Sky BB ditching caps, users telling them to FUP off? :)

vibe666

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/17/sky_fair_use/

Sky sent this statement:
We have removed the Fair Usage Policy (FUP) from our Sky Broadband Max product. Customers have told us that they want "unlimited" broadband to be exactly that, so we’ve acted on their feedback. We believe that we are now the only major broadband provider to offer truly "unlimited" broadband. What this means is that, if you’re a Sky Broadband Max customer, means you're free to download as much as you want, whenever you want.

we can but hope that Irish ISP's see sense and start to follow suit.

and pigs might fly. :mad:

smellslikeshoes

I imagine that there is some sort of restrictions on it, Like no p2p etc.

mumhaabu

Some people will download terrabytes via torrents and when Joe Soap goes to download a 15MB email it will take him two hours because of it despite maybe having a 25mb connection. Bad move IMO, Torrent overnight and throttle people people back after say 250GB. This will bite Sky in the ass big time I think, you'd want Fibre everywhere to do this succesfully.

AlmightyCushion

I wonder do they actually mean it. If you started downloading at max speed literally 24/7 I'm sure they'd eventually throttle you.

cgarvey

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

I wonder do they actually mean it. If you started downloading at max speed literally 24/7 I'm sure they'd eventually throttle you.

Well T&Cs still retain the right to throttle you. They said they wouldn't restrict your speed, but if there's a whole bunch of heavy users on a given exchange they'll probably just bunch those together more efficiently.

Like Smart, it's not a problem for now, but if they gain traction, then that product offering becomes not so viable.

barnicles

Are tehy ever bringing it to ireland?

MunsterCycling

I am interested in subscribing to your newsletter cgarvey, how is Smarts business model not viable?

MC

Cabaal

Mark my words, once Sky receive the massive influx of heavy users and there business model falls apart they'll be quick to put in a FUP again, they don't have unlimited bandwidth and money to keep feeding those heavy users

vibe666

the article mentionsvirgin and possibly other ISP's following suit too, so it might well end up being everyone doing it before long (hopefully).

tbh once we all have a backup copy of t'internet on our PC's from downloading tb's of data it'll settle back down to a reasonable level.

jack222

CAPS are necessary to stop some idiot hogging all the bandwidth

vibe666

it's not hogging all the bandwidth, it's using what's been supplied to you to it's full potential.

and an idiot is someone who has 20mbps broadband and only uses it to check his email and read news headlines.

if an ISP can't provide the service it's offering then it shouldn't offer it in the first place.

if the proper infrastructure is in place to support the products being offered then there is no need for any CAP or FUP at all.

ask someone in Japan what a broadband CAP or FUP is and they won't be able to tell you because they don't have them.

In the long term this will be a very good thing. If people start to stress their ISP's infrastructure as a result of this then they will be forced to improve it to compensate. eventually everything keeps getting faster and online content and what you can do with it improves.

when DSL was first rolled out 512kbps was fast and everything was great, but as content got richer that was no longer fast enough, so we got a boost to 3mbps and things were fine for a while but then that started to feel slow so again things are moving up a notch and the content will do the same etc. etc.

it's the cycle of supply and demand same as everything else.

nohopengn

Good news from Sky (I must admit I am reluctant to give them any credit whatsoever).

Unlimited usage can be managed, once they have the backend systems to manage traffic priority, everything should work ok. Obviously torrents will have the 'lowestof the low' priority but for most people thats not an issue.

I just hope this isn't a 'falsh in the pan' move to get new users............ hmmm

vibe666

i think (at least I hope) the UK is in a position now where other ISP's may well follow suit if people start voting with their feet.

Cabaal

traffic management via priority for example http takes priority over bittorrent and bittorrent speeds are slower is a form of FUP.

There is no such things as a truely unlimited ISP, the business model is not sustainable.
Its fine to a point but you can't have everyone downloading 1TB a month or everything will go to ****.

ISP's make money on the fact that the vast majority of people pay say £10 for 8MB Broadband and then only use it for web browsing and clock up 10GB, thats how it can be so cheap.

