[dub45]

I recently emailed UPC (for the third time) and asked them what their contention ratio is. This is the reply I received:

Dear xxxxxx

Thank you for your email, my apologies for the delay in getting back to you.
Having reviewed your account I can confirm that our Broadband Services are not available in the area you are living in, xxxxxxxx

I reviewed your request with our Technical Support Desk and they advised that unfortunately we are unable to provide this information to non customers.
If you have any further queries, please do not hesitate to email us on customer.support@upc.ie
Kind regards,
xxxxxxxxx
Chorus ntl Customer Support Team

Do BB customers have to sign a non disclosure agireement?

[the_law]

Haha! But to be honest, they have stated in advertising that they do not have any contention... go here and click on the 'conditions' tab. You will see the following:

Average expected broadband speeds at peak times are 5Mb, 15Mb and 30Mb.

That forms part of your contract with UPC... they are telling you you'll get the full speed at peak time.

Now I admit that they have various other get out clauses, but under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations which state that

Where there is a doubt about the meaning of a term, the interpretation most favourable to the consumer shall prevail.

So it doesn't really matter. And to this point, no UPC rep has attempted to pass off their service as satisfactory based on this kind of nonsense...

Imagine you contracted someone to provide you with 30 rental cars to carry your employees from and to work, but then they told you that you could only have 5 cars at 6pm as 'they were really busy then'.

All the guff in UPC contracts wouldn't last five minutes in a court...

[dub45]

Someone should tell whoever writes that stuff about 'paragraphs'.


They are incredible at absolving themselves of responsibility for anything they can --

Installation is carried out by a third party installer. Chorus ntl will not be responsible for the installation

[dub45]

Originally Posted by the_law

Haha! But to be honest, they have stated in advertising that they do not have any contention... go here and click on the 'conditions' tab. You will see the following:



That forms part of your contract with UPC... they are telling you you'll get the full speed at peak time.

Now I admit that they have various other get out clauses, but under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations which state that

So it doesn't really matter. And to this point, no UPC rep has attempted to pass off their service as satisfactory based on this kind of nonsense...

Imagine you contracted someone to provide you with 30 rental cars to carry your employees from and to work, but then they told you that you could only have 5 cars at 6pm as 'they were really busy then'.

All the guff in UPC contracts wouldn't last five minutes in a court...

They know that no one is going to challenge them in court so can eforce these terms

If they wouldnt stand up in court then surely a reputable company would not have them in their terms and conditions in the first place?

Also what relation does this new paragraphless set of 'conditons' bear to the actual Terms and Condtions?

And I wonder if they actually know what they are saying?

Average expected broadband speeds at peak times are 5Mb, 15Mb and 30Mb

If the 'average' speeds that they quote are the actual speeds that they are quotiing for the product category then to achieve those averages the speeds could never fall at all - once they did the average would be dragged down. If you quote the top speed as the average then there can be no variance.

Imagine you contracted someone to provide you with 30 rental cars to carry your employees from and to work, but then they told you that you could only have 5 cars at 6pm as 'they were really busy then'.

According to UPC's terms and conditions they would expect you to pay for the 30 cars!

[IrishTonyO]

Originally Posted by the_law

Haha! But to be honest, they have stated in advertising that they do not have any contention...

Where do they state they have no contention?

[the_law]

Originally Posted by IrishTonyO

Where do they state they have no contention?

Originally Posted by the_law

Haha! But to be honest, they have stated in advertising that they do not have any contention... go here and click on the 'conditions' tab.

Average speed of 30Mbit at peak time means that they may never fall short... because modems are rate-limited to 30Mbit, so they certainly won't be any faster, and therefore the only way to maintain the average is to hit 30Mbit 24/7.

[dub45]

Originally Posted by the_law

Average speed of 30Mbit at peak time means that they may never fall short... because modems are rate-limited to 30Mbit, so they certainly won't be any faster, and therefore the only way to maintain the average is to hit 30Mbit 24/7.

I suppose that if they don't understand the meaning of the word 'average' you cant hold out much hope for them overall?

So everyone on the new high speed effectively has their own individual 30Mbit line!!!! wow.......

[soeren]

hi, i upgraded to 30mbit last this weekend but the speeds i get are not more than 20mbit highest so i asked ntl/upc to switch me back to 20mbit becaus the 30 invole 1 year additional contract length but it seems the service is not possible here via cable, maybe fibre works but it´s not available here as well and costs much more

i live in kilnamanagh/d24 btw.

http://www.upc.nl/internet/snel_internet/speedtest/
03.02.10 16:34
test1 - down 15.34 / up 1.98
test2 - down 19.42 / up 2.04
test3 - down 13.15 / up 1.98
03.02.10 18:45 -
test1 - down 8.24 / up 1.82
test2 - down 9.08 / up 1.75
test3 - down 12.76 / up 2.00
03.02.10 21:08
test1 - down 9.56 / up 1.82
test2 - down 8.52 / up 1.90
test3 - down 9.49 / up 1.84
www.speedtest.net
03.02.10 21:12
server dublin - down 18.25 / up 1.88
server frankfurt - down 6.76 / up 1.70
server amsterdam - down 13.59 / up 1.78
server london - down 12.30 / up 1.88
server galway - down 13.54 / up 1.81
server limerick - down 8.64 / up 1.83

rgds
soeren.

