Intensive gamer finding for truly uncapped ISP

akea

Hi all,

I am a heavy internet user. I use it for online gaming (Guild Wars), Skype, and P2P.

I checked out Zen as recommended but found that they only do 256kpbs uncapped. Wonder what happened to the 1mbps and 2mbps? And the 8mbps is capped at 50GB. Wondering whether that is enough for me?

Would appreciate it if someone can point me in the right direction.

Cheers

banger9365

what about cable if you can get it

computerwoman

:j I'm in the same boat as you, as my son is a 24/7 gamer, so rule out force9 plusnet as they suck eggs, alot of firms say uncapped but they have a usage tool so it's not, I think ofcom should make them change that as force9 is unlimited download but oh no it isn't, as I'm finding out they brought in the usage tool at the end of march and i've had nothing but trouble since, pain in the a**s at the moment they are saying i have a fault on my line, bt have confirmed i don't, they promised to upgrade me to 8meg in march no they have'nt and now they say they are not upgrading anymore but you can opt in to upgrade if you want, i'm paying £21.99 per month for 2meg with a 30gb usage yet 2 weeks down the line, no more gaming no more downloads no more nothing I can surf the net if i try to buy anything my connection is broken, if i try to download my connection is broken bull s**t i can't wait to get away from them my modem/router/firewall, is almost 2 years old so that'll be going next, so me thinks bt total broadband is looking very inviting free home hub and phone, 40gb download, £23.99 for 3 months then £26.99 after that it'll be worth it at least I can ring someone when there's a problem, T

steve!_10

50p says you don't need uncapped. It's very hard to get over 50GB in a month for most people. Try it and see.

atlantic_2

This post on maxadsl here would interest gamers.

Just recieved this email from MultiplayDSL

Dear MultiplayDSL Customer,

Many of you will be aware of the issues that arose last month, from our
forum post @ http://forums.multiplay.co.uk/showthread.php?t=41194 Our BT
Central provider notified us of a dramatic change in our pricing, meaning we
are now billed by our bandwidth use rather than a per-connection rate. This
combined with us seeing a large influx of non-gamer high-downloader users to
our service prompted us to close off ordering and consider the way forward.

Whilst we have oodles of capacity on our network, it is the cost of getting
the traffic from BT's ATM network that is the killer. For example, the cost
per Mbps on a BT central pipe is 10 times the average cost of international
transit.

We never intended MultiplayDSL to be a service to attract the non-gamer
very-high-download users, but with hindsight we were perhaps silly not to
expect it with our no download caps statement. MultiplayDSL is designed to
be a service to offer high-performance connectivity to our network for
gamers with a package appropriate to gamers tastes. No download caps was
something we were able to offer under our pricing, but with a sizeable
proportion of high-bandwidth users and the new pricing our provider has
announced, this is totally unsustainable.

So what does this mean to you as an existing customer? In order to maintain
a sustainable service of the quality we intend and you expect, we are having
to go back on our original idea of "no download caps" and also revise our
pricing. As a result:

1. Download caps are being introduced from 4th July 2006.
2. Pricing changes are coming (but we're holding your price for 3 months).


Download Caps
=============

From 4th July a download cap will be implemented across all of our
connections. This cap will be set at 40GB for GamerDSL and IP MAX services,
and 50GB for OfficeDSL packages. However, fear not for 75% of you are
already well below these caps and we will not cut you off when you reach
them. You have to do a lot of downloads to hit these caps!

We have spent some time considering the way our download caps will be
introduced, as we want to offer a flexible service geared to the needs of
gamers. As a result, we are offering a "gamer friendly" capping policy
which means that once you hit your cap that month, your connection will be
reduced to 256kbps for the remainder of that month. 256kbps is more than
enough for gaming, surfing the web and getting emails, but downloads would
be reduced to approximately 30 KB/s.

Only your usage during our advertised "peak" hours will contribute towards
your usage against the cap each month. At present our "peak hours" are
8am-midnight daily. This means that any downloads you do between midnight
and 8am will not count towards your cap.

In order for you to keep track of your usage during the month, we will
shortly be implementing the "My Account" section of the MultiplayDSL site.
This wil include a page where you can see how much you have downloaded so
far, so you know when you are getting close to the cap. We will also be
introducing a way for you to buy additional download credits, but this is
going to take some time to develop.


Price Changes
=============

As the amount you download is now the driving force of our pricing, we are
dropping the concept of billing by speed, e.g. 500, 1000 and 2000 will no
longer be listed. Instead our connections will all be quoted as "up to" a
certain speed at the same price. We are also introducing a cheaper
low-usage package for light users.

Check out our site @ http://www.multiplaydsl.net for details on the new
packages. Note that your current price is fixed for 3 months from now.


