Alot of moaning and groaning!

Superman

Ok, I know alot of us on boards use pc's alot but why is their so many people giving out about broadband caps, I think their a bit annoying but not massively and i'm just curious as to why so many of you's are constantly bitching about 8gb limits.


well that's my 2 cents!

Fill in the poll so i can see where you lot all stand on the issues!

Stephen

an 8/16 gig cap really sucks balls when you have 4 people sharing a connection

Stark

Aye. Same here.

Pacifico

No cap for me :cool:

alleepally

I haven't even a clue how much of my cap I use as digiweb don't have a counter but when I had a demo a counter application installed I did about 1gb in a month.

beer enigma

an 8/16 gig cap really sucks balls when you have 4 people sharing a connection

Jeez, surely if you have 4 people sharing a connection, each of you is only paying a quarter of the bill - €10/month........

I'm on Eircom 4Gb €40 a month & have no complaints. Sure I'd love 8Gb or 16GB or unlimited.....but personally, I'd run out of things to download !! - AND I administer two largeish websites.....

BigEejit

I control my downloading habits to suit my cap .... I'd rather not have a cap but it isnt all that restrictive .....then again its mostly just me using it ... and I havent been downloading much ....just playing games with bittorrent running in the background

Stark

Jeez, surely if you have 4 people sharing a connection, each of you is only paying a quarter of the bill - €10/month........

It's a family situation. As in one person pays the bill, the other 3 leach off it.

beer enigma

Lol - Stark.....stop it out of their Pocket Money

See your point though.....

John R

Broadband installed July 19, downloaded so far 6.81GB Downloaded today 2.59GB
I could use up 8GB in 3 days:(
I will have to leave the bandwith hogging until the end of each month lest I forget and end up with a massive bill.

RobertFoster

I'm "happy" with my 16GB cap - I'd prefer a speed upgrade before a cap one.

ozt9vdujny3srf

Anything over 16gb in a month is pretty much warez monkey territory.

The cap as it is is fine, they're there for good reason.

I'd much prefer a 1meg connection to a higher cap .

Gonzo

the 8 gig cap is definitely a bit tight especially considering its an extra €15 per month for those extra 4 gigs. Ive a feeling tho that the 8 gig cap will get pushed upwards within the next 3 months hopefully.

Gonzo

Faster speeds would be nice but at the moment a 1mb dsl connection with a mere 8gb or 16gb cap is overkill imo, if we are ever upgraded to 1mb I think the cap for that speed should be around 30gigs+ to balance the connection out.

PiE

Allie Mealy Sportsman wrote:

Anything over 16gb in a month is pretty much warez monkey territory.

Please stop saying things like this, it's silly.

Just because you (plural) have no legal need for a higher cap, doesn't mean everyone else can live with it.

Stark

Exactly. Have you seen the size of Linux distributions these days? Even the updates for the things can come to 300MB.

Ripwave

PiE wrote:

Please stop saying things like this, it's silly.

It's a lot less silly that the constant moaning about caps, when the vast majority of broadband users don't have any problem with caps. (2%, according to UTV, exceed the cap).

PiE wrote:

Just because you (plural) have no legal need for a higher cap, doesn't mean everyone else can live with it.

Just because you (plural) won't pay for a connection big enough for your needs, doesn't mean everyone else should have to listen to constant whinging about it.

AdMMM

I actually think we are lucky in comparison to some of our English friends.

Example, Wanadoo, Englands most popular BB ISP has a service £20 for 512/128 with only a 2GB cap!

Going by the first 6hours I had BB, I'd be gone over that by now!

Gonzo

yeah but for about £10 extra they can get 1mb with 30gig cap or even better move to a capless isp for relatively similar money. Here home users are stuck with the caps, theres no option for those who want to download more or get sommet faster than 512k. The uncapped business offerings here are adsl and quite often not available to residential users depending on line quality.

Hellraiser

I have 16 gb up and down from IOL and i dont even do that much downloading, so it doesnt really bother me that much.

Sarn

If the cap on a particular product is increased it will only be a matter of time before somebody is complaining again about the poor cap limit. People were complaining when IOL only offered the 8GB limit, when this was increased to 16GB, complaints appeared again about the 16GB offering.

Purchase the appropriate product based on your need, if you want more pay more (assuming the particular service is available in your area). As time progresses caps will be revised upwards as Joe Soap realises what can be done with a connection, but until then we'll have to survive with what we have or pay for what we want.

When IOL switched me to the 16GB limit I switched back down to 8GB, simply because I wouldnt use the higher cap and I didn't want to pay more, those were my needs. I personally would prefer higher data transfer rates than an increase in my cap.