[hightower1]

Originally Posted by dub45

I recently emailed UPC (for the third time) and asked them what their contention ratio is. This is the reply I received:



Do BB customers have to sign a non disclosure agireement?

Perhaps your time would be better spent not emailing ISP's asking for contention ratios when as you have stated in previous posts on other threads that their service is not available in your area, you wouldn't take it if it were and you seem to completely dislike them?

This thread couldn't be any further removed from being helpful to anyone on the broadband section. Waste of time.

[dub45]

Originally Posted by hightower1

Perhaps your time would be better spent not emailing ISP's asking for contention ratios when as you have stated in previous posts on other threads that their service is not available in your area, you wouldn't take it if it were and you seem to completely dislike them?

This thread couldn't be any further removed from being helpful to anyone on the broadband section. Waste of time.

While I appreciate your concern as to how I might best spend my remaining time on this fair planet surely that is a matter best left to me (and my life coach of course!)

UPC are a major player in the bb market (134,900 customers at the end of last September according to the Irish Times) and I would imagine that their claimed contention rates would be of interest to those people who visit here who have a general interest in the 'world' of broadband in Ireland Their claimed contention rates are conspicuously absent from their website.

Given the present problems with the new products which are well documented elsewhere their contention rates may now be of interest to more people than previously.

[bealtine]

Originally Posted by hightower1

Perhaps your time would be better spent not emailing ISP's asking for contention ratios when as you have stated in previous posts on other threads that their service is not available in your area, you wouldn't take it if it were and you seem to completely dislike them?

This thread couldn't be any further removed from being helpful to anyone on the broadband section. Waste of time.

I find this particular thread to be of great value to me. So with that in mind I'd really like to know what the real contention ratio actually is and why are UPC hiding behind babble and T&Cs?

[the_law]

Originally Posted by hightower1

Perhaps your time would be better spent not emailing ISP's asking for contention ratios when as you have stated in previous posts on other threads that their service is not available in your area, you wouldn't take it if it were and you seem to completely dislike them?

This thread couldn't be any further removed from being helpful to anyone on the broadband section. Waste of time.

I actually find this very useful. It is now on record that UPC refuse to supply potential customers with their contention ratio.

This makes it even harder for UPC to hide behind 'oh but you agreed to contention in your contract'. If the only information available to a potential customer is a) the headline speed of 30Mb and b) the expected peak speed of 30Mb - how can UPC claim anything less than 30 is fulfilling their obligations?

For what it's worth, in my ongoing dealings with UPC not one person has attempted to call this kind of contention acceptable or been any less than reasonable. I have managed (admittedly a week later) to get the attention of a supervisor who sounds a good guy, so they get the benefit of the doubt from me for now.

[dub45]

Surely contention rates are an important feature of any commercial bb product and should be on the record just as much as the speed of the product or the cost?

[the_law]

Originally Posted by dub45

Surely contention rates are an important feature of any commercial bb product and should be on the record just as much as the speed of the product or the cost?

Yes... but I would argue that in a properly managed network it should not concern the consumer.

For example UPC have 135,000 broadband subscribers. Say they all took 10Mbit packages, that's 1,135,000 mbits, or 1135 Gbits, 1.135 Terabits of internet connectivity required.

Obviously they don't have 1135Gbits - that's contention, but so long as it is far enough up the access network it's not a problem in itself. Average internet usage is probably only about a couple percent of sold capacity.

Where the problem comes is in a local exchange for DSL, or at node level with DOCSIS. Say you plan on 2% usage at national level. So for every 1000 gbits sold, you have 20 gbits available. That (or something in its range) is absolutely fine and transparent to the end user. But it's a contention ratio of 50:1. It works because of the thousands of people who don't use their connections some days, who only browse on a 10Mbit connection etc. etc.

However consider the DSLAM in the exchange that has 24 10Mbit connections on it. Total demand 240Mbits, but what if you only gave it 10Mbits connectivity? That's only a 24:1 contention ratio, twice as good as the 50:1 you plan with nationally, but it's ridiculously low. It means that if any of those 23 other people use their internet at all, you don't get the advertised speed - so you can't really go any worse than 10:1 at DSLAM level.

So the closer you get to the consumer, the less you can contend the network. The same happens in power distribution networks... consider that there are some 1.3 million households in the state (before you consider commercial demand) and each with a maximum import capacity of around 16kVA, which at unity power factor is 70A. Say for conservatism that everyone's fused at 60A (you can see this main fuse in your own ESB cutout).... and that's 1.3million x 60 x 230 = 17.94 Gigawatts.

The maximum available capacity to Eirgrid on any given day is around 6GW - less than a third of the maximum demand available to domestic installations.

Electricians call this diversity, comms engineers call it contention. We don't have blackouts every night at 10pm, because diversity is well managed in the power network. Why do we tolerate poorly managed contention in broadband?

[_Sidhe_]

I find it amazing how selective some people reading seems to be!

Like how so much of this was missed in the indept analysis ye've provided.

Average expected broadband speeds at peak times are 5Mb, 15Mb and 30Mb. Broadband speeds are the maximum possible speeds only. Actual speeds will vary depending on internet traffic, the sites you visit and other factors.

I'd get your eyes checked if I was you.