Unlimited Download Broadband, Does it actually exist?

seoras_2

There are many broadband providers out there offering 'Unlimited Downloads' (subject to a fare usage policy), which means in effect it is not unlimited at all. They are in fact making false claims about their products. Why are they allowed to get away with this by the advertising standards authority? I though we had legislation in this country to protect us from this sort of false advertising.

And it's not only the download limits, what about when they offer 'super fast' up to 8Mb broadband and barely ever manage much above 2Mb even when BT's own test say your line is capable of between 6-8Mb. If you complain about this you get fobbed off with lame excuses etc. implying that it's somehow your fault. But try and watch a few programmes on the BBC iPlayer and wallop your ISP throttles your connection because "you're in breach of the fair useage policy"

When are we going to get ISP that tell the truth?

• Your broadband connction will be limited
• Your download speed will be much less that 8Mb
• Your broadband connection will be a little better than dailup, but not much.

Why do we accept this sort of rubbish in the UK? loads of other countries are light years ahead of us with the service they get.

normanmark

seoras wrote: »

loads of other countries are light years ahead of us with the service they get.

You'll find its because their governments invest heavily in the infrastructure as to why they're light years ahead of us.

DatabaseError

I don't accept any of that "rubbish"
Perhaps the question should be "what can we expect for a fiver a month, with a free wireless router and a laptop computer thrown in"?
FWIW my connection isn't 'limited', no traffic shaping or port blocking here
my download speed is generally restricted by the laws of physics and BTs profiling system
my connection is superb

Nilrem

Actually that is partly true - there is also the matter of how new the infrastructure is, and population density.

We're stuck with a triple whammy of problems.
1: Generally very old, poor quality cabling that was never intended for data - in some areas it's not even copper (aluminium was used during copper shortages), and it's often got many connections (which make the signal worse) - to get better speeds we need to at least improve the telephone cables, if not replace them with cables intended for high speed data use (either the high quality co-ax cable companies use from the street to the home*, or fibre).

2: We're fairly spread out - it costs much less (per customer) in somewhere like Tokyo than it does in even London due to differences in housing (iirc in Japan/Korea they often run fibre to the basement of new blocks, then convert it to all the phone/TV/Data lines needed as it's cheaper than running hundreds of individual phone lines etc).

3: We, as a country don't want to pay for it.
At the moment most of the ISP's are barely breaking even with the current policies, let alone the cost of running fibre, then allowing "unlimited" downloads (which stress the backbones as it is, before you get into higher capacity lines).

The closest you are probably going to get to truly unlimited at the moment for higher speeds is probably Cable (which at least pretty much guarantees your connection to the service will be at the agreed speed), and even then you face being throttled if you use too much bandwidth at peak hours - iirc you can still with throttling download over 200gb a day on Virgin 20mb (if you're not in an area with too many other people doing the same).
From what i've heard they are thinking about launching the 50mb service with no STM at a cost of something like £50 a month - I suspect most people won't be willing to pay that though as it's more than ADSL as "up to" half the speed costs...

It's worth noting that whilst the US for example is miles ahead of us in terms of best net connection, they are well behind us in the average speeds and costs to people outside the larger towns/cities due to the distances involved and lack of competition in smaller towns.

The likes of Denmark (I think it is) that has offered higher speeds to pretty much every home has done so thanks to heavy government subsidisation and investment in the infrastructure (paid for with taxes).


For what it's worth, i'm on Vrigin cable, and have been since NTL first offered 512k cable access in our area (7+ years ago), and it's been pretty much superb in terms of reliability and speeds (i'm paying less now for 20mb than i was when i first signed up).

*cable that can cope with speeds of several hundred mbits of data with ease, is relatively cheap and easy to handle (compared to fibre) - the cable companies use fibre to the local exchanges then very high quality co-ax to the local boxes (where they get signal boosts etc), then good co-ax to the house.

MrsTinks

Nilrem you're right - Denmark has some of the best connection speeds around available pretty much everywhere - not bad for a country with a population of about 5-6 million My father worked for the equivalent of BT in Denmark basically working the new lines and what have you as an engineer. He was shocked that in the UK we don't have ISDN lines as standard as they do in Denmark. It's been in place there for many years now...
And yes there the average cost of BB is much higher - He couldn't believe we can get "Free" BB here when the normal cost in Denmark is £50 a month...
Oh and as for taxes... yeah I guess we'd moan about a standard income tax of 52% and somewhere in the 60s for the high tax bracket THAT is why we don't have cable everywhere in this country and why we still have to survive on GOC (good old copper) in most areas.