PiE

Oh right. Well hang on everybody, shut up and don't bother requesting a bit more from your overpriced DSL. Take what you're given and you damn well better be happy about it because people like Ripwave are. Be safe in the knowledge that of course the big cuddly ISP's here only have your best interests at heart by giving you crappy download caps that would be (and are) laughed at in neighboring countries.

tomk

I haven't yet come close to my 16GB cap, and I don't expect. For all practical purposes, I can effectively download as much as I want of the stuff I want, so I never give it a second thought.

GreeBo

You just arent getting it.

The cap is not a problem for most people. I mean honestly, what are you downloading that you need more than 16GB every month??

If you you legitimately need more than this then pay for the upgrade.

oh, and posting facetious messages dont help your case at all.

Cryos

June 2004 799:43:15 378 MB 7500 MB
91%

July 2004 190:08:51 827 MB 6319 MB
77%


The cap is only starting to become an problem now as the rallycross season starts back up so we are doing alot of heavy matirial and graphical design work for customers

seamus

PiE wrote:

Oh right. Well hang on everybody, shut up and don't bother requesting a bit more from your overpriced DSL. Take what you're given and you damn well better be happy about it because people like Ripwave are. Be safe in the knowledge that of course the big cuddly ISP's here only have your best interests at heart by giving you crappy download caps that would be (and are) laughed at in neighboring countries.

Well, they're not totally overpriced anymore. Broadband in Ireland is in the affordable zone. As someone said earlier, for £20 in the UK, you get a 512 connection with a 2Gb cap. Here in Ireland for €40 (STG£25.80) you get the same connection with 4 times the cap. Or you could pay €8 (£5.30) more and get twice the cap again (Going by IOL's prices here). In Ireland, where everything is slightly overpriced, at least we're getting more out of products for paying a little more for them.

I can see in a few years many customers will be won and lost on the download limit, as higher speed connections become commonplace and the speed of a connection takes second place to cost and download limits.

Serbian

I have had IOL Broadband and I have downloaded less than the 16 Gigs a month I'm allowed in an 8 month period. I think the cap is sufficient for the majority of people who use broadband.

If you need to download more, you are not capped at 16 GB, 8 GB or whatever. You can keep downloading, you just have to pay for it.

I have to concur with whoever said earlier that the speed needs a good boost before caps need a revision. 1 Megabit DSL should be available at the price we are paying for 512k.

Serb

Moriarty

I'd be happy with a cap of about 10gig/month and paying for any excess if the charges were in any way realistic. Bandwidth retails at less than a euro a gig to ordinary people, telcos could get far better rates. If they based their prices on what it actually costs them and even added a 100% markup to bring it up to say €1/gig or €1.50/gig, I'd be happy to use as much as I wanted and pay for it.

ChipZilla

|.Murderer.| wrote:

I actually think we are lucky in comparison to some of our English friends.

Example, Wanadoo, Englands most popular BB ISP has a service £20 for 512/128 with only a 2GB cap!

Going by the first 6hours I had BB, I'd be gone over that by now!

Rubbish! How many ADSL ISPs are there in the UK? Just over 100. How many actually use caps? Four or five. And they are only used on newbie-user bargain basement packages, not on regular 512/256 packages. Look on http://adslguide.org.uk and check the facts.

PiE

seamus wrote:

Well, they're not totally overpriced anymore...

Yes, yes fine. We're getting there on the prices. But the difference in the UK is (as you know), if you do want/need a bigger download cap there are dozens of companies aching to give it to you. I saw an advert for NTL UK there the other day, they're giving away a free XBOX with every new connection. I'd give THEM a bloody XBOX if they'd offer me cable.

While I'd prefer the caps to be more like the UK model (where they "reserve the right" to disconnect you if you download a stupid amount), it's not gonna happen here in the forseeable future. In that respect I fully agree with what Moriarty posted about the bandwidth charges.

oh, and posting facetious messages dont help your case at all.

It's not "my" case at all; it affects everyone.

Moriarty

Congratulations fidel, you don't know what you're talking about. Have a gold star.

Mutant_Fruit

Instead of watching the phone bill, counting out the pennies, people moved to the "unlimited" usage packages for dialup, and started counting the hours they were online instead of the price.

Now instead of counting pennies or hours, they are now counting megabytes. I fail to see how this is much different to what we had before, we are still counting out our usage, being spareing with what we have, so we don't go over the fixed limit.

THe only true broadband will be when we can forget completely about limits, and being careful about how much we use the internet. Otherwise its just souped up 56k.

In otherwords, caps should be removed soon. It may not be possible now, but they need to go. We have just substituted one barrier for another one (albeit, a bigger barrier).

Moriarty

The argument can be made that if you want that sort of service a leased line is what you should be looking at MF.

