The existance or not of caps, unlimited downloads and a supreme being

Ardent

Garfield

I don't understand why you're going to great lengths to explain the rationale and technical points behind some of the features of your service yet you decline to provide simple, conclusive answers to simple questions posed by people who are seriously considering your service.

Namely:

1) What is deemed excessive use and at what point will Smart begin throttling users, if at all?

2) If I don't have an active phone line - I am a happy wireless broadband user for example - and I therefore can't avail of your first-100k-customers offer, where is the incentive for me to move?

3) If I'm currently a Eircom Broadband user, what will the down-time be if I decide to switch over to your service?

4) Can Smart Telecom activate my phone line?

dub45

LoBo wrote:

Agree with basically all of dahamsta's points and would like to reiterate some of his questions-


2. "no limits": you can't tell us that there's no limits to usage and no contention on bandwidth, we understand that this isn't the case. It's alright to sell the service as 'always-on' to the general public & cover yourself in T&Cs, but on this board you're dealing with folks who know. We (me included) got burnt by the 2001 IOL/esat surf no limits fiasco and have seen again and again that it just isn't the case. If you intend to be transparent & communicate with your prospective customers and (more importantly) evangelists here, please be very clear on this: what's your policy for fair usage data-wise? We've seen 1GB / day on NTL and monthly caps for the bitstream DSL services - what do you think is fair on your proposed service?

It is totally contradictory for Smart to state clearly on the website 'No montly limit' and then subsequently make reference to a fair usage policy. And it should not really be ok at all 'to sell the service etc etc ...and cover yourself in T&C's.'

What should be there for all to see up front in terms of any offering whether they 'know' or have never used bb in their lives before is clariy and not contradictions.

GarfieldConnoll

Ardent wrote:

Garfield

I don't understand why you're going to great lengths to explain the rationale and technical points behind some of the features of your service yet you decline to provide simple, conclusive answers to simple questions posed by people who are seriously considering your service.

There are some questions that I can answer directly, there are some I need to talk to other people on.

Ardent wrote:

Namely:

1) What is deemed excessive use and at what point will Smart begin throttling users, if at all?

There have been a number of queries outstanding. Someone emailed me the other day and asked if 100GB up/ down was excessive. We think that is excessive. Do we think that 8GM/ 16BG/ 20GB is too low? Yes of course. But 100GB, for €35 a month? Not a chance. So, it's between 20GB and 100GB. That's as much as I'm willing to say right now.

Ardent wrote:

2) If I don't have an active phone line - I am a happy wireless broadband user for example - and I therefore can't avail of your first-100k-customers offer, where is the incentive for me to move?

You need a phone line for us to unbundle. If don't have a phone line, don't see any advantage to having one and are happy with your wireless provider, then there is no incentive to move.

Ardent wrote:

3) If I'm currently a Eircom Broadband user, what will the down-time be if I decide to switch over to your service?

The issue of co-ordination for existing bitstream customers has been addressed at industry and regulatory levels. An answer on this is still outstanding.

Ardent wrote:

4) Can Smart Telecom activate my phone line?

Yes. We have been providing this service through our SB-WLR (Single Billing) service for some time.

Garfield.

oscarBravo

Ardent wrote:

What is deemed excessive use and at what point will Smart begin throttling users, if at all?

I have to say I'd be reluctant to give a firm answer to this question if I was in Smart's position. If they set a specific threshold for "excessive" it will be seen as a target by many people - I've seen posts on this very board where people were looking for ideas on what they could download to "use up" their download cap.

I think it's only fair that there should be no specific limit as such, but that if a small number of users consistently download a large multiple of whatever the average is, to the point where they are affecting other users' online experience, that those users should be either curtailed or moved to a more appropriate product.

