BT option 3 NOT unlimited! are any isp truley unlimited?

[SiriusB]

BT have been upgrading infrastructure for a few years now - 21CN I believe it is called. For the average person it will just mean a general increase in speeds as all Exchanges will be linked by fibre.

There are no plans yet for running fibre to people's homes, but it hasn't been ruled out.

 

[Rroff]

I understand why bt have that 80/90/100 cap but untill someone actually take them to court over the "unlimited" advertising they, and most other isps, will continue to use it.

Being fair, 90gb really is a joke these days. With browsing, afew downloads, hd tv (iplyer/whatever), games, steam, patches, youtube etc is very realistic of a family of 4 to hit 5-600gb a month.Talktalk is possibly the worst isp out there but even their fup on their top package is 500gb. I should point out, for the unsympathetic/d-grade mathematicians , that a line synced at 24m will hit 150gb in ~16 hours, not exactly 24/7. A more realistic 10-12m (which most people get) is 30 (30/30=1 hour per day). I don't want to know how much data you can shift on a 50m virgin line but even that, globally speaking, isn't that quick.

The simple fact of the matter is bts infrastructure is many years behind the rest of Europe but our usage is not and people are starting to realise that.

I don't think its realistic of a family of 5 to hit 500-600gig a month... unless you got 1-2 people running torrents 24x7 at an average ~2Mbit/s constantly - and thats not what home connections are for despite what some people might think.

1 person downloading 1-2 movies a day plus 4-5 TV shows a week, few more people making active use of iplayer and youtube, someone downloading 4-5 games off steam a month, etc. will all come in under 200gig, probably under 150gig a month.

 

[thepeganator]

All ISPs have a fair use policy, even unlimited ones like Virgin and Sky. Some don't enforce it, but they probably will do eventually.

Be Internet.

They have no limits, never throttled.

 

[Rroff]

be so far haven't hit anyone hard... they've sent out the odd warning letter to people going over 500gig in a month - but generally its when they've had network issues - sent out emails asking people to go easy for a week or 2 and a few people still carry on maxing out the connection through that period...

 

[rippling]

BT clearly states there is a Fair Use Policy attached and that you can be limited to preserve the broadband experience for other users.

I agree BT shouldn't really call it Unlimited [though according to their site you don't get charged for going over the magic line, just have your speed throttled until you stop].

Either way, you're the one to blame for not reading the small print.

i am not a stuip person , when i took out option 3 there was no small print on the download limit that was 3 years ago i took it out , after that bt would call and ask if i wanted to keep service with them , which i agreed to , but its only these last few months that the broadband has really been slowing down , some of you say that £25 a month isnt a lot , no it isnt , but how manay of you cant watch a youtube video on hd? with out it stipping every 10 seconds to buffer , and yes that before they throttled the line ......
yes you get what you pay for , but there is being ripped off to! and no i dont think we should be presirving the broad band experiance to someone paying £10 a month , if you pay for the top package , you should get what they say you get , to me looking at the site now , unlimited with a small * next to it , isnt unlimited , and no bt isnt alone stating that , but come on 80 g a month? dam most people use steam etc for games , well most new games are 10 g !

 

[DavyBoy]

Can't you pay BT to get out of your contract sooner?

I am on option 3, have been for like the past 3 years, and I remember reading when I signed up about the fair usage policy, I thought all "unlimited" broadband services were like this?

 

[Ev0]

Christ what do you people download/do to use up hundreds of gigs a month?

Even with all our machines and devices running here we don't clock anywhere near that much up.

Or is it heavy 'downloading' (which I'm sure is all legit right?) that does it? If so does it contravine the AUP you agree to by taking out BT broadband?

I'm just playing devils advocate, yes these so called unlimited services are annoying, but they do it because frankly no one adheres to the AUP so they have no choice so as to try and preserve the quality of the service.

Until a new national network comes along

 

[Rroff]

Even being a bit generous with useage - assuming someone with absolutely no life:

50 hours of gaming - 2.5gig
Game Patches/Updates - 1.5gig
60 hours of streaming (iPlayer, youtube, etc.) - 15gig
30 movie downloads - ~25gig
Music (including streaming, spotify, iTunes downloads) - 1gig
General browsing, email, etc. - 2gig
4x game downloads - 20gig

Comes to around 67gig - and your highly unlikely to have 4-5x people doing all that every month, each month.