Totally forgetting about the limitations of DSL provision for the moment, bandwidth still costs the ISPs money. They're already on a pretty tight margin with dsl services. Why should they be subsidising (because that's what it is) your net useage?

jesus_thats_gre

While caps do piss me off no end, I do appreciate the reasoning behind them being in place.. When people have something for nothing, they use it for the sake of it and generally take the piss. However, its the fear of going over a cap that worries me.

The charges that one incurs for every megabyte over the caps is terrible. I wish ISPs here would consider sellings bandwidth in bundles.. That is, you get your xDSL service and 10 gig download cap for say 40 euro. Then allow customer who want more bandwidth to pay 10 euro odd per extra 5 or 10 gigs.. And when you exceed your cap you are automatically billed for an extra bundle..

Obviously the idea needs refinement but it would be fair on everyone, even the ISP..

Mutant_Fruit

Moriarty wrote:

bandwidth still costs the ISPs money. Why should they be subsidising (because that's what it is) your net useage?

I see what your saying, which is why i said that removing the caps isn't possible now, but it should be done whenever it is feasible. substituting one cap for another is all well and good, but when you see people having to practically stop using the internet 2-3 weeks into the month because they went and download 7.8gb's in the first 2-3 weeks just isn't fair.

Caps's such as NTL's are ones i could certainly live with. 1gb a day is fine. Ok, i would probably have to cut back at times, but it is certainly very resonable.

An 8gb cap can be blown in less than 48 hours, if you so wish. 8gb translates to roughly 250mb a day. My Steam installation cost me over 2gb's of bandwidth. Thats over a weeks worth of allowance if i had an 8gb cap.

If ISP's even offered 10gb packages for 5-10 euro, they'd still make a profit on the bandwidth, thus giving the customer better value (in the customers eyes), and giving them more money!

Moriarty

The current cap system is pretty extortionate, but I believe that a well implemented system is the most equitable way to provide broadband to people cheeply.

Sweeden has much higher (>70% iirc) income tax levels. Ireland is one of the lowest direct taxation economys in Europe. We get what we pay for.

Moriarty

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

I see what your saying, which is why i said that removing the caps isn't possible now, but it should be done whenever it is feasible.

I don't see any need for caps to be removed at any point in the future, just modified so that they're fair.

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

substituting one cap for another is all well and good, but when you see people having to practically stop using the internet 2-3 weeks into the month because they went and download 7.8gb's in the first 2-3 weeks just isn't fair.

You could make that argument about anything in life. 'I get a weekly pay cheque of 300 euros, but I can spend that in minutes if I want to! This is clearly unfair, I'm not being paid enough!'. It's not an argument for the increase in the caps, it's a demonstration of the lack of control some (a lot) of people have over themselves.

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

An 8gb cap can be blown in less than 48 hours, if you so wish. 8gb translates to roughly 250mb a day. My Steam installation cost me over 2gb's of bandwidth. Thats over a weeks worth of allowance if i had an 8gb cap.

I'm tempted to say 'So what?'. The ISPs don't provide you with a dsl connection specifically to play games, or install valves latest mod, or anything else. They provide you a connection to do what you want with, but specify limits on the total useage you're allowed. It's not their problem if you can't do everything you want.

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

If ISP's even offered 10gb packages for 5-10 euro, they'd still make a profit on the bandwidth, thus giving the customer better value (in the customers eyes), and giving them more money!

That won't work until eircom do it. Any ISP that offers a noticeably bigger cap than the average will have all the heavy users jumping ship over to them, with a far smaller amount of average users to even out the load. That sort of service is unfeasable, as we saw with netsource last year.

fidel wrote:

if NTL can afford to have 1gb a day cap why cant the whole Eircom/Esat/Netsource/UTV cartel have the same,

Simple reason really: NTL own their own network from top to bottom. They can run their service any way they choose, modifying contention ratios, caps and speeds as and when they want. IOL, UTV, Netsource etc can only run the services and types of services that eircom say they can.

fidel wrote:

dont they all buy bandwith from the same supplier??

No, they don't.

CyberGhost

Can't live with a cap!

No cap!

Moriarty

CyberGhost wrote:

Can't live with a cap!

No cap!

Well I don't know about all of you, but I'm convinced now.

Down with caps.

Murray

Setting limits on BB usage is probably one of the reasons why Ireland is 2nd last in the OECD BB penetration - providers should offer different pricing options so consumers can get unlimited downloads and aren't worried they're going to be screwed at the end of the month, whereas more savvy users (i.e. those of you who voted in favour of caps) who know their usage patterns could be offered the discounted pricing plans with the cap. How do we expect broadband usage to grow in Ireland with these artificially-imposed limits? Thats like saying, you can get electricity from ESB, but once you've consumed XX watts in a month, we'll cut you off. Wake up eircom!!