I'm aware that such a view puts me firmly in the minority.

gsand

between 20-100gigs is a bit variance. i think it should be stated before the product is launched what acceptable is. it is nice to see that the firm is not expecting something like 15gigs and capping/charging after that but i think a firm stance is required so people know exactly where they stand to avoid both customer and provider trouble in future. 'no limits' is very deceptive in the advertising.

dahamsta

I agree with oscarBravo to a degree, but by the same token this needs to be made absolutely clear to users. We all know what kind of trouble the phrase "no limits" can conjur up.

adam

gsand

i dont agree with you on that one oscarbravo. as a smart employee one might favour this but as consumers we should be demanding product transparency and not surprises of capping and new 'excessive' definitions half way through a 12 month contract. sure, some people are gona see it as a target but half the customers wont even understand what the hell a gigabyte or a cap is. if you are trying to compare products then it is better to know exactly how much smart are willing to give each customer, its not hard for them to calculate this if they take some time and then everyone knows where they stand. for example when irishbroadband say no caps they actually are no caps as far as ive heard from anyone, NTL were blurry at first but have now settled at 16-20 gigs with no known charging for excessive? eircom are apparently ignoring some and annihilating some with huge bills.

so from my point of view as a consumer id very much like to know that if i or infact anyone here is getting a 2meg product for 35euro which is a real groundbreaker in the industry then exactly what are the limit to 'no limits'(seems a ridiculous thing to say).

but as you said if any of us was a smart employee i doubt we'd have the consumer transparency POV

CiaranC

Just a heads up. Earlier in the thread you state that there is no upload/download limit. A few posts back you state that 100GB transfer a month would be totally excessive.

Make up your mind which it is.

Your 2Mb product will attract users who use lots of bandwidth, it goes without saying, as it will be the fattest pipe available just about anywhere. People will deliberately move from services like NTL to avail of the higher throughput.

Do not make the mistake of saying that this product has no limits. You will find yourself in the middle of a ****storm, just as ESAT did with surf no-limits etc.

At least, if you must lie about the service being uncapped, qualify your statements each time you make them.

GarfieldConnoll

CiaranC wrote:

Just a heads up. Earlier in the thread you state that there is no upload/download limit. A few posts back you state that 100GB transfer a month would be totally excessive.

Make up your mind which it is.

Ciaran, there is no limit but Smart do reserve rights regarding 'excessive usage'. From a company perspective we'd be pretty damned stupid not to cover ourselves on that one. If certain users consider that 'pretty damned stupid', fair enough. I've said previously that there would be little point in rolling out the network and skimping on bandwidth, but we do reserve our right to manage what we would communicate to users as 'excessive usage'.

CiaranC wrote:

Your 2Mb product will attract users who use lots of bandwidth, it goes without saying, as it will be the fattest pipe available just about anywhere. People will deliberately move from services like NTL to avail of the higher throughput.

Do not make the mistake of saying that this product has no limits. You will find yourself in the middle of a ****storm, just as ESAT did with surf no-limits etc.

EsatBT's Surf no-limits product, if memory serves, was a dial up service. They made a calculated risk on aggregate minute usage (payable to eircom) against subscriptions and found that certain users were making the service very unprofitable. In fact the service as a whole probably only appealed to customers with excessive usage. That's my understanding. I could be wrong. That's not the case here.
Smart will be using its own fibre network and own upstream IP relationships. No charges payable to eircom.
We're just covering ourselves.

oscarBravo

CiaranC wrote:

Just a heads up. Earlier in the thread you state that there is no upload/download limit. A few posts back you state that 100GB transfer a month would be totally excessive.

Make up your mind which it is.

...and this is exactly what I'm talking about. Stating that there is no (explicitly set) limit doesn't mean that you can go completely nuts. Are you seriously expecting a €35 product that will allow 100GB transfer? Is anyone seriously expecting this?

Let me clarify: I run a community broadband network, and we don't set limits on how much people can use it. That doesn't mean that if someone starts using all their available bandwidth all the time, that I'm not going to have a polite word with them.

CiaranC

Garfield wrote:

Ciaran, there is no limit but Smart do reserve rights regarding 'excessive usage'.

Sorry Garfield, but that right there says to me that there is a limit, plain as day.

No limit means no limit, i.e. being able to use the maximum bandwidth available to you each month. Anything else is a limit.

Whos to say what "reserving rights regarding excessive usage" actually means? And whos to say what it will mean in a year or so, after some of your management team have moved on and new faces see the potential in interpreting "excessive usage" another way to make the figures on Smart Telecoms bottom line look prettier?

