The Great 'Up To' Con

moonrakerz

Nex0 wrote: »

That's not the isps fault thlough is it.

They don't provide you with the phone line that's down to bt.

Doesn't matter who supplies it - if it is copper, the result is the same. The ISPs are fully aware of that but still make the same old claims !

Nex0

moonrakerz wrote: »

Doesn't matter who supplies it - if it is copper, the result is the same. The ISPs are fully aware of that but still make the same old claims !

Which is up to say 8meg?

Whats so bad about that and as its been around for ages why kick up such a big fuss about it now.

Now if we are on about these so called unlimited download packages with there fair usage policy's that's a different story.

mrJ_5

A decent ISP does make a difference, for example, if you switch from BT to Tiscali - you may find your speed gets cut in half, or worse. Whereas if you switch to like Be, you may find it doubles as you go onto their ADSL2+ network. Distance does make a difference, but not the only one. Another difference is by changing your internal wiring - like cutting the bell wire/using the iPlate, using the modem in the master phone socket, getting rid of viruses, etc etc. A number of problems can be resolved in the home.

Nilrem

Nex0 wrote: »

Which is up to say 8meg?
hats so bad about that and as its been around for ages why kick up such a big fuss about it now.

Now if we are on about these so called unlimited download packages with there fair usage policy's that's a different story.

Aye, in the words of the great Scotty "ye cannae brake the laws of physics cap'n".

The limitations on ADSL are down largely due to simple physics - untwisted, unshielded wiring picks up a lot of interference/noise, the longer it is, the worse it is.
Add to that the fact that most telephone cables have multiple joints, which along with the condition of the joints affects the signal, and that's before you look into the fact that some areas don't even have copper telephone cables (during copper shortages they used aluminium for the wiring in some area), and you've got a fairly serious problem with supplying higher speeds over longer distances.

As for the "upto", whilst it would be nice if ISP's could give you a definite rough speed reading when you sign up, it's not really possible due to the variables listed above, and most of the sites that do try and give you a rough estimate base it purely on average line quality in a straight line to the nearest exchange - your phone line might travel 2-3 miles to reach an exchange a mile away.

As for unlimited, going back a few years that would have been taken to mean unlimited connectivity, as opposed to unlimited downloads (which seems to be how people take it now), and is closer to what most ISP's allow for.

Personally, I think we as consumers have as much to answer for about this marketing strategy, as the ISP's - as too many of us only look at the price and "up to" speed, ignoring everything else, and not caring about the realities of the situation.

I say this as ISP's work on the contended line principle - they (like Telecom's companies for the past 75 years) provision their backbone capacity based on only a certain percentage of customers making full use of their product at any one time.
They do that as it's the only way to provide the service without charging huge amounts of money - look at the cost of a guaranteed business level ISP's service compared to the consumer ones.

If we really want fairer pricing for the ISP's as customers, then we may have to face up to an unpalatable fact - it might end up costing those of us who use the internet a lot, more than we pay at the moment.
At the moment most ISP's charge the same sort of money for Granny Ethal who only uses her "up to 8mb" connection (real speed 6mb) for a few minutes a day to email her son etc, as they do for Little Billy with his "up to 8mb" (real speed 4mb) who downloads full whack 8 hours a day.

The fairest way for ISP's to charge would be a combination of your theoretical max speed (IE "up to 8mb") and your actual bandwidth usage.
So you could get a package that allows for very high burst speeds, but only a low overall bandwidth limit if you only use your connection for short periods of time, or go for a package with a much higher bandwidth cap if you're using it to download a lot (the actually connection speed to the ISP doesn't change the cost much, it's how much bandwidth you eat using it).


I know people who complain bitterly about the fact they've got something like the Virgin 20mb connection, and they get speed limited during the day, or don't get the full speed at night - when they are downloading hundreds of gb a day.
Given that a business class line, which would have the guaranteed speed most of the time would cost anything from several hundred, to several thousands of pounds a month for the same "speed" we get a very good deal most of the time.

DatabaseError

Nilrem wrote: »

.......

A well written, sensible answer. We'll be having none of that around here!

:beer:

This "ol'chestnut" raises it's head every 6 months or so, I've also had a go explaining the realities including contention and traffic shaping, the problem is that many consider broadband a service, such as gas, electricity or telephone, and it isn't.
(was going to be a longer reply...but school run time )

mindsigh

Good answer, fair points Nilram

diamonds

no you dont want billed by bandwidth/speed usage Nilram, they do this in AU & all I can say is BB pricing is more expensive even on lowest packages & limited GB's to what we get here, UK is lucky to have what it has otherwise you be paying double what we pay here for the minimum packages