Moriarty

Murray wrote:

Thats like saying, you can get electricity from ESB, but once you've consumed XX watts in a month, we'll cut you off. Wake up eircom!!

No it's not, it's like the ESB saying once you go over a certain amount (0 in their case) you pay for what you use. No more, no less.

Unfortunatly eircom have extortionate prices for exceeding their cap and the other ISPs more or less had to follow suit or get overwhelmed with heavy users.

Ripwave

fidel wrote:

dont we pay the higher taxes as well,

Where does this persistent meme come from?

Irish income taxes are among the lowest in the Euro zone.

boo4842

my 2 cents...

This whole 95% of customers never go outside the cap comment that always comes up is crap. I'd say 90% of internet users in ireland don't know what an ISP is or do anything other than send emails or surf like the same 5 websites. There is so much on the internet that 4GB a month doesn't cut it.

I've seen Moriarty's comments that everyone who goes over the cap must be doing something illegal, this is just wrong. I used to live in Canada and I use up a lot of bandwith downloading TV shows that I can't get over here. This is perfectly legal as long as its for personal use and not for profit.

I used to use NTL and found that 1GB a day was reasonable, although I would have to clock watch sometimes. Eircom etc will just gouge out what they think they can get away with. I was quoted e240 just to install eircom bb last year!

My friend in Canada has this product which costs less than e30 for 5mbs and no cap. Another friend in Japan has 5 times this speed for the same price.
http://www.shoprogers.com/Store/Cable/InternetContent/extreme.asp?shopperID=

Its like saying you can use your car enough to get to work and back, but anything more and you have to pay twice as much for petrol.

Moriarty

boo4842 wrote:

I've seen Moriarty's comments that everyone who goes over the cap must be doing something illegal, this is just wrong. I used to live in Canada and I use up a lot of bandwith downloading TV shows that I can't get over here. This is perfectly legal as long as its for personal use and not for profit.

Sorry, I've never - not once - said that. People that do either (a) don't know what they're talking about &/ (b) are morons.

CyberGhost

drane2 said that boo

If you're transferring more than 24 gigs a month and using eMule, it can be safely assumed that you're involved in some kind of piracy. So why should they provide the bandwidth for you to do this?

just watching trailers takes so much bandwidth!

My friend in Canada has this product which costs less than e30 for 5mbs and no cap. Another friend in Japan has 5 times this speed for the same price.
http://www.shoprogers.com/Store/Cab....asp?shopperID=

I think I'm going to be sick now!

GreeBo

Murray wrote:

Setting limits on BB usage is probably one of the reasons why Ireland is 2nd last in the OECD BB penetration - <SNIP>
How do we expect broadband usage to grow in Ireland with these artificially-imposed limits?

Errr so you are saying that all these heavy users who will exceed the caps are not taking up BB at all because of the caps?

Hmmmm. Errrrr. No.

CyberGhost

redoxan, I dunno what will Murray say but I will defenatelly say yes!

while the hell should I pay so much money, If I can't do what I want?

GreeBo

That makes no sense (to me).
If you DL so much that you cant deal with a CAP you are very unlikely to go to dialup.

And if you are.....
nose/face

CyberGhost

why not? if I don't do what I want to do, then I just check emails, browse couple of webpages - importants only, and that's it! I won't watch trailers and play games, I will turn of images and flash, it usually comes out cheaper

because I know if I get BB with a cap, I won't be able to stop myself! BB to me is like blood for a shark - watched finding Nemo?

so I'm always on a look out for an unlimited cap isps!

why should Ireland close it's eyes and accept caps and monopoly, when other countries don't?

I'm pretty sure Ireland gets enough bandwidth!

It's just that greedy a**holes like eircom

GreeBo

"if I don't do what I want to do"

Says it all for me.

Gonzo

everyone is getting edgy over this cap issue coz as it stands at the moment there is no happy alternative for the home user, basically theres fek all difference between the home starter packages and co called homeplus/advanced package. The caps on both are relatively small particularly eircoms and even worse theres only 512bps and thats it. The home starter packages are fine as they are for light users but the top home package are only marginally better, this has to change and change soon hopefully. Hopefully fingers crossed we'll see a big improvement to the top home package this autumn with an increased cap from 8mb to 30gig and a bandwidth improvement to 1mb, I think the time has also come for eircom/iol to offer the home user a 3rd home package offering of an uncapped service at a higher price again so at least theres an option for those who want to use broadband the way it was intended but ive a feeling that this uncapped offering could be a year or two away. There should also be a 4th option of 2mb for the home user for those who could avail of it. We should see changes to the current offerings this autumn but ive a feeling im gonna be dissapointed once again with still just 2 packages @ 512k each available for the humble home user and only slight cap increases but we'll wait and see what happens