In Summary
==========

Download Caps
* Effective from 4 July 2006.
* 40 GB on GamerDSL and IP MAX services.
* 50 GB on OfficeDSL services.
* Once you hit the cap your connection is reduced to 256 kbps for the
remainder of that month.
* Only downloads you do between 8am and midnight count towards your usage.
* You will soon be able to monitor your bandwidth usage through the
MultiplayDSL site.
* In the future you will be able to buy extra GB credits to increase your
cap.

Price Changes
* EXISTING CUSTOMERS CURRENT PRICES ARE HELD FOR 3 MONTHS!
* Packages are changing to be priced independent of speed
* GamerDSL - 500,1000,2000 replaced by "up to 2Mbps" and price change to
£29.99 p.c.m.
* OfficeDSL - 500,1000,2000 replaced by "up to 2Mbps" at £49.99 p.c.m.
* Price change on IP MAX to £34.99 a month
* Price change on IP MAX Premium to £39.99 a month
* New HomeDSL package being introduced with 3 and 10 GB download caps @
£14.99 and £19.99 a month respectively.

Full post at above link.
HTH

computerwoman

:rolleyes: I think this usage lark is bull, my son plays online games pc all I do is send afew emails come on here and browes for bargains I have had to re-install windows afew times but that was only because of vista, before they brought in this usage allowance I did check my usage on force9 with the usage tool that they supply and it was always on 5-6gbs a month, now they say I'm using 10-20gbs a month which I don't believe as they have been playing silly !!!!!!s with my broadband and as soon as I try to download it says connection lost from server, so they kick me off, and I'm paying them £21.99 for this kind of service, I have a 30gb cap 10gbs peak which is 4pm-midnight which to my knowledge I haven't gone over in a year and 20gbs off-peak midnight-4pm which is where I try to do all my downloads if I have any, all I really download is updates from MS everything else I need is on removal storage and disc's, so I don't really download that much really, and I couls understand it if we had the pc's on 24/7 but we don't my son is currently on his PS2 as he's got mega lag on his pc games so keeps getting kicked, it's not much fun, and to be quite honest I'm seriously thinking of going onto dial-up pay-as-you-go it might be cheaper, although I've been weighing up the pro's and con's of BT Total BB and it's looking very nice, my router/modem/firewall/ is coming up to being two years old, and everyone I know who's got netgear say they break after the 2 year warranty, so it's going to cost me £160.00 to renew these that's 2 usb adaptors and the router/modem/ but if I go with bt total bb I get a wireless home hub + wireless phone for free so all I'll have to buy is 2 usb adaptors to go with that at £100 for two, the free hub and phone is worth £170.00 so I'll be saving money there although it will cost me £51.00 more over 12 months if I stay with force9, if I stay with force9 it'll be £60.00 cheaper then bt total bb only 2meg bt is 8meg only 30gig usage bt is 40gig and I'd have to folk out £160.00 for a new router/2 usb's so I think I'm on with this one. T

masonic

Freeola do 8Mbit service with a 30GB peak (8am-10pm Mon-Fri) / 300GB offpeak cap. The first 3 months are billed at £14.99, then it goes up to £24.99 (minimium contract 3 months). They are resellers for Entanet, who have a pretty good reputation.

I've been with them for a month now and have been quite impressed. It might give you a bit more flexibility if you think 50GB might not be enough

greyster

I use fast24.co.uk ..... for the last 3 years .... uncapped and no problems.

Yes I play online games frequently (WOW to CSS) and P2P. 3 month contract as well but prices higher than the cheapo 12 month deals.

maniac886

I have been with bulldog broadband for the last 3 years. They are the only LLU company in my area plus they are truly uncapped. I download a hell of a lot....up to or even over 60gb a month . I know ppl complain about their service but I never have had a problem with them. Anyway i am getting up to 16meg next week , uncapped of course!

piggeh

Nildram are still the best value company in Broadband in my opinion. Great service, excellent reliability, and excellent pricing. Looked at the prices several times but can never find anything that comes close in performance:pricing terms.

I normally use 6GB or so a month and do some gaming most nights and surf the web alot. Then an occassional large download.

Only issues I've had are a router hardware issue (which Nildram were able to sort out whenever I've phoned them up), and a local exchange issue (which I phoned up and they found pretty quickly).

I also switched from the normal 512KB line to the uncapped PAYG service and the bills are now slightly less but have a nice connection speed currently of 2.5Mb down and 0.5Mb upstream.

The one company I have no hesitation in recommending, and the contract is a 1 month minimum term.

Rex_Mundi

It's a shame you weren't looking a couple of months ago. When Zen started offering MAX, they realised that offering unlimited with a very fast connection could cost them a fortune because of the BT wholesale pricing structure. They now offer up to 8Mb with a 20GB, or 50GB limit (download only, not including uploads). The don't offer unlimited anymore.

All the existing Zen customers were offered a free upgrade to MAX with a limit, or the choice to stay on their 1Mb, or 2Mb unlimited connection. I like my 2Mb completely unlimited, so have stayed on this package. The boy is constantly on Guildwars while I download a lot. Ping times have always been excellent on Zen (never had a single problem for his gaming at any time).