[UPC] Cap and Fair Usage Policy

dave-higgz

Just got a letter in the door today informing me that I downloaded 358.05GB last month on my UPC 10mb Broadband.

They stated that even though my broadband cap is unlimited that there is a residential cap of 250GB per month.

There's no way I downloaded that much data. I have a windows home server which is constantly getting TV shows and movies but for me to have clocked up that much I would have had to download 1gb every 2 hours for an entire month!!!


Along with being threatened with disconnection, the usual lark, they also said that I might be automatically upgraded to their highest package, UPC broadband extreme (€79.99). I checked their website and along with there being no mention of a 250Gb cap there most certainly isn't a residential package that's 79.99. Will this be the anticipated 50mb service??

paulm17781

dave-higgz wrote: »

There's no way I downloaded that much data. I have a windows home server which is constantly getting TV shows and movies but for me to have clocked up that much I would have had to download 1gb every 2 hours for an entire month!!!

I'm on the 20 Mbps. I have downloaded 6Gb in under 3 hours. I wasn't paying attention to the time. If you're constantly getting TV shows and movies, then you probably did download that much.

Burning Eclipse

dave-higgz wrote: »

Just got a letter in the door today informing me that I downloaded 358.05GB last month on my UPC 10mb Broadband.

They stated that even though my broadband cap is unlimited that there is a residential cap of 250GB per month.

There's no way I downloaded that much data. I have a windows home server which is constantly getting TV shows and movies but for me to have clocked up that much I would have had to download 1gb every 2 hours for an entire month!!!


Along with being threatened with disconnection, the usual lark, they also said that I might be automatically upgraded to their highest package, UPC broadband extreme (€79.99). I checked their website and along with there being no mention of a 250Gb cap there most certainly isn't a residential package that's 79.99. Will this be the anticipated 50mb service??

I'm on the 10Mb connection too. I know they say there's no cap, but they do state that there's a fair use policy!

jor el

At least now you know the limit is 250GB, which is quite good, and they've not actually penalised you in any way, yet. Better than BT's 80GB anyway.

I'd take the warning, and stick to under 250GB. Remember too, that the 350GB they quote probably includes upload aswell as download.

dave-higgz

ok sorry let me explain, yes the server is running all the time backing up etc. but I've checked the speed regularly and it's always usually sitting at about 10% of the 10mb. And I just did a count of my recent downloads and they're at 200Gb MAX! I'm fairly sure UPC have calculated this wrong. Besides the videos, xbox and other usage is probably at 30Gb tops. That's over 300Gb in videos which, there is no way I've done, because the server only has a 500Gb HDD and I keep all the movies I get.

But anyway I will be cutting down on my downloads. However the principal of unlimited downloads which I signed up for has been breeched

jor el

Withe regard to "unlimited" usage, there is always a fair use policy. They rarely put a number on the fair use though, as they don't want to make it a target.

J-blk

I have a Windows Home Server too and I've installed this on it to try and keep track of things:

http://www.bandwidthmonitorpro.com/

It still won't give you an accurate figure for your total, because I imagine you are streaming video to your internal network and the upload will be very high after a couple of weeks (there's no way to monitor just the external traffic) - but it should at least give you an idea of the overall download amount (it can be set to reset back to 0MB every 1st of the month...).

Cabaal

I'd say 250GB is not a cap merely a FUP which all there packages have, there is no such thing as a unlimited ISP as outlined here http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=58094826&postcount=11

your fooling yourself if you believe there is

MrVestek

Cabaal wrote: »

I'd say 250GB is not a cap merely a FUP which all there packages have, there is no such thing as a unlimited ISP as outlined here http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=58094826&postcount=11

your fooling yourself if you believe there is

I beg to differ. The likes of IBB still offer a service on their Breeze network without a FUP. This may change however since their acquisition by the Imagine group. We all know what they're like considering the changes they brought about pretty swiftly on the Ripwave network, although in fairness to them I think that was for the greater good.

Yeah breeze is expensive but alot of people seem to overlook the fact that with DSL you need phone line, and with that over €20 a month in line rental fees alone so when you think about it realistically it all balances out.

