ISP Under Fire For Throttling 100 Mbps Connections To 64 kbps

Soldato
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OMG

An Australian ISP by the name of Optus has found itself at the center of a debate over their bandwidth caps. The cable operator's DOCSIS 3.0 100 Mbps service, dubbed "Supersonic," is subject to a usage cap that when crossed -- results in the tier getting slashed dramatically to just 64 kbps. The ISP is facing charges by Australian regulators that it didn't adequately inform customers of this restrictions in advertising, which proclaims the service is "four times faster than standard broadband." This isn't Optus's first run in with regulators:
The case is the second time marketing has landed Optus in court fronting allegations of breaches of the Trades Practices Act by the ACCC. The telco found itself in court in June for its use of "unlimited" for voice and data plans that had various usage caps and prices, and is seeking to have the court clarify the application of the word to telecommunications services. AAPT, perhaps irked by the rise of so-called "unlimited" plans, had sent Delimiter a dictionary and a personal note....
Capping is common in Australia, and such efforts go well beyond the caps we see here in the States. The Optus tier is question features a 50 GB cap during peak hours (12am to 12pm) and a 70 GB cap during off-peak hours (12pm to 12am). That's in contrast to Comcast's monthly cap of 250 GB -- which is unconditionally applied to all DOCSIS 3.0 tiers. Comcast users are throttled, but only the heaviest users on the most-congested nodes.
 
Caporegime
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The problem is there's no regulation in the market, which leads to false advertising and other unethical practices. Since in Australia almost everything on the internet is illegal anyway I don't see what difference it makes though. :p
 

fez

fez

Caporegime
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Its all a bit **** isnt it. They give you some **** and bull story about the need to give everyone fair usage of the connection. That is until you pay enough; then we couldnt care less about the other users.

The thing that annoys me most about this is the fact that ISP's all started touting the fact that they were upgrading everyone on 2mb to 8mb for free etc.

Then suddenly, around about the time of iplayer's wide scale uptake, they decide that they need to throttle the connection for power users.

They were happy to give everyone whatever speed they wanted as long as the customer never used it. As soon as they actually had to delivery on their claims to a large percentage of customers they have to throttle the network.
 
Soldato
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I get charged something like £1 a mb if I go over 500 in a month on my phone. Lets not implement a version of that in broadband please :(

"Unlimited broadband" has been taking the **** for a while now.
 
Associate
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Well it's hardly going to be £1/meg as thats just a penalty charge.

Seeing as how some 3G operators can charge a normal rate of 2.5p/meg and its profitable i imagine that it would be less for fixed lines.

Maybe 1p/meg or something
 
Soldato
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I'm not equating 3G with adsl, as that would be ridiculous. I'm suggesting that £10 a month for 40gb, then £1 per gb over that limit is an alternative model that could be implemented by isps. And that it's one I wouldn't like.
 
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