“Unlimited”, that's a word that gets abused far to often. Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett also stated back in 2008 that Net Neutrality is rubbish (not sure if I can say that word? haha). This company are the enemy. Avoid them.
Pretty comprehensive table though, how many other providers publish something like that?
Despite this decision, how the ASA consider unlimited to have any meaning other than unlimited is beyond me.
And is Sky “truly unlimited” too does anyone know ?
The politest thing that can be said about the ASA is that it is staffed by a complete bunch of t##ts. Unlimited has an ordinary dictionary definition - without limits.
Whether or not most people would recognise the limits is not the point. If something has limits it should be illegal to advertise it as “unlimited”
Firstly I can see why (by literal definition) a throttle is an imposed limitation to the service. However, until I had read articles like this one, I always thought unlimited applied to the fact that they don't cut you off (as some companies do when you reach their cap), only slow you down if you are caning it (ostensibly so that a few super-users aren't hogging all their bandwith at peak times etc. etc.
I have been affected by throttles in the past, but the throttles were always set high enough that I thought of them as ‘fair’. The exception to this in my view was when you were on the highest tier service they provided. At this point, there is no higher tier that you could be expected to upgrade to if you were a heavy user, and unlimited should truly mean unlimited!
…I'd also note that I'd rather have a 5h throttle imposed for heavy short-term use than a throttle that was applied until the end of the month, as some companies did (do?) when you hit their cap.
g8ina
And is Sky “truly unlimited” too does anyone know ?
I understand it to be, yes. Last time I checked, they regard themselves as not having a fair usage policy. If they do have one, it doesn't limit by quantity of usage.
And this excludes stuff like nntp, that's throttled irrespective of the caps.
My “100 Mbit/s service”, that used to quite happily bounce along at 12MB/s, now hovers around 3MB/s
Its better than it used to be. I was on their 10Mb service up to a while ago and the reductions were around 75% with considerably less allowance (easily reached with Steam etc). However has to be said the service was pretty solid and had few complaints apart from all the great offers for “new customers only”. Had to cancel pending a move so will have to see what offers are available later, can certainly say that using my 3 mobile for internet just sucks.
The caps seem high, but in actuality they aren't, not if we are heading for a digital distribution economy. For example BioShock Infinite (which I received with my new graphics card) was a 15gb download. Steam allowed me to max out my circa 75mb connection at just over 9mb a sec, and it was downloaded in around half an hour. That would be enough to hit a speed restriction on Virgin.
(For clarity I'm on BT Infinity, the unlimited option. I haven't yet noticed global throttling (though I'm sure there will be throttling of certain services).)
were on sky fibre (not the plus though) - we run at 40/10 - streaming hd content on lovefim , youtube , multiple games on various devices and haven't noticed any throttling as yet
g8ina
And is Sky “truly unlimited” too does anyone know ?
I've been on sky boradband almost continuously since about 2009. They have been advertising as unlimited for years now. But they used to throttle my speed by 50%! I had to keep hassling them about it and left their service for a bit. But these days they seem to be pretty good. I'm not a real majorly heavy user though so maybe I just don't get throttled by them (how funny does that sound? haha). I do a lot of web browsing/email/youtube stuff everyday, usually download a game from steam each month or two, and the odd program here and there. So I'm guessing I'm only going through about 30GB a month or something? While I'm on that note - can anyone tell me a good program for monitoring the total amount of data I send and receive? Would be interested to see my monthly totals! Also if anyones speeds get throttled by sky I'd like to hear too.
I was always under the impression that VM media were always unlimited. Now thay its known to be throttled, might explain why my networks connection seems slow after a days netflix and gaming.
I'm an age where games and videos are being downloaded, HD movies ,games.and TV shows being the biggest data hog, surely the caps are just too low.
deejayburnout
I was always under the impression that VM media were always unlimited. Now thay its known to be throttled, might explain why my networks connection seems slow after a days netflix and gaming.
I'm an age where games and videos are being downloaded, HD movies ,games.and TV shows being the biggest data hog, surely the caps are just too low.
Their old top packages were, I remember getting a truly unlimited 50Mb package. That was all canned about a year ago though.
Just about to switch over from Virgin to Sky Fibre in the next couple of weeks.
Virgin are complete and utter idiots. Forcing me to ring an 0845 number (call lasted 45minutes) to cancel and asked why I was leaving by the RUDEST telephone customer service person I have ever dealt with.
:)
You should try the CSA. Sexist arrogant rude women make every other customer “service” experience enjoyable. I complained and got passed onto a female manager who was unbelievable. Got her name and reported her to my MP. Got an email back from my female MP saying she couldn't believe how bad they were and she was making formal complaints…
Anyway, off topic completely, Sky don't throttle or anything, but network useage is getting high meaning slowdowns. They will eventually struggle like Virgin unless they can make some huge investments in capacity. Still seem best out there at moment for me though, and at £7.50 a month plus line rental a steal. I get 19 meg down and 1 meg up too
ZaO
“Unlimited”, that's a word that gets abused far to often. Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett also stated back in 2008 that Net Neutrality is —–. This company are the enemy. Avoid them.
Can't see how you can justify VM as "
the enemy“ - while they've got less than brilliant support etc at least they do fulfil the invaluable function of keeping the pressure on BT. Strangely enough I think in this respect they're very similar to Three - another company that's pretty good on data provision yet has ”customer support" that tends to make folks either cry or want to go on a killing spree. :censored: (ex Three customer). And are they honestly any worse than other company - although from their reputation Talk Talk seem to be worst.