Cabaal

Achilles wrote: »

I beg to differ. The likes of IBB still offer a service on their Breeze network without a FUP.

My point being if enough heavy users start using this service you'd very quickly see them start terminating users for network abuse or introducing a FUP or cap.

As an ISP you can only afford to have a certain % of heavy users before it starts affecting the bottom line

jimmycrackcorm

dave-higgz wrote: »

ok sorry let me explain, yes the server is running all the time backing up etc. but I've checked the speed regularly and it's always usually sitting at about 10% of the 10mb. And I just did a count of my recent downloads and they're at 200Gb MAX! I'm fairly sure UPC have calculated this wrong. Besides the videos, xbox and other usage is probably at 30Gb tops. That's over 300Gb in videos which, there is no way I've done, because the server only has a 500Gb HDD and I keep all the movies I get.

Somebody is using torrents methinks. The upload could match the download so your 400GB turns into 400Gb before you know it.

Cabaal

I've edited the thread title in-line with the charter so its clearer,

BlackJewel

Thanks Caabal for directing me here!
Yup i recieved such a letter too.
I would happily send them via email "I recived a threatening letter from you guys! OMG!"
Anyway my situation is different. I am sharing a 4 room house and each room is occupied and has a pc=laptop which has wireless.

I guess i wont be disconnected, they don't want to lose a client which maybe will pay them the double price...:o

Cabaal

BlackJewel wrote: »

Thanks Caabal for directing me here!
Yup i recieved such a letter too.
I would happily send them via email "I recived a threatening letter from you guys! OMG!"
Anyway my situation is different. I am sharing a 4 room house and each room is occupied and has a pc=laptop which has wireless.

I guess i wont be disconnected, they don't want to lose a client which maybe will pay them the double price...:o

UPC/NTL have sent out warning letters in the past...I think back in 2005 or so. (I got one myself for doing 350GB)

The letter did not state a limit or cap but merely stated the usage for a set period, after two warning letters were sent a third was sent advising the service would be terminated....very few people got these but I know of one or two people.

The same laytout may not apply this time, I guess your options are upgrade to highest package or cut back usage.

Its a pain but sure 250GB is still pretty reasonable imho

BlackJewel

250GB might be resonable, but with lot of ppl in the house, each wanting to do something else on their pc, i can;t ban anyone to dont use the net.. i guess the landlord wont have other option than just to update to UPC-B extreme..

Cabaal

BlackJewel wrote: »

250GB might be resonable, but with lot of ppl in the house, each wanting to do something else on their pc, i can;t ban anyone to dont use the net.. i guess the landlord wont have other option than just to update to UPC-B extreme..

Either that or ban P2P and file sharing sites as I'd imagine these are the likely causes of such high traffic

Blindpew

Cabaal wrote: »

Either that or ban P2P and file sharing sites as I'd imagine these are the likely causes of such high traffic

If you ban file sharing sites and torrent downloads what purpose would having 20mb download speed serve? Even the BBC iplayer will work perfectly with less than half that speed. What is the point of advertising "No Cap" as a selling point when they can terminate you after after 250gbs. I know I have said all this before in other threads but the problem resurfaces with every isp. They all use false advertising to get you to sign up to their service but then threaten to cut you off once you hit their hidden cap, a combined upload / download 250 gbs in UPCs case. That might mean that you had downloaded 150 gb and uploaded 100gb. The fair usage policy gives no indication of this ammount. They should not be allowed to advertise a No Cap service when there is in fact a 250gb upload and download combined cap.
In fairness to other isps most don't advertise a no cap product. Who ever controls false advertising needs to take UPC in hand and sort them out.

vibe666

dave-higgz wrote: »

Just got a letter in the door today informing me that I downloaded 358.05GB last month on my UPC 10mb Broadband.

dude, I beat you by just over 10gb.

