this probably wont happen every month since my usage varies so much eg. I have only used 21 gig this month and it is the 19th already so I expect to not go over 30 gig as I will be away over christmas, but there will be month's I will use around the 50 gig mark, will NTL let this go? or will they send me a overage bill? or will they throttle my speed? how they react will depend on what I think.

If they let it go I bet there will be peope bitching saying its unfair and that I should pay for the extra 10/20 gig, why? so they pay 50pence less a month?

Mauldor
19-12-2004, 11:22
None of my points have been answered because I assume the NTL defenders know I am right, When the changes happen I will just carry on as normal and see how NTL react when I break the limit, this probably wont happen every month since my usage varies so much eg. I have only used 21 gig this month and it is the 19th already so I expect to not go over 30 gig as I will be away over christmas, but there will be month's I will use around the 50 gig mark, will NTL let this go? or will they send me a overage bill? or will they throttle my speed? how they react will depend on what I think.

If they let it go I bet there will be peope bitching saying its unfair and that I should pay for the extra 10/20 gig, why? so they pay 50pence less a month?
TBH nobody knows yet, much like nobody really knew about the first soft cap and thus Billions of threads all arguing about the pro's and the cons. Best option is basically Wait and See and hopefully like say Pipex they will list in a FAQ what happens. In the case of Pipex if you go over they throttle your connection for the rest of the Billing month or you can pay £1.95 I think it is for 1 GIG extra.

As per Point above by SMHarman (people jumping on 1 mbit) - thats a very good point and now it all makes sense in a funny sort of way. I suppose the main bone of annoyance is that a lot of use Arguing use our connection on a random basis and maybe we would never go over the cap but if they bring in something that is meteringf what you use, then you start to ask questions such as what are they metering and so forth. I just had a dig around the ADSL Lite option on some ISP's and a lot have a policy in where as 12-6am is free of metering as during these hours it does not normally effect people when you download stuff. As already posted by others, a lot have already done this to ease the burden on the UBR at peak time...

SMHarman
19-12-2004, 12:28
None of my points have been answered because I assume the NTL defenders know I am right, When the changes happen I will just carry on as normal and see how NTL react when I break the limit, this probably wont happen every month since my usage varies so much eg. I have only used 21 gig this month and it is the 19th already so I expect to not go over 30 gig as I will be away over christmas, but there will be month's I will use around the 50 gig mark, will NTL let this go? or will they send me a overage bill? or will they throttle my speed? how they react will depend on what I think.

If they let it go I bet there will be peope bitching saying its unfair and that I should pay for the extra 10/20 gig, why? so they pay 50pence less a month?
From the limited knowledge around, which we all hope NTL clarifies before it goes and does this.
1. If you do nothing you stay on the contract terms, speeds and soft cap you have now.
2. If you pay the £20 fee you switch to the new contract and the new contract terms, by paying the fee you are explicitly accepting the new terms (and hopefully the FAQ will explain the effects of those.

What NTL do when you go over has yet to be explained. Send you an email to buy more bw, throttle speed? Wait and see, but so far even with the guidance limit (aka cap) that exists on current usage I think we are hard pressed to find people that have been asked to curtail their usage.

Chrysalis
19-12-2004, 17:06
pipex have unmetered options, and I am aware there is the option of staying as I am and not going to a new package but this holds no garantuee I will still be on the soft cap and also this option will only be avialble for a limited time, eventually the old packages will be phased out.

SMHarman
19-12-2004, 17:16
Not necessisraly, I'm was until recently on Talk 60 with Orange, they phased the plan out 3 years ago.

ian@huth
19-12-2004, 17:45
So you think its ok for NTL to decide how we can purchase our software? If anyone wishes to purchase online software which they download, they can and should be able to - what gives NTL the right to dictate peoples shopping habits?

Could quite easily take NTL to court and state they are infringing on human rights (the HRA 1998 has been great for things like this!)

