[Gllug] On a Fasthost adv.

[John Winters]

Jason Clifford wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-12-19 at 19:18 +0000, Christopher Hunter wrote:
>> There IS a significant problem with (for example) Virgin Media offering
>> "unlimited" broadband, when it is seriously limited by their draconian
>> policies.  There is also a problem with Virgin offering "20 Mb/s" when
>> with STM and contention issues, most users seldom see anything above 2
>> Mb/s.
> 
> But the problem there is the one I already identified as the real one -
> companies selling a service as "unlimited" when it is nothing of the
> sort due to the limits they place on it with their policies beyond
> normal contention.

I'm inclined to agree with Jason.  There are two different issues here 
and the wrong one is being targeted at present.

1) Describing a link as being "up to 2 or 8 Mb/s"

This one is fair enough, provided the general explanation of what 
exactly you're getting follows fairly closely afterwards.  Two things 
will reduce what you actually get - your distance from the exchange (in 
the case of ADSL) and contention from the exchange onwards.  In practice 
few consumers are going to notice a real difference between 1 Mb/s, 
2Mb/s and 8 Mb/s.  They're all fast enough to make for convenient use.

I upgraded mine from 2 Mb/s to 8 Mb/s purely because it moved me on to a 
  new (ever so slightly lower) tariff with my ISP.  My ADSL router syncs 
to the exchange at 8 meg and just occasionally I get downloads at that 
sort of speed too (usually in the middle of the night), but for everyday 
use I don't feel it's much different from 2 Mb/s.  You're always going 
to be limited by the general mish-mash of tubes and what's at the other 
end anyway.

Unless an ISP is selling links as 8 Mb/s but providing enough underlying 
bandwidth for punters to get a maximum of, say, 128 Kb/s then there 
isn't really an issue.

2) Describing a connection as unlimited when it isn't.

This is a far more real problem.  There are umpteen ISPs out there 
advertising deals which are just plain lies.  They say in big letters 
"Unlimited" and then in smaller print "Fair usage policy applies" and 
then when you read the so-called fair usage policy you find the the 
original claim was simply untrue - the connection is not unlimited. 
There is not only a limit, but the limits are getting lower and lower 
whilst still being described as "unlimited".

This is the one which the authorities should be cracking down on.

It's a real pity that the media have latched on to the wrong problem. 
Their campaigns are actually doing punters a disservice, by distracting 
attention from the real problem.

John
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