Never that impressed with the ASA at the best of times - seems like the kind of sleepy bureaucracy that's easy to poke fun at. And in this respect I think the best, and certainly, fairest would be to ban
everyone from using the word “unlimited” in their advertising, since ALL broadband is limited:
- Capacity limits - get to that GB/month and suddenly lose your connection (BT et al)
- Throttling when you hit that magic limit (VM)
- Physical limits - surely there's no company that has enough capacity to give you even 90% of the stated speed 100% of the time. Certainly not for the kind of costs that I could afford!
I couldn't live the with capacity limited provision - I've tried that with my phone and it becomes a real chore to “ration” yourself. Plus the fact that I also have to use my b/b for to dial in for work (teleworker) makes that a non starter.
Throttling - to me at least - seems fair … hit the network hard and we slow you down so other folks get a shot. And I'll give props to VM in that their throttling is limited to a couple of hours and then you're back to normal. Talking to a friend in the US and he was saying that his ISP applies a throttle for the rest of the billing period. Ouch!
As as to Burke-faces comments about the lack of net neutrality - that's probably right. I WANT my VOIP calls to be prioritised over someone's CoD session, and in turn they deserve to be prioritised over someones download, or worse still, torrent use. That's the only time I'm going to agree with NB - in other respects the guy had a poor grasp of reality.
Im a virgin customer and agree if it has limits then its not unlimited but i dont think its just Virgin thats doing misleading adverts. All of them are as bad as each other in their advertising but at the emd of the day there service is better than most others but that doesnt make it ok to mislead people, you just have to know what your signing upto and if you read the small print it tells you about such things.
3dcandy
Sky don't throttle or anything, but network useage is getting high meaning slowdowns. They will eventually struggle like Virgin unless they can make some huge investments in capacity.
As a Be Unlimited user that fills me with dread having just been bought out by sky….
I can imagine ISP's being sat round a table at a primary school and the teacher asking them to describe their service without using the word unlimited and all of them struggling.
All companies are the same though, I don't get why they can't just leave the word alone. When I was setting up a phone contract with T-Mobile I said I wanted data to be unlimited.
“Oh it is unlimited… up to 2Gb”
“But no, that's not unlimited”
“The first 2Gb is unlimited”
“And after that..?”
“after that the service slows as you use more data”
“so it is limited?”
“….well yes”
peterb
Can I remind members to read this please. I have edited some posts.
http://forums.hexus.net/faq.php?faq=hex_mainrules#faq_hex_swearing
Just wondering if I broke this rule? - “Many unacceptable words are in the swear filter anyway, and so will not appear on the forum if used anyway. But if people star out parts of words, we WILL construe that as a deliberate attempt to bypass both our rules and our intent, and will deal with it in that light. If you have to star out a word or any letters in it, then you should not be saying it. Find another way to express yourself.”
I didn't consider the word I starred out to be any worse than “crappy”, which was said to be ok. I was also quoting a statement so didn't want to alter it too much for accuracy reasons. I haven't received a message about it though so I assume it's ok? Interested to know if it's allowed now…
Edit: Oh scratch that. I re-read what you said and went back to check my post and you changed that word. My bad :P
Also - “Unauthorised advertising is expressly prohibited. This applies not only to advertising by commercial organisations, but to individuals “pimping” their own websites.”
Is the link to my Soundcloud page in my signature ok?
Thanks.
crossy
Can't see how you can justify VM as "the enemy“ - while they've got less than brilliant support etc at least they do fulfil the invaluable function of keeping the pressure on BT. Strangely enough I think in this respect they're very similar to Three - another company that's pretty good on data provision yet has ”customer support" that tends to make folks either cry or want to go on a killing spree. :censored: (ex Three customer). And are they honestly any worse than other company - although from their reputation Talk Talk seem to be worst.
Never that impressed with the ASA at the best of times - seems like the kind of sleepy bureaucracy that's easy to poke fun at. And in this respect I think the best, and certainly, fairest would be to ban everyone from using the word “unlimited” in their advertising, since ALL broadband is limited:- Capacity limits - get to that GB/month and suddenly lose your connection (BT et al)
- Throttling when you hit that magic limit (VM)
- Physical limits - surely there's no company that has enough capacity to give you even 90% of the stated speed 100% of the time. Certainly not for the kind of costs that I could afford!
I couldn't live the with capacity limited provision - I've tried that with my phone and it becomes a real chore to “ration” yourself. Plus the fact that I also have to use my b/b for to dial in for work (teleworker) makes that a non starter.
Throttling - to me at least - seems fair … hit the network hard and we slow you down so other folks get a shot. And I'll give props to VM in that their throttling is limited to a couple of hours and then you're back to normal. Talking to a friend in the US and he was saying that his ISP applies a throttle for the rest of the billing period. Ouch!
As as to Burke-faces comments about the lack of net neutrality - that's probably right. I WANT my VOIP calls to be prioritised over someone's CoD session, and in turn they deserve to be prioritised over someones download, or worse still, torrent use. That's the only time I'm going to agree with NB - in other respects the guy had a poor grasp of reality.
I definitely agree that they should be a lot clearer about stuff. “Unlimited” has a strong, clearly definied meaning. And you can't mess with that. They've literally lied to you to sell you something and somehow they get away with it almost all the time. You try pulling something like that on them like telling them they've lied about their service so you're not going to pay them the full amount, and you'll have debt collectors after you in no time!
McEwin
As a Be Unlimited user that fills me with dread having just been bought out by sky….
Necessary evil, internet useage in general is rocketing, you have to balance the investment. To be fair, so far Sky seem to have managed to do it much better than Virgin did when they were struggling - although I'm still hearing plenty of horror stories from mates where they have a service that crawls and the date for upgrades keeps getting put back and back, and that's with ALL the IPS's out there…