369.94gb combined.

as the g/f keeps telling me with the credit card, it's a limit not a target.

seriously tho, they take what you download, add on what you upload to get that figure so it's not just what you download that counts so heavy duty torrenting of linux iso's (etc.;)) is going to be a heavy hitter.

interestingly enough, in an effort to push up my seeding ratio i actually uploaded considerably more than I downloaded in January but I'll have to put a stop to that now. so much for sharing.

ah well, as they say, 250gb is pretty generous and more than you'd get off anyone else. i just wish they'd come out and say it beforehand.

it's like anything else though, you expand to meet your limits. you could probably live on 10k a year if you really wanted to, but if you earned 100k in a year you'll probably still find a way to spend it.

incidentally, does anyone know if this *extreme* package is actually faster or just a higher limit (or none)?

would be cool if it was double everything. 40mbps down and 3mbps up with a 500gb FUP would be handy, but I honestly don't think even I could maintain the usage to make that practical.

Donald-Duck

BlackJewel wrote: »

250GB might be resonable, but with lot of ppl in the house, each wanting to do something else on their pc, i can;t ban anyone to dont use the net.. i guess the landlord wont have other option than just to update to UPC-B extreme..

Each wanting to do what that would make you reach that cap? Unless you're constantly torrenting blu-ray movies you won't reach it.

And if you have loads of people in the house doing that, your router will be ****ting itself anyway

Cabaal

Blindpew wrote: »

In fairness to other isps most don't advertise a no cap product. Who ever controls false advertising needs to take UPC in hand and sort them out.

Smart do but I'd imagine they have a FUP somewhere in their T&C's, no residential ISP can truly offer an uncapped product it just is not cost affective

vibe666

Donald-Duck wrote: »

Each wanting to do what that would make you reach that cap? Unless you're constantly torrenting blu-ray movies you won't reach it.

And if you have loads of people in the house doing that, your router will be ****ting itself anyway

i'm not torrenting blu-ray movies (or any other HD content) and i managed to exceed their FUP by over 100gb in January. there was a whole lot of torrenting, but my router is fine. you just need a decent router.

i'm actually torrenting right now whilst surfing the net and VPN'd into work and I can't even tell.

/smug (*sorry)

* but not really.

Cabaal

vibe666 wrote: »

i'm not torrenting blu-ray movies (or any other HD content) and i managed to exceed their FUP by over 100gb in January. there was a whole lot of torrenting, but my router is fine. you just need a decent router.

i'm actually torrenting right now whilst surfing the net and VPN'd into work and I can't even tell.

/smug (*sorry)

* but not really.

Ok put it this way you'd be very hard pressed to download in excess of 250GB of legal content from bittorrent or any other source,

vibe666

maybe, but where's the fun in that?

in all seriousness though, things move on.

speeds get faster, more content becomes available and what used to be considered a 'fair' limit on usage becomes more and more common and the boundaries are pushed further back in a continuing expansion and the circle of online life continues.

okay, so not 100% serious.

Cabaal

vibe666 wrote: »

speeds get faster, more content becomes available and what used to be considered a 'fair' limit on usage becomes more and more common and the boundaries are pushed further back in a continuing expansion and the circle of online life continues.

Agreed, caps do increase and you can see that across the board in Ireland where the basic caps on packages have gotten larger and some providers even have no caps or have a FUP with a generous guideline amount.

The problem for Ireland is there is nothing like BBC iPlayer yet which requires alot of bandwidth, is legal and will be used alot by the average joe. Ok sure there is 4onDemand but very few people use this.

Blindpew

Cabaal wrote: »

The problem for Ireland is there is nothing like BBC iPlayer yet which requires alot of bandwidth.

I have often used the BBC iplayer using a program to hide my ip address, very good quality it is too, RTE need to get something similar.

iano128

Looks like i win, apparently according to upc i did a total of 387.41gb in february. Shocked myself when i saw it not only cause i thought it was unlimited but because i thought it maybe was about 100gb max. I guess all those hd vidcast get you in the end but what can i say i love the hi-def video. I still find the whole hidden cap thing really annoying since when i ordered it i did ask was there some kind of cap and was told absolutely no, so of coure i jumped on the 20mb bandwagen. Then again before this i had a whole 1mb down with a 10gig mothly cap with digiweb so its still a massive jump. Just don't like being lied too.

vibe666 wrote: »

dude, I beat you by just over 10gb.

