AOL Capping Users? Supposed To Be Unlimited!

Mista.Gee

Mista.Gee

Mista.Gee

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I've been doing some searching as i came across a small problem in the evening at around 6PM to 11PM on a Sunday to a Thursday my speed drops from 8MB to 512K Broadband speeds.

I later found since Feburary they have been capping a lot of AOL users both light and heavy users which is totally unacceptable and was not informed of these changes if any of any Fair Usage Policy even if it exists which i cannot seem to find in the T&Cs.

Anyone else getting these problems with this dire poor service been a great service until Feburary.
 
Yeah its not Unlimited anymore its changed now, they do cap, they do shape, throttle etc... as its their new FUP which came into effect from Feb 1st (since CPW took over), you should have had an e-mail about the changes a month before they started so you could have gotten out without penalty if you were still in a contract like me and many others did.
 
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Mista.Gee said:
I later found since Feburary they have been capping a lot of AOL users both light and heavy users which is totally unacceptable and was not informed of these changes if any of any Fair Usage Policy even if it exists which i cannot seem to find in the T&Cs.
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Check your email. You are right about finding information on this though, I can't find it anywhere on their site.

DAMMIT! Beaten! :mad:
 
Yeah you can get the new T&C's on the AOL site no problem, but you wont find any info on the FUP, they just mention having an FUP, there is no details as to what times peak/off peak times are, or how much you can download a month before you get FUP'd etc... so they can just change it at will to suit themselves, if you get FUP'd for downloading 1mb in a month then theres nowt you can do, its up to them, they say FUP you cant challenge it as there is no details, they dont have times, limits etc... specified as said, got you over a barrel now. :(
 
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all the aol users i know, myself included, never got this email.

aol are crap. they tell me my bt line will only support 1mbit, yet still charge use £29.99 a month (2mbit charge), telling us we are on the 2mbit package yet only get 1mbit speeds off peak. they also tell me adsl max isnt supported in my area.

then bt tell me :

Broadband is available for 01579******

Your exchange is ADSL enabled, and our initial test on your line indicates that your line should be able to have an ADSL broadband service that provides a line rate up to 2Mbps. Our test also indicates that your line should be able to support a potential ADSL Max broadband line rate of 6.5Mbps up to 8Mbps. The actual ADSL Max line rate supportable will be determined during the first 10 days of use, after which time the highest stable rate possible will be set. If you decide to place an order, a further test will be performed to confirm if your line is suitable for the service you wish to purchase. Thank you for your interest
 
It claims that it's only for new customers yet many of us here have been with AOL for many years and are now being affected by this FUP without warning, myself upgraded to 8MB Broadband in October of last year 2006 so in effect they've slapped another 12 Months Contract on me without even explaining that before i upgraded.
 
AOL...one of the last ISP's to offer truly unlimited broadband mow capping, shaping and giving priority to traffic which is far more unlikely to be carrying illegal content.
Oh well, the leechers, pirates and general over-users have destroyed yet another ISP.

No wonder Zen keep their prices so high on their packages - it keeps those people away from their service.

Haven't people seen the pattern - Unlimited ISP is forced to introduce caps and the like, the above leave and join another ISP (usually en mass) and then a few months later that ISP is also forced to introduce caps and the like.
Then it is on to the next - the unlimited ISP's are running out.
And to think, 12 months ago I was called names and laughed at when I said there would be no non-capping ISP's left and it would be a matter of finding the best caps for your money within a year...
I wish I'd been wrong.
 
It's only been introduced since talktalk have bought the UK Division of AOL out and it came into effect at midnight on the 31st Jan 2007.

I'm a light user a total of (109 hours a month) (Claim AOL) hardly download anything and i've been introduced under what they claim an automatic FUP.

AOL say an FUP only applys to those that use 800 Hours or more a month i qouted only 720 Hours in a month, so i thought hang on a minute here i was just told i only use 109 Hours a month? What a load of you know what to replace this line with!

Had one of the best phone conversations i've ever had infact somehow i've got another 12 month contract and i've been with them since March 2005.

Got great speed all morning and afternoon up until 6PM to 11PM from 8MB to 512K Broadband a speed decrease for a total of 5 Hours what a stupid limit whats stopping the heavy user downloading after that time.
 
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Zen's prices arnt high, they are just realistic when carrying data over the BT central's. ISP's that offer higher caps and lower prices end up having to traffic shape and throttle because they cant stay in business running a clean none traffic shaped connection at those prices.

LLU isp's make thinks a little easier as they dont have to carry data over the bt centrals and thus the costs per gig is less than that of connections that use BTwholesale.
 
Mista.Gee said:
It claims that it's only for new customers yet many of us here have been with AOL for many years and are now being affected by this FUP without warning, myself upgraded to 8MB Broadband in October of last year 2006 so in effect they've slapped another 12 Months Contract on me without even explaining that before i upgraded.
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BT have done this as well, but at least they do say you will get a free upgrade to 8MB when you sign up for another 12 months. Hence why I am still on 2MB.

From what I read somewhere it did say that ISP's are charged for how much you use i.e. GB per month and not how fast your connection is. This means that 2MB and 8 MB costs the same for an ISP, the only reason to drop from 8MB to 512kb is to stop you downloading so much! Not sure where I read this so I can't post a link.
 
firewallblocked said:
From what I read somewhere it did say that ISP's are charged for how much you use i.e. GB per month and not how fast your connection is. This means that 2MB and 8 MB costs the same for an ISP, the only reason to drop from 8MB to 512kb is to stop you downloading so much! Not sure where I read this so I can't post a link.
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Yep, It's known as Capacity Based Charging.

My understanding is that the ISPs rent Centrals, high capacity links from the BT backbones to their own networks, for a set fee based on the capacity of the Central (up to 622Mbps). The ISP then puts as many folk as it thinks it can get away with onto each Central and charges each customer a monthly fee. Now with a lot of heavy users the Centrals become congested and this causes two main problems - 1) the service suffers and 2) you can't get as many users on per Central so the ISP may be running the Central at a loss.

The last figure I saw was that for a £25 per user per month income the ISP needed to keep the average bandwidth per user under 8Gb per month. Therefore you see two approaches, the unusual one that the likes of Zen take by charging a realistic price for high bandwidth or the AOL/Pipex approach of throttling, shaping, FUPing etc.

Virgin & the LLU providers don't use BT Centrals and hence are able to source bandwidth elsewhere at lower cost.
 
They are not charged per GB. They are charged £1.5million per 622Mb central a year. That is split into 4 150Mb segments charged at £40k each a month. A £1.5million central includes 1 segment lit at 150Mb/s. Add onto this horrible lead times and a ISP has to be able to read the future.

I *think* it is £1.50 per GB of throughput it is worked out at.

According to here: http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/adsl_cost.htm it is 73p per GB if a fully lit central is maxed 24/7. So realistically £1GB.

*Awaits for people to pull all this apart as I have given up trying to find exact figures.

Edit: The calculator does not include BT connection costs at around £12. *searches.
 
im baffeled I joined AOL about 2months or so ago on the following day they naturally announced there FUP which is normal for me.....

Im still downloading 24/7 at 100-300k... ill admit tends to get bit sluggish every now and then but certainly at seen nothing like 12k or 20k max downloads... surfing remains uneffected.

However when it does occur will make arrangments to jump onto the next ISP and bog them down :)
 
Prior to my other thread about trying to get your ISP to remove your restriction, which is a pain in the ass with Tiscali anyway.

Who has actually had their FUP restriction removed, or do you all just jump to different ISP? lol
 
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