There are a lot of people that got burned here before with this lark, Im simply advising you not to go down the "nolimit" road with a limited service.

Otherwise the product looks decent, a real step forward. Could do with 256 up to go along with the 2048 down though

gsand

a relevant bandwidth 'excessive' example might be that of netsource who blatantly advertised as being unlimited 'no cap' etc and caused riots and absolute disdain from the boards here on enforcing limiting on what they deemed 'excessive' which had been totally undefined. a number of clients on the boards here immediatley handed in their 2 months notice as far as i remember but in this case it is 12 months which is where the potential riot lays.

as you say it is fair to cover yourself and its not a personal thing where im looking to get 100-200gigs a month but i think potential customers of a ground breaking product should have a specific note especially with a 2meg service. at this stage im rehashing the point but sure if any directive is made on this matter i think it would be an important addition to make to this thread. cheers, gsand.

CiaranC

oscarBravo wrote:

...and this is exactly what I'm talking about. Stating that there is no (explicitly set) limit doesn't mean that you can go completely nuts. Are you seriously expecting a €35 product that will allow 100GB transfer? Is anyone seriously expecting this?

Well, people wouldnt normally expect 100GB transfer, but if the product and product manager of said product explicitly states that the service has no limit then it will cause much confusion.

Obviously the answer is to provide an uncapped service at a higher cost.

Smart want to have their cake and eat it. Sell and market a product with such a major selling point of no cap, while actually having a cap after all.

On the other hand, saying that there is actually a cap negates the draw for NTL customers (1.5Mb customers looking for more bandwidth) to move over to smarts 2Mb service.

oscarBravo

CiaranC wrote:

Well, people wouldnt normally expect 100GB transfer, but if the product and product manager of said product explicitly states that the service has no limit then it will cause much confusion.

The product manager has explicitly said that they reserve rights regarding excessive usage. I'm curious as to what you are asking for: do you want a cap? Do you expect a completely unlimited service for €35? What exactly is it that Smart could tell you right now that would make you happy?

CiaranC wrote:

Obviously the answer is to provide an uncapped service at a higher cost.

If you want a product that meets your definition of "uncapped" (which from what I can see means that you reserve the right to download at 2Mbit/s 24x7) I suggest you investigate a leased line.

gsand

i think you are looking at this from an irish broadband industry perspective oscarbravo. in many other countries you can have 5/10/15meg broadband with no caps but in terms of the way the marketing campaign is going smart seem to be going for a we are breaking the mould category.

personally yes i would prefer if a specific number was put forward as a cap and i think the wishy washy attitude towards it is to the complete detriment of a properly working transparent consumer choice. eircom say 8gig so people who want razor sharp but limited 512k go there. irishbroadband have no limits and access to different areas but less consistent customer service/speeds so some people go there or not. esat offer slightly larger cap with reliableish speeds.

for a pioneering 2meg product yes i think a distinct directive should be made and it is by no means unreasonable as a consumer to expect it. but the irish broadband situation might lead us to belive we should expect less.

but as you have already said we can sit here banging on about it between us but at the end of the day 'excessive' and 'no limits' are convenient words and i doubt any more progress will be made on this front for the time being.

CiaranC

oscarBravo wrote:

The product manager has explicitly said that they reserve rights regarding excessive usage. I'm curious as to what you are asking for: do you want a cap? Do you expect a completely unlimited service for €35? What exactly is it that Smart could tell you right now that would make you happy?

I was merely pointing out that offering a "no limit" service which is not at all a "no limit" service is a bad idea, and bound to cause problems for all concerned.

If you want a product that meets your definition of "uncapped" (which from what I can see means that you reserve the right to download at 2Mbit/s 24x7) I suggest you investigate a leased line.

I suggest you investigate how broadband works outside this country, as you seem to think that this ripoff culture is somehow the norm.

Unbundling the local loop is supposed to remove the pricing factors that made Irish broadband a joke compared to its European counterparts, but all I see is another provider looking to sell people a product that they cant properly utilise.

