yes it would be called G0UDG if you downloaded it between 9am-9pm. however as i keep telling people those with connections better than 10mb are a minority and the number of users decreases rapidly as you get closer to 20mb so TF2 may download perfectly fine on your connection or anyone else in the minority at any time of the day. The vast majority of sky users however download at less than 5mb which would take friggin ages anyway resulting in the same issue as virgin "It isnt playable anytime soon"
I have downloaded over 400-500GB a month on Virgin Media for the past eight months on a 50mbps line and _have never been contacted_ about my usage. Nor has my speed been throttled.
I have Virgin media and its absolute crap!! I swear I am throttled even when I don't download anything, even youtube videos take about 10 minutes to load. Annoying thing is my house doesn't have a BT phone line and the landlord refuses to allow me to have one put in :/
Well I have and have letters to prove it! Look around the net on virgin media's own forums, many people on 50MB complaining in there.
Internet access in Britain has always been crappy. Back in the dialup days, you paid around £20-£30 a month for a 56k connection. Then when the first truly "free" ISPs showed up - "free" as in, no monthly costs and no call charges - you were usually kicked off every hour and spammed with adverts. Anyone remember X-Stream? I spent hours getting autodial scripts, figuring out ways to remove their banners, etc. When "broadband" first started appearing, you didn't have a speed fast enough to warrant the FUPs that we have today - nobody would have ever imagined being able to download over 1.5Gb per day on 256k/512k connections. There probably were caps back then, but I don't really remember looking into it too much. Plus if you lived too far from the exchange then tough luck - you got no service at all, let alone a reduced speed. Now that connection speeds are vastly higher than they once were, we have "Fair" Usage Policies to contend with. All these measures pretty much boil down to the same thing: making sure that a small percentage of heavy users don't ruin it for everyone else. We just don't have the infrastructure to give everyone the full access speed at any time. You can point fingers and argue about who's to blame, but that doesn't change anything. Given the cost needed to overhaul our infrastructure, it's not going to happen any time soon either. Places like South Korea may have FTTH and gigabit connections, but they're not relying on an ancient infrastructure (parts of which are very old indeed). Besides, I really thought we were over the whole "Unlimited doesn't actually mean 'unlimited'" thing. Yes it's wrong to advertise it that way, yes that sucks, but as with many things, if you agree to terms without actually reading them in the first place then you don't really have a leg to stand on when those terms come back to bite you in the arse. I downloaded TF2 from Steam yesterday and it's actually 7.5Gb. Yeah you'd still hit the cap pretty soon on a lower-tiered connection, but as with anything though you get what you pay for. If you want cheaper access, then you're likely to face caps/throttling. If you pay more for access, then you're likely get a higher cap. To answer the OP: I'm afraid you haven't got a leg to stand on. Those are the terms you signed up for. I seriously doubt it'd make any impact. The sort of people you need to be complaining to are consumer action groups and OFCOM. Besides, as far as I know ISPs are already in hot water over "unlimited" claims.