 

[JimAroo]

Yea 90GB is nothing, when I first installed 7 and installed my games off steam I was surprised at how much bandwidth I went through.

- Grid (10GB)
- Killing Floor (1.6GB)
- Counter-Strike: Source (4.5GB)
- Left 4 Dead (4.8GB)
- Team Fortress 2 (8GB)

That's 29GB worth of Bandwidth in 1 night.

and that's totally legal, If I was to format now it would be ever more.. with L4D2 and Mirrors Edge and so on.

 

[Ev0]

That's 29GB worth of Bandwidth in 1 night.

true but thats not the norm though, unless you format once a month

I'll have to pull off some stats one month but even with gaming and streaming it's nowhere near hundreds a month.

I still bet a large chunk of high usage people's monthly data use goes against the aup of their supplier.

 

[Rroff]

Mind you I've put 30gig through my connection since first posting in here... tho thats not normal usage heh

DL'd Modern Warfare 2 and Operation Flashpoint 2 on steam, 2 movies on iTunes and about an hours usage on iPlayer plus some other misc stuff - all legit.

 

[G1BB0]

to the OP, I am moving to sky bband unlimited 20mb service as it is true unlimited (for now lol). BT have been throttling me for the last 3 months at peak times, with 3 teenage kids each with console and pc in their rooms I regularly hit 150gb a month.

I spoke to BT and said that with i-player, hd on demand via xbox/ps3, Itunes, gaming and so forth that 100gb is not enough these days. They have no plans to amend this so I swiftly got my mac code and move to sky on 14th Dec.

also had issues with home hub/line and now on my 4th hub so personally I am glad to be rid of them as my isp at least sky call centre is uk and not mumbai (no offence but they are bloody useless)

 

[Guest2]

Our Sky broadband unlimited takes a beasting sometimes. We use it for general net surfing mainly, but then will hammer through 60gb in a day

 

[gurusan]

Christ what do you people download/do to use up hundreds of gigs a month?

I watch TV shows all in 720p and try to get all my movies in 1080p. A single 1080p movie MKV is over 8gb

Can easily rack up a few dozen GB in just a couple days.

 

[kylew]

Doubt you will be able to get out - you'd have had to have complained within a limited time after a change in the agreement to break the contract.

We are quite heavy users here - I just DL'd MW2 on steam (~12gig), use iTunes, iPlayer, etc. and quite a few of us sharing... we use around 80-100gig a month - I don't have much sympathy for people using more than 150gig or so a month, paying £20-30 and complaining - its a residential connection and not intended for heavy use 24x7 ffs... if you were paying £60+/m then I could understand it.

So because you don't use more than 150gig, others shouldn't?

I'm on Be, they say it's unlimited, and it definitely is.

I've never once had a complaint from them saying I've used too much bandwith. I've been with them for around 2 years now and I'm a very heavy user.

I use steam a lot, I download a lot of TV shows/Anime etc in the highest quality, Youtube, and HD Youtube. I can and at times, I estimate I've gone pretty close to 1TB in a month.

Hundreds of GB is nothing now, especially on a 24Mb connection.

At 2.6MB/s, you could download 1.56GB in 10 minutes, in an hour that's almost 10.

I'm paying for a service, I'll use it how much and when ever I wish.

"Using it too much" is just a load of nonsense.

 

[DragonQ]

Slightly off-topic but what is the best application for monitoring bandwidth usage on a PC? I've never had any throttling or letters and I doubt I'm anywhere near 100GB a month but I'd just be interested to know.

 

[Matteysan]

So because you don't use more than 150gig, others shouldn't?

I was thinking the same heh, I easily surpass 200gb a month & that is mainly just using Sky player, TVcatchup, Iplayer, 4oD & five online. But then I don't complain with my connection cause it is awesome! Gotta love Sky BB Unlimited

 

[G1BB0]

a few thumbs up for sky, glad I am changing

 

[Ev0]

I watch TV shows all in 720p and try to get all my movies in 1080p. A single 1080p movie MKV is over 8gb

Can easily rack up a few dozen GB in just a couple days.

Which goes back to my original point of without , er, dodgy downloads, how much usage to people actually use?

 

[Columbo]

Not a single piece of illegal software on my comp and I'll easily do 150 - 200 gig per month.

Being on Sky Unlimited it doesn't matter of course ..!!

Sky Player and Iplayer HD take up more bandwidth than some people realise and there's no way I'm watching the cack the wife has on, when other options are open to me..!!.