369.94gb combined.

as the g/f keeps telling me with the credit card, it's a limit not a target.

seriously tho, they take what you download, add on what you upload to get that figure so it's not just what you download that counts so heavy duty torrenting of linux iso's (etc.;)) is going to be a heavy hitter.

interestingly enough, in an effort to push up my seeding ratio i actually uploaded considerably more than I downloaded in January but I'll have to put a stop to that now. so much for sharing.

ah well, as they say, 250gb is pretty generous and more than you'd get off anyone else. i just wish they'd come out and say it beforehand.

it's like anything else though, you expand to meet your limits. you could probably live on 10k a year if you really wanted to, but if you earned 100k in a year you'll probably still find a way to spend it.

incidentally, does anyone know if this *extreme* package is actually faster or just a higher limit (or none)?

would be cool if it was double everything. 40mbps down and 3mbps up with a 500gb FUP would be handy, but I honestly don't think even I could maintain the usage to make that practical.

Oat23

Got a letter this morning saying that someone in my area complained of slow speeds and i was the problem, funny thing is. My street is one of the only one's in Sligo that can get UPC Broadband currently. And nobody else in my street has UPC BB:rolleyes:

Downloaded 269.94GB's.

vibe666

Oatesy23 wrote: »

Got a letter this morning saying that someone in my area complained of slow speeds and i was the problem, funny thing is. My street is one of the only one's in Sligo that can get UPC Broadband currently. And nobody else in my street has UPC BB:rolleyes:

Downloaded 269.94GB's.

yeah, it's a default template they use, usual story.

no letter this month (yet) but by my own calculations I came in at the following for feb:

down: 149.06 GB
up: 104.98 GB
total: 254.04 GB

slightly over, but who knows if they send out the mails as soon as you're 1mb over or 5-10gb.

donal.hunt

You may not be aware but NTL's modems do have SNMP daemons running so it's possible to expose the variables that indicate speed and throughput...

If you're already running a machine 24/7 then it makes sense to capture the SNMP data and have pretty graphs / data to determine what your upload / download for a month is.

You can also kindly remind UPC that they still haven't provided a means for customers to monitor their usage. However, I have to side with UPC in this case - using more than 250gb per month really is pulling the piss and drives up their costs substantially while degrading the service for others (especially when the data being uploaded / downloaded is of questionable content)...

vibe666

donal.hunt wrote: »

You may not be aware but NTL's modems do have SNMP daemons running so it's possible to expose the variables that indicate speed and throughput...

If you're already running a machine 24/7 then it makes sense to capture the SNMP data and have pretty graphs / data to determine what your upload / download for a month is.

You can also kindly remind UPC that they still haven't provided a means for customers to monitor their usage. However, I have to side with UPC in this case - using more than 250gb per month really is pulling the piss and drives up their costs substantially while degrading the service for others (especially when the data being uploaded / downloaded is of questionable content)...

i already have all that from my router, historical data and more graphs etc. than i can shake a stick at.

the content is largely irrelevant, i'm paying for a service advertised as unlimited.

if they are going to put limits on it then they need to be clearly defined, stated publicly up front and they need to provide a method of tracking that usage to their customers. if i can manage it on a 40€ consumer grade router then surely they should be able to do the same for everyone. every other ISP in the country can at least do that, so why not ntl?

right now my connection is sitting idle and this is all i can get out of it on speed tests.





there's a drastic lack of bandwidth available and if they can't provide 20mbps to their customers then they shouldn't be selling it.

paulm17781

donal.hunt wrote: »

If you're already running a machine 24/7 then it makes sense to capture the SNMP data and have pretty graphs / data to determine what your upload / download for a month is.

Thanks for that, I'm going to set this up for myself.

Don Diego

vibe666 wrote: »

there's a drastic lack of bandwidth available and if they can't provide 20mbps to their customers then they shouldn't be selling it.