IMHO its all one big grey area that is not well managed by the ISP as you can have two people on the exact same package and one get throttled / capped etc and the other user has no problems at all. Which all comes back back to the ISP's making money and not providing a professional service. but i will have to agree some serious investment is needed in the Infrastructure to cope with whats to come
i been with virgin media for more then 10 years (1-2MB here on BT so no point going to ADSL and they cant match 50-100mb even with FTTC that has not been installed around the exchange i am on so its not an option any way) old bandwidth management http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management/traffic-management-policy.html most should be on the one below now, if your upload is 1mb 2mb 3mb or 5mb (download speeds as in order 10 20 30 50) your on the one below http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management/traffic-management-faster-uploads.html what i do dislike is that usenet filtering (lucky if your an gigianews user just use the VPN that they offer for free i use astra web so no vpn for me but for 5.99 you can get VPN) nothing really HTTP can really use 50mb or 100mb like Usenet can i would recommend you go onto 30mb as that limit is 5GB between 4pm and 9pm (10mb is 1.5GB) all triggers take 30mins to hit if your downloading at full flat out speed (10 20 30mb speeds, 50-100MB bb only has an upload throttle no download but still has lame Usenet limit that can be VPN to bypass it) and last for 5 hrs from when it Starts (so if you hit the download cap 1 second before 9pm you got to wait until 2am) also you should Not be getting packet loss when Throttling is active they just limit the data rate to 2.5mb down and upload to 256kb (400KB/30KB ish) if your using P2P apps (wow and torrents) Make Sure the upload is limit to 11KB upload and enable encryption you you be forcing packet loss due to flooding your connection packet loss could also be due to the one of the Bandwidth providers that VM use on the router edges to connect to the internet that VM seem to not be bothered about it much (hits me from time to time but quite sure it does not happen at my end now) but it can also be an local fault as well like power levels been to high or low (log onto the modem or cable modem router and see what the power levels are) note there is No monthly cap with VM (so it is unlimited to an point) and even with them above limits in place you can still download over 100-200GB in an day (i prefer you not to thought, think VM will give you an buzz if you do more then 1.5TB in an month) you do that on an BT ISP (LLU or not) they boot you or charge you (sky soft limit is 100-150gb an month) or limit your connection to stupid speeds
What I wonder is, is there a way to get the kind of business-grade connection that, well, businesses have? Universities and places like that have incredibly high speeds and absolutely no usage limitations at all. Makes me wonder how much money you'd have to pay to get that kind of connection domestically. I think I wondered this same thing years ago, and actually found out somewhere. It can't have been cheap, else I'd have convinced my mum to do it for the house by now.
You are talking about T1 to T4 connections. These are dedicated fibre-optic cables. Prices start from about $200,-- a month on a T1 to $14000,-- a month on a T4 connection. These are for universities, hospitals, banks and other big companies, not for us mere mortals.
Were have a 10mb leased line at work as I mentioned earlier. I know the cost is around 1000-1200 a month
If an ISP is LLU then it's use of the BT networks extends only as far as the copper between your house and the exchange, they definitely aren't 'BT' ISPs. And Be will quite happily let you download huge amounts of data without question, charge or disconnection. People can, and do, download over a terabyte of data in a month without problem.
In my heart, I knew it to be so, but why couldn't you leave me in blissfully hopeful ignorance? Actually, screw common sense, I'm just going to blow half of my income on one as soon as I have a job and a house. Because I'm that cool.
It irritates me when companies advertise as 'unlimited' and then always say that there is a fair use policy, if they say unlimited then it should be unlimited, really i think that is false advertising.
My housemates and I last year at uni were on VM's 50mb connection, there were 5 of us and 4 of us downloaded and played excessively on Steam and also streamed and downloaded excessively from iPlayer and 4OD, SkyPlayer and other sites. We all used to buy some of the latest games through steam store as well. Not once did we get any calls or communications from VM asking us to cut it out and we did it at all times of the day. I had a network utility application we all used and each of us was downloading on average a heck of a lot. Thought you might like this
Got a letter from my ISP Wave Broadband notifying me that I've gone over the 300GB monthly Fair Use Policy limit for the month of July, but the $10 fee was waived because it was during my first six months of service. Planning how to move forward from here. With four people in the house, all heavy gamers and Netflix streamers, we're almost guaranteed to break the limit in the future. Hopefully with a little luck and a lot of bargaining they can be convinced to keep waiving the fees. Wave doesn't offer any unlimited packages, so there's always the "I'll move to competitor <blank>" card, and most importantly the large majority of our internet usage is during off-peak hours which they don't factor in to FUP measurements. Already setting up methods to monitor usage to prove that the amount of off-peak usage (and I plan to be generous, 10pm to 6 am), if subtracted from total usage, is well below the limit. A salesman's job is to get profitable customers. As long as they can be convinced that letting a user go over the limit is more profitable than having them leave for a competitor they'll make compromises.
t1 is affordable if everyone agrees to split the cost never had an issue with at&t dsl here at least.. cable is a lot faster but they are really expensive compared and are sell outs paying 46 a month and that includes a land line.. you have to renew the plan every year though- $150 to break the lease not too bad considering cable wants to gobble you up.. had comcast for awhile but the first letter was it for me.. pay more and be treated like they're doing me a favor- yeah right