If everyone uses 1TB then expect to pay ALOT more for your Broadband based on the current business models used in the likes of Ireland and the UK.

You'll note that many ISP's years ago including Orange, BT, NTL and AOL had no caps or FUP's but thats changed, I wouldn't expect it to change back in a hurry.

As I've said before it sucks but thats the reality, an ISP is in it to make money at the end of the day.

Blindpew

It's not's a very good business model to have a big splash on a web page like BT do offering 24mb broadband , unlimited at that, available now. But when you check the page more carefully you find that it's only available in parts of Dublin and it's crap, but country people can have 7mb, or 3mb if really a culchie. All the packages are the same price, 30gb cap on the culchie package, unlimited if a Dub, once you only use it to check e-mail. That's BTs business model and it's really stupid. Only UPC have really improved their infrastructure, the rest are still trying to make money from old phonelines.

Nehaxak

It's a good move and I don't care much at all about excuses given by other ISPs, their staff or supporters of same saying otherwise or using age old excuses to justify caps.
Not the customers fault their ISP is badly managed, badly run and have it's wholesale bandwidth badly negotiated or even worse, lazy about actually doing some work and going elsewhere for it and to get more and of course cheaper service.

If we didn't live on an island ruled by unchecked corruption, both in business and politics, we might actually have a fair chance of getting a similar deal here with our own ISPs.

Where's that flying pig ? ...

flamegrill

Guys do you realise that 1TB of data is just a little more than 3Mbit/s sustained for 30 days. It's not _huge_, if an ISP offers 24Mbit/s and can't let average joe sustain at the minimum of 3Mbit/s then they shouldn't be offering 24Mbit/s.

vibe666

indeedy.

jor el

Blindpew wrote: »

But when you check the page more carefully you find that it's only available in parts of Dublin and it's crap, but country people can have 7mb, or 3mb if really a culchie. All the packages are the same price, 30gb cap on the culchie package, unlimited if a Dub, once you only use it to check e-mail.

They also seem to be throttling users, inconsistently, for going over the cap, and also on the unlimited one.

flamegrill wrote: »

Guys do you realise that 1TB of data is just a little more than 3Mbit/s sustained for 30 days. It's not _huge_, if an ISP offers 24Mbit/s and can't let average joe sustain at the minimum of 3Mbit/s then they shouldn't be offering 24Mbit/s.

I average about 250G on my 7M connection, and I'd consider myself quite a heavy user. I'm sure there are others doing more.

The caps that most Irish ISPs have in place are also way too low, and have not changed in line with the speed increases. More and more content is now available, even legally, with HD DVD downloads now possible. These would blitz a 30G cap in no time, and then you end up back on 100kbps.

As long as the majority of Irish ISPs are just reselling eircom, I can't see anything changing here.

CaraFawn

vibe666 wrote: »

it's not hogging all the bandwidth, it's using what's been supplied to you to it's full potential.

and an idiot is someone who has 20mbps broadband and only uses it to check his email and read news headlines.

+10000000000 lol

vibe666

it's true tho.

I've 4 PC's in the house, 3 games consoles and a mobile phone with wifi. 30gb in a month is nothing. i've gone out of my way this month to limit my downloads and even after being throttled for the first week of the month I'm already over 40gb downloaded and that's going out of my way to be conservative about what I do.

anyone who even thinks about using the word 'excessive' when talking about internet usage should have their broadband taken off them and be forced to use dialup.

I'm on a roll now I've got a little fanclub.

cgarvey

MunsterCycling wrote: »

I am interested in subscribing to your newsletter cgarvey, how is Smarts business model not viable?

I never said it wasn't. What I meant was that a truly unlimited 7-20Mb product isn't scalable or viable. I stand by that.

However it's the terms "unlimited" and "contention-free" I dispute (not that they can provide 20Mb connectivity). I don't think Sky or Smart (or any residential ISP) can afford to offer truly unlimited or truly contention-less connectivity for the masses. No other ISP has managed it anyway.

I think that's a very different claim to suggesting that Smart isn't viable as a business. Mind you the jury is still out on that too, but that's not the point I was making.