The devil is in the details. ISP's usually advertise as "speeds up to 20meg" or whatever so technically they can weasel out of providing what they are supposed to be selling you.

vibe666

well it was 18mbps at peak time a few weeks agowhich is fine, but 2mbps is pretty poor by any standard.

good call on the snmp data though, would have come in handy if i wasn't already using the tomato firmware on my wrt54gs to capture it all. highly recommended btw if anyone is on ntl and looking for a good router/firmware combo. a lot of people go for dd-wrt, but i find tomato to be a lot leaner and more stable.

Jardel

I just received my bill for March. They upgraded me from UPC Broadband Express to UPC Broadband Extreme (€80.00) without any notice. I didn‘t receive any warning about going over usage limit from UPC. However Customer support is now claiming that they sent me a letter. What I've got recently was an offer to upgrade to UPC Broadband Ultra.

I know that I was downloading quite a lot in January, so it must something over hidden 250GB cap. Normally my traffic isn‘t high – I‘d say 20 to 100GB a month.

My question is to those who were forced to upgrade to that rip off Extreme Broadband (which officially doesn‘t even exists). What option do we have as users and what did you personally do? I have no intentions to pay 80 euro a month from now on for broadband just because my traffic for a month was higher than usual. I was happy with UPC Broadband Express and I want to have it back!

So everyone who has experience dealing with UPC please advice.

vibe666

they wouldn't normally just move you over with no notification or prior history of going over the FUP.

i was over mine by over 100gb in January and they sent me a letter to warn me (posted earlier in this thread) and by about 5gb in Feb and didn't hear anything from them at all.

i think you need to find out what your useage is off them fr the last 3 months and find out exactly what happened and why.

is it possible you have an unsecured(or poorly secured) wifi router on your broadband connection that someone else is using to steal all your bandwidth?

also remember that it's not just what you download that counts, it's what you download plus what you upload.

for example, these are my stats for the last 3 months (from my ruter, NTL don't have an option to check your stats online which is a real bummer for trying to manage usage).

month d-loaded uploaded total
January 137.69GB 173.68GB 311.37GB
February 149.06GB 104.98GB 254.04GB
March 84.71GB 50.72GB 135.43GB

(i missed a week of January in my router stats, so it's not showing the full total of 360gb+)

the only number NTL cares about is the total of the downloaded & uploaded data combined. thats where the 250gb FUP comes in.

if they justmeasured downloads then great, i'd be high and dry every month, but because they count uploaded data too, with a 1.5mbps upload it's not too hard to wander over the FUP even though I'm not downloading much more than I was on my 7.6mbps BT DSL before I moved over.

it's also worth noting that I'm getting nowhere near my full 20mbps, and for the last few weeks haven't even managed to hit 10mbps down on speedtests, although my upload is around 1mbps still.

a lot of the time i'm getting between 2mbps and 6mbps, so quite how 250gb in both directions is supposed to be adequite for a 20mbps connection I don't know.

jtothesums

Hi guys. I've been reading your posts with great interest. I'm currently with Digiweb (wireless not DSL) and for €46 per month I'm getting 8mb with a 40GB monthly allowance. Service is very good and overall I'm happy except that the download cap is too low are there are 6individual users and it costs too much to upgrade to a higher package. UPC had a door to door saleman going around in Carlow recently and he tells me that they offer 10mb download speeds with unlimited (fair usage policy) traffic. It only costs €35 a month if I recall correctly so it would be a much better deal for me. I'm just curious to know what UPC service is like? It might be good in Dublin, Waterford or wherever but has anyone had any experience of UPC Bband in Carlow? I'm somewhat reluctant to change from Digiweb as they have been very reliable, customer service is good & they also have a freephone number . I previously had DSL broadband both with Perlico and Cinergi (later taken over by imagine) and they were a disaster! I had to get my solicitor to resolve a dispute with Cinergi.:mad:
Any comments on UPC service and reliability would be greatly appreciated. I need to make a decision soon as we have gone over our monthly limit by 40GB and our download speeds have now been reduced to 152kbps until be come back within out limit

vibe666

well, I was in a similar position to yourself.