NTL offer a service which has conditions and set a price for that service. If you are happy with that service, those conditions and that price you contract to take it. If you are unhappy with any aspect you are quite free not to take it.

NTL are not dictating what you buy or where you buy it. As long as you work within the terms and conditions you can buy what you want, where you want.

What do you think your local bus company would say if you went to Comet and bought a fridge freezer and then tried to take it home on the bus. Would you take them to court for infringing your human rights if they wouldn't let you on the bus with it? :D

elvistheprince
19-12-2004, 20:15
I wonder if the experience (apocrathal or not) when the 30mph limit in towns was first introduced will be repeated when the (hard) caps are introduced
When the speed limit was intorduced the minor accident rate actualy went UP because where as before people just drove at the speed the felt appropriate once the 30mph limit came in they all drove at that speed.

What I can see happening is that where as before people just "used" the net without any thought to total downloaded, once the cap is introduced people will start looking for excuses to download things so as not to "waste" their available downloads a month (e.g. "well I'm not realy interested in it but I many as well download it now whilst I've got some doenload capacity spare").
Therefore whilst the top say 10% of downloaders will download less because everyone else is downloading up to their limit the average usage per user will actual go up.

I know this certainly occurs with the "free" minutes on mobiles phones etc. oft times people make calls just to "use them up".

Of course even if this does come to pass and NTL scrabble to ditch the cap the genie will already be out of the bottle in all likelyhood people will continue with their (new) old habits.

I wonder if NTL "customer research" addressed this (probably not as almost certainly the people in charge of commisioning the research were also behind the hard cap idea and therefore had too much capital invested in the idea to get the "wrong" result from the research, or am I just being cynical).

Stephen

LostintheNW
19-12-2004, 20:31
NTL offer a service which has conditions and set a price for that service. If you are happy with that service, those conditions and that price you contract to take it. If you are unhappy with any aspect you are quite free not to take it.

NTL are not dictating what you buy or where you buy it. As long as you work within the terms and conditions you can buy what you want, where you want.

What do you think your local bus company would say if you went to Comet and bought a fridge freezer and then tried to take it home on the bus. Would you take them to court for infringing your human rights if they wouldn't let you on the bus with it? :D

Where does it say on the bus though that you cannot take a fridge on board?

And that is actually a stupid example to use in this situation. How can the Government in this country expect users to get on the net and use it for what its meant - which is not downloading illegal wares and mp3's when there are companies like this around who are going to dictate what can and cannot be done.

I am not arsed what they think, if I wish to purchase gig loads of software and download them I am perfectly within my rights to do so - maybe NTL should change thier AUP regarding large programs as 100meg these days is nothing!

Chrysalis
19-12-2004, 21:57
a large program in my opinion is usually 700meg to a few gig.

ian@huth
19-12-2004, 23:37
Where does it say on the bus though that you cannot take a fridge on board?

And that is actually a stupid example to use in this situation. How can the Government in this country expect users to get on the net and use it for what its meant - which is not downloading illegal wares and mp3's when there are companies like this around who are going to dictate what can and cannot be done.

I am not arsed what they think, if I wish to purchase gig loads of software and download them I am perfectly within my rights to do so - maybe NTL should change thier AUP regarding large programs as 100meg these days is nothing!

Exactly the point I was making. There is nothing in NTLs terms that stop you from downloading large legal software. The vast majority of users will never come anywhere near the caps but some users will. We will have to wait and see what happens when the cap is reached.

What it comes down to at the end of the day is that if you have something that needs to be carried you choose the carrier that can handle it. This applies whether it is fridge freezers, people or data. You don't order a taxi if you have 30 people to transport, you hire a bus. You don't hire the taxi and then when it comes along complain that it hasn't the capacity that you want and that it's infringing your human rights and the taxi company should be taken to court. If you want to transfer more data than your ISP says you can then you look for an ISP that meets your requirements.