Am I the only one suspicious of recent "Unlimited" broadband offers?

crankup

There are a lot of posts appearing as ads for new broadband services, eagerly stating they are unlimited and much cheaper, amongst other things.

I find the "unlimited" bit hard to believe:-
http://www.adslguide.org.uk/newsarchive.asp?item=2652

There are only a handful of ISPs offering truly unlimited subscriptions, and they are not in the £14.99 ballpark.
Each ISP has a "fair usage policy" which may sound fair to them, but not to us.
They may be using traffic-shaping software like Ellacoya. This means they will monitor different types of internet traffic, and if there is a lot of it, throttle it down. Any ISP can offer "unlimited" usage when they are throttling their users to 20K/sec!

If we only want to view a few messageboards and websites, check email then these cheap deals may suffice.
If we intend to play games online, use msn or similar, use itunes or similar, p2p or similar, listen to radio, watch video, stream tv progs using our bb subscriptions, then software like Ellacoya will throttle it for your ISP (and us). And still advertise it as "unlimited".

Decide what you want from your subscription, and choose an ISP based on that. They aint all vanilla!

As to what is a good ISP that is truly unlimited, I dont know. SOme say Nildram are excellent for a premium supplier. But then they are owned by Pipex - who use traffic-shaping software.
Anyone else got any views relating to "unlimited use" ISP subscriptions?

Cheers.

masonic

crankup wrote:

Anyone else got any views relating to "unlimited use" ISP subscriptions?

I'm currently with ADSL4less, who charge £14.99 for unlimited use (albeit at a stingy 512kbps) and averaged 200-300Gb/month with no complaints. The price rockets up, though, if you opt for faster speeds. Unfortunately I'm moving house and these guys charge a huge connection fee (migrations are cheaper), meaning I've been looking for an alternative to try and dodge that cost and I agree it's pretty hard to find something cheap, reliable and truly unlimited.

In the end, I've come to the conclusion I'll have to make a compromise. I can live with limits if they are upfront and generous enough for my needs. For example, Freeola are doing a 3 month contract @ £14.99 for 8Mbps "Unlimited" service (30Gb limit 8am-10pm weekdays + 300Gb 10pm-8am plus weekends). If you stay on after 3 months with them, the charge goes up £10, so it would be a temporary option.

Rex_Mundi

masonic wrote:

I'm currently with ADSL4less, who charge £14.99 for unlimited use (albeit at a stingy 512kbps) and averaged 200-300Gb/month with no complaints.

I think your downloads would add up to a lot less than you realise.

If you downloaded 24hours a day for a month on a 512Kb connection, this would only total 162GB. In reality, holding a full speed download for this long would be very difficult to keep up at full download speeds.

I see you quoted 200-300Gb/month. This would equate to 25 to 37GB a month.

masonic

Rex_Mundi wrote:

I think your downloads would add up to a lot less than you realise.

If you downloaded 24hours a day for a month on a 512Kb connection, this would only total 162GB. In reality, holding a full speed download for this long would be very difficult to keep up at full download speeds.

I see you quoted 200-300Gb/month. This would equate to 25 to 37GB a month.

Blimey, something doesn't add up, eh? I never seriously considered that I was downloading 300GB per month (my reporting it as Gb was probably me trying to unwittingly reconcile the figure I was reading - and then I guess wrongly applied that same 'correction' elsewhere). However, checking my figures from the ADSL4less website again, they are clearly displaying them in "MB" (which I am interpreting as 1/1000 GB) :mad: . That begs the question what does GB mean in their limited contracts? and do other providers confuse Gb and GB? I know some of them don't as when I've been on limited contracts I've kept track of my own bandwidth.

Apologies to the OP for taking this thread off-topic.

Rex_Mundi

masonic wrote:

Blimey, something doesn't add up, eh? I never seriously considered that I was downloading 300GB per month (my reporting it as Gb was probably me trying to unwittingly reconcile the figure I was reading). However, checking my figures from the ADSL4less website again, they are clearly displaying them in "MB" (which I am interpreting as 1/1000 GB) :mad: . That begs the question what does GB mean in their limited contracts? and do other providers confuse Gb and GB? I know some of them don't as when I've been on limited contracts I've kept track of my own bandwidth.

Apologies to the OP for taking this thread off-topic.

1GB=1024MB

The general terms used nowadays are............

Broadband speeds are always quoted in bits (512Kb, 1Mb, 2Mb etc).

Download limits are always quoted in bytes (1GB, 5GB, 10GB etc).

normanmark

the general rule of broadband is you get what you pay for, if its too good to be true, then it usually is

shelly

Masonic. I'm looking for a BB deal for hubby at the moment. He wants unlimited for as cheap as possible and looks like the co you are with fits that. He doesn't mind 512kbps as thats what we have now. Can you confirm for me that they truly are unlimited and would you recommend them? Is there anything I need to be aware of before showing him this deal?


Thanks for your help

masonic

Hi Shelly,

Yes, I certainly would recommend them. In my first 3-4 months with them, I was pretty much downloading at full capacity 18+ hours daily and had no problems. I should think if there were any other limitations, with my habits I would have found them . I've never been unable to connect, or noticed reduced bandwidth (the service itself is provided by Hotchilli, who seem to have quite a good reputation on adslguide). Telephone support is 0870, but you can e-mail them through the website and I've generally got replies within 2-3 hours doing that. The only reason I am considering leaving them is because I need to get BB enabled on my new line when I move house (at a cost of £60 from them). Website here.

Can't think of anything else relevant right now, but feel free to ask.

Edit: Oh, and they operate on a month-by-month basis, you just need to give 30 days notice to cancel/migrate.

crankup

I'm currently hunting down info on http://www.ace-internet.co.uk/adsl/
Some hardcore ADSLGuide users seem happy with them.
If I go for it I'll post a review in a few months. Nildram are still tempting me though. Decisions Decisions...

It would help to assess if an ISP was truly unlimited by them declaring if they purchase their BB as "Capicity-Based" or "Usage-Based". If its usage, then it wont be unlimited.

oranabana

masonic wrote:

The only reason I am considering leaving them is because I need to get BB enabled on my new line when I move house (at a cost of £60 from them).

Have you considered Virgin Net? You can sign up with them on a monthly contract and then start your migration after the first months. They pay your connection fee and hav not asked me to pay, when I left them. Its been about 18 months since I have done this, but I think its still an option... just a thought.

Website here

mrJ_5

how many more people have to say join virgin then migrate/cancel after a month or so.... its been a year or so since they've changed it - all new users whom leave within the first 12 months must pay £50