Chorus have been doing TV in my area for yonks so the cable was already there, but recently (towards the end of last year) UPC started rolling out their 20mbps cable broadband around Navan so I took them up on it.

it's been up and down, but what it seems to be is that it's a new service, so they put x amount of bandwidth/hardware whatever in the back end to cope with x amount of new customers.

then more and more epople join up and that back end starts to struggle with the load and speeds drop, but eventually they send someone out to add more on the back end and it goes back to normal again.

here's the complete history of my speedtests since I got it in November last year.



as you can see, it's hardly a solid 20mbps all the time and quite often has been particuarly bad, but it always works and i very rarely have any real problems with real world speed, be it downloads or browsing.

in case you're wondering how i got that info BTW, speedtest.net keeps track of your IP address and even though it's not techinically a static IP address, its unlikely to change very often (if ever) if you don't turn off your modem.

i took that historical data and saved it into excel and just created a table from there.

yes, I know i'm a geek.

hightower1

Don Diego wrote: »

The devil is in the details. ISP's usually advertise as "speeds up to 20meg" or whatever so technically they can weasel out of providing what they are supposed to be selling you.

I think the whole "up to" line is just to cover standard stuff like network loss but in reality anything more than a meg lost is major and should be looked at. The issue really being that there is a lot of these sales tag lines that arent illegal but definitly not good business ethics, things like advertsiing as unlimited downloads but the having the FUP not set a limit is unfair.
There definitly needs to be more clear cut rules when people shop around that just arent there or are very hard find.
In an ideal world the government would have regulations there to ensure that any broadband product sold should have clear and accessible hard line figures on usgae, promised speeds etc.

vibe666

the 'up to' thing is there because they know that they can't guarantee certain speeds to every single person in the country who should be able to get it without picking their way through every mm of cable between their hub and your house to find the bottleneck, which would cost millions that they don't have.

it's an easy get out clause for all ISP's.

if you had a contract that said exactly 20mbps broadband service and they couldn't give exactly that to you, you'd keep at them to fix it until they could.

of course they also use it to hide contention at busy times as well, so it's win win for them.

thecornerboy

I'm thinking of getting 20Mbit UPC broadband for a new house, there'll be a few people using it. Does anybody know where they draw the line at for the 20Mbit service? Or is it genuinely unlimited? Do they throttle users showing excessive usage?

I'll try to stop people hammering the bandwidth 24/7 but there's only so much I can do and if people are paying for it I can't restrict their internet access.

The other option is Smart.

Fresh Pots

Could anyone tell me what the download cap is on UPC Broadband light package? They don't sell it anymore so its not on the site.

vibe666

if you're on a package they no longer sell, you might well be paying over the odds for it as UPC have a habit of not updating users when they update their packages.

sorry, don't know what the cap would be, i've only had it since nov. and got the 20mbps package.

Fresh Pots

vibe666 wrote: »

if you're on a package they no longer sell, you might well be paying over the odds for it as UPC have a habit of not updating users when they update their packages.

sorry, don't know what the cap would be, i've only had it since nov. and got the 20mbps package.

Paying €27.50 a month for it at the moment. When i signed up a few years back i got a few free points installed around the house as part of the deal (Broadband Starter i think they called it) So if i upgrade i'll lose them, I might give them a call and see what they could do for me!

hightower1

squared wrote: »

Paying €27.50 a month for it at the moment. When i signed up a few years back i got a few free points installed around the house as part of the deal (Broadband Starter i think they called it) So if i upgrade i'll lose them, I might give them a call and see what they could do for me!

Ok thats very confusing? You have a few points around the house? There is only one modem though. Are you saying you bring the modem around the house to connect the modem to different catv points for connection? Are they cable tv active? If so bb upgrades wont effect the physical points as catv points can only be deactivated by cutting their feed from the main exterior point. @ 27.50 a month you may be on the light pack. It has a 6mb speed with a 20gb cap per month. They have finished the pack now so cant be found on the site...but can still be upgraded. Call them up and find out the options adn seeing as your on a discontinued pack the can do it live on th call for you. I belive you can go to the 10 mb express pack for 32eur per month or the value pack for 22 per month and a 3mb line speed.

