Heaviest Virgin Media downloaders face new daytime go-slow

[Noreen]

Virgin Media will double the number of hours it throttles the bandwidth of customers who hammer its network day and night, changes to its traffic management policy have revealed.

The tightened regime means that between 10am and 3pm subscribers to its "M", "L" and "XL" packages will have their connection throttled for five hours if they download more than their full speed ration..........

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/29/virgin_media_daytime_restrictions/

[Rik]

More squeezing rather than investing so that they can deliver what they sell. 

[Sebby]

What gets me is their adverts; they make it sounds like it's the best thing since sliced bread!

[Rik]

Given how foul sliced bread is, it might just be,

[Sebby]

Nothing wrong with a bit of Hovis.

[doc_holiday]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/29/virgin_media_daytime_restrictions/

I suspect that we will eventually see LLU operators, particularly those who are pushing ADSL2+ products, all do the same. The reason is the fundamentals of bandwidth costs, even if they aren't based on BT products, are too expensive to allow people to set up their own 24/7 personal data centers. You can't download month after month 300gb for £25. It's economically infeasible and the love affair between these users and LLU bubble will go on the rocks at some point.

[madasahatter]

Your totally right doc, and you can't really blame them - you can't have users downloading the whole internet every month. The problem is that they are advertising their connections as unlimited to get the customers, then not providing that.

It does come back to the old question of why are companies allowed to advertise connections as unlimited, when they are patently not? No matter how many asterisks there are, or how clear a FUP is, it doesn't alter the basic fact that this is false advertising. Or am I using common sense a little too much here? 

[doc_holiday]

It does come back to the old question of why are companies allowed to advertise connections as unlimited, when they are patently not? No matter how many asterisks there are, or how clear a FUP is, it doesn't alter the basic fact that this is false advertising. Or am I using common sense a little too much here? 

There is a thread on Thinkbroadband about this in ISP unhappiness. I agree. I really wished the Advertising authorities would crack down on ISPs.  The front page of their website needs to say what it does clearly and upfront.  No footnotes with 8pt arial FUPs, etc.  I also think we need a good dosage of reality on speeds as well. 

[Malc]

The thing is, it's not 300gb.   I was with pipex and DL about 30gb a month (as I do now) and got a letter asking me to reduce or accept a MAC. The damned annoying thing was it arrived as my contract ended. 


They expect peeps do DL ove or two gig a month and call it UNLIMITED.

[vitriol]

So according to that, one HD movie download from Xbox Live (around 6GB) for instance would wipe out your connection before it has finished, wow that's great.

Seriously what is the point of having all that speed and not being able to use it for anything worthwhile. 

[Rik]

It means there's enough speed to go round so that everyone can get their emails in the blink of an eye... 

[Malc]

And a very lazy eye, at that...