BT and other ISPs are still working on new technologies that can increase our speeds and improve services. The problem is that the technology we use in this country has limitations - not only because much of the copper cable needs to be replaced (which isn't cheap) and the exchanges need upgrading (even less cheap) and more and more housing estates pop up often with no financial support to BT etc to install better equipment to cope with the increase in demand so they have a huge outlay, with no guaranteed income following it...

I work in the ISP industry and I see things from both sides - both as a consumer and as a supplier (not to the home user market I hasten to add before anyone tries to send me details of their problems!) and it's always a balancing act. Suppliers are pushed to lower their prices by consumers demand for cheap services. The less that is paid overall for a service the less there is in the kitty to improve the standard of the services... so every person on "free" broadband are in effect contributing to slowing down the speed of the development of better services

I guess we can't have everything Not you as an individual, but the nation as a whole...

rich010273

It is clearly false advertising in my eyes as per OP. The regulator ought to be stamping down on this for the good of consumers.
Might be worth sending your thoughts to BBC Watchdog and let them decide if they want to include it.

Saying "unlimited" when it can be but at an extra fee, thank you, isn't really truthful.

DatabaseError

here you go unlimited broadband from a good supplier, £80/month

m1ntie

SKY have just removed their fare usage policy from their MAX product making it truly unlimited.

DatabaseError

Mozkowitz wrote: »

How much more internet do people need!

Personally, around 80 - 100Gb/month, though I like to know I can have more if I want

Nilrem

m1ntie wrote: »

SKY have just removed their fare usage policy from their MAX product making it truly unlimited.

At least until they get enough users onto the system that contention becomes a big issue - all domestic telecoms/ISP's work on the basis that only X% of customers will be using the service at any one time* (or using it fully at any one time in the case of ISP's)

IIRC normal contention ratios vary from 10-1 to 50-1 depending on your package and the ISP's system**, fair use policies tend to allow the ISP (or telecoms provider) to help ensure a minimum level of service by taking action against those that are very heavy users.

So unless Sky have a lot of spare capacity, or are willing to invest in a lot of spare capacity, as soon as they get a lot of heavy users moving over to them they will either suffer very badly from over subscription (slow speeds for users), or reintroduce a FUP at some point.

I've seen it happen a number of times now, an ISP will either start from scratch with no FUP, or scrap it's FUP, leading to the heaviest users from other services moving over to them, which leads to the ISP either going bust, having a massive loss in quality of service, or reintroducing a FUP to try and keep running at a profit.

From a business point of view scrapping the FUP is great for marketing and getting new customers, but very risky in the medium to long term unless you're lucky and don't get many heavy users (who the lack of FUP would appeal to the most), or are willing to throw a lot of money at it (more than you'll probably make out of it).


From a personal point of view, we're pretty heavy internet users in my household, probably up to about 150gb a month all told (possibly more some times), due to 4 of us using the connection for gaming etc - but we use it largely "off peak" (we're effectively using our connection for about a 30th of what is possible***).
However some people, the ones that the FUP is really aimed at are those that are really heavy users who use it peak time, all the time.
Most ISP's don't mind so much if you're a heavy user off peak when you're not affecting the "average" users (those that might actually allow the ISP to make a profit, and subsidise the heavy users), but if the heavy users are affecting the average users too much during peak time it costs the ISP customers - and the ISP would generally much rather lose someone who is costing them money, than one who is letting them make a small profit on the account.

Basically, in the end the connection speeds we are getting now, are being sold for prices that aren't sustainable if everyone maxes them out all the time, hence the FUP most ISP's have.


*It goes right back to the early days of landlines - there was/is no point in running enough capacity for everyone to use the phones at the same time (even in the same town, let alone between towns), if on average only a couple of percent of the phones are likely to be in use at any one time - so you build enough capacity to cope with normal peak usage with some spare.
Even today that is still the case with both landlines and mobile phones, although the capacity between towns etc has improved massively thanks to digital equipment (and the ability for a single fibre optic cable to carry tens of thousands of calls).

**It doesn't take many people with an 8mb+ connection downloading at full pelt to saturate the normal sort of connection an ISP has from the exchange to it's backbone, and those connections cost a fortune (much more than the number of heavy users that can use it completely bring in)

***Even with STM and the FUP Virgin have on their 20mb service, you could hit 200gb a day :eek: (although I suspect they might contact users doing that every day).