Fresh Pots

Sorry I didn't make it clear enough, they are extra tv points. I have 4 extra points which I'm getting for free since i signed up. Think i will give them a ring when i get a chance and get the express pack.

vibe666

thecornerboy wrote: »

I'm thinking of getting 20Mbit UPC broadband for a new house, there'll be a few people using it. Does anybody know where they draw the line at for the 20Mbit service? Or is it genuinely unlimited? Do they throttle users showing excessive usage?

I'll try to stop people hammering the bandwidth 24/7 but there's only so much I can do and if people are paying for it I can't restrict their internet access.

The other option is Smart.

sorry cornerboy, i missed your question before.

the 20mbps service has a FUP of 250gb per month which includes downloads+uploads, so if you're torrenting you'll see that disappear fairly sharpish with a 1.5mbps upload speed, especially if you have multiple people in the house using the connection.

if you repeatedly go over that, you'll get a couple of warnings, then they will move you over to their (unpublicised) 'extreme' package without any further warnings that will (afaik) give you truly unlimited bandwidth for €80 per month.

PixelTrawler

Don't forget overheads...

UPC probably count upload + downloads + the actual overheads to deliver the content

So even if you measure you're traffic (up and down) at your end, this is likely not the same picture of the traffic UPC have... - and its almost impossible to do with multiple devices, consoles, ipods etc etc online in a house

What UPC really have to do, and this has been said for years, is provide a simple customer site to measure usage - they obviously have the data, just make it available.

It may be a case to avoid breaching a FUP of 250G you'll want to to be keeping under 150 or so but its hard to guess

kaimera

tbh, 80 euro pm isn't bad for unlimited traffic.

smart's 20Mb/1Mb is eighty-something per-month as well for well over a few hundred megs a month

krpc

I'm not sure if this will help, but alas, here's some information.

I was involved, in 2006, in a situation with a certain prominent mobile phone provider where a close friend had purchased a data card (mobile broadband) and used it as they pleased. The advertisement for it was listed as 'unlimited', so being quite naive back then (thinking unlimited actually meant unlimited), they used it based on that fact.

A little while later, without warning, the provider sent out a bill to cover 'excessive usage' of the service - amounting to almost $75,000. In attempting to find out what excessive usage on an unlimited package was, the provider just stone-walled the issue. They would not confirm that a cap existed on the package and therefore there was no way for a customer to know that they were going over a non-existent cap.

The matter was taken to ComReg who ruled against the mobile phone provider on the basis that they cannot have a hidden cap and as such cannot charge customers for excessive usage when they do not advertise the limitation somewhere in their T&C's.

In the case of UPC, 250 GB is a very generous amount, but as some other users here have echoed, the reference to 'unlimited' is misleading. I imagine that should someone take an issue to ComReg with this 'hidden' 250 GB then ComReg would ensure, after quite some time, that it was listed in UPC's T&C's.

PixelTrawler

As far as im aware comreg dont actually regulate BB products.

This might be more a consumer watchdog issue, not sure of the exact body here in ireland. Perhaps advertising standards body.

However they do list in the T&C's a FUP exists and they are probably covered.

250G is very generous, however its impossible to know if what you have used is what UPC thinks you have used.

Course, they don't want to advertise 250Gb limit and a tool to check cos everyone would aim for it pretty quickly

krpc

Solyad wrote: »

As far as im aware comreg dont actually regulate BB products.

This might be more a consumer watchdog issue, not sure of the exact body here in ireland. Perhaps advertising standards body.

However they do list in the T&C's a FUP exists and they are probably covered.

250G is very generous, however its impossible to know if what you have used is what UPC thinks you have used.

Course, they don't want to advertise 250Gb limit and a tool to check cos everyone would aim for it pretty quickly

I had a quick look to be sure - ComReg do regulate broadband services in Ireland, although I'm not sure about it's position with UPC since no phone service is offered.

Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland (ASAI) is a pretty pointless avenue to explore as the group has no legislative power.

The cap, as far as I am aware, must be listed in their T&C's - saying one exists isn't sufficient. I absolutely understand that some people will see the cap as a target rather than a limit if it is listed, however, on the flip side, users (particularly new users) need to monitor their own usage so they don't exceed fair usage and become the subject to this clearly unwanted warning letters