If a line delivers 100KB/sec max, then a customer is buying 100KB/sec for every second in that month, and the price should reflect that. Its a simple concept, thats how it works in practically every other European and thats exactly how the ISP itself pays for its bandwidth.

Can you imagine Smart telecom signing up to a peering contract or a backbone connection with one of the large EU/US hubs with a vague proviso that UUNET (or whoever) reserves rights regarding excessive usage that they refuse to actually define and may change at any point in the future?

I think not.

oscarBravo

gsand wrote:

i think you are looking at this from an irish broadband industry perspective oscarbravo. in many other countries you can have 5/10/15meg broadband with no caps

I wonder how many of those services will let you download hundreds of gigabytes every month without saying "excuse me sir, you're being a muppet"? I remember my brother in London getting an email from his (ostensibly uncapped) provider along the lines of "um... hello!?!"

Granted, the broadband scene in this country has been coloured by the Eircom experience. On the flipside, I think there's a prevailing belief out there that bandwidth is free. The fact is, no matter how cheap it is, it has to be paid for. A few muppets can effectively make a service unviable.

gsand wrote:

personally yes i would prefer if a specific number was put forward as a cap and i think the wishy washy attitude towards it is to the complete detriment of a properly working transparent consumer choice.

That has to be a first - requesting that a service be capped! I've outlined earlier why I don't think a specific cap is a good idea.

gsand wrote:

for a pioneering 2meg product yes i think a distinct directive should be made and it is by no means unreasonable as a consumer to expect it. but the irish broadband situation might lead us to belive we should expect less.

I'm struggling to understand this perspective. You're asking for a hard limit, rather than a general "don't take the p!ss" request? I know which I'd prefer.

Moriarty

CiaranC wrote:

If a line delivers 100KB/sec max, then a customer is buying 100KB/sec for every second in that month, and the price should reflect that. Its a simple concept, thats how it works in practically every other European and thats exactly how the ISP itself pays for its bandwidth.

No it's not. That's what a leased line is - dedicated, uncontended bandwidth along with a SLA. They cost big bucks for a reason.

There are loads of ISPs across europe that operate with caps, and far far more (all) that 'reserve the right' to dump customers that are using excessive amounts of bandwidth. What 'excessive' means is entirely down to what they decide, usually based on how much you're costing the company.

This is the attitude smart are taking which is far more flexible than strict defined caps, and yet you want to cut off your nose to spite your face by demanding that smart define specific caps.

lomb

Moriarty wrote:

No it's not. That's what a leased line is - dedicated, uncontended bandwidth along with a SLA. They cost big bucks for a reason.

There are loads of ISPs across europe that operate with caps, and far far more (all) that 'reserve the right' to dump customers that are using excessive amounts of bandwidth. What 'excessive' means is entirely down to what they decide, usually based on how much you're costing the company.

wholesale data rates are only 5 cent a gig, so 100gb up and 100 down is 10euro, so they might deem that this 10euro is excessive?????

CiaranC

Moriarty wrote:

No it's not. That's what a leased line is

Ok, so in Sweden when you buy a 10Mb downstream internet connection for €30 a month to your house in the suburbs they make you sign a form saying you cant use it, do they? That would explain how they can afford to sell such great connections alright.

Care to explain what it is actually for then? Faster pings in Counter Strike? :rolleyes:

Moriarty

lomb wrote:

wholesale data rates are only 5 cent a gig, so 100gb up and 100 down is 10euro, so they might deem that this 10euro is excessive?????

They only get ~€15/month off you once the LLU charges are paid to eircom. That has to pay for the hardware in the exchange, the customer support people, all the rest of the infrastructure, all the bandwidth you use _and_ find them a profit somewhere. I don't know what smart are paying for transit either, it could be more than 5c/gig for all I know.

You're also ignoring that dsl only "works" because it's a contended service.

CiaranC wrote:

Ok, so in Sweden when you buy a 10Mb downstream internet connection for €30 a month to your house in the suburbs they make you sign a form saying you cant use it, do they? That would explain how they can afford to sell such great connections alright.

A lot of the network that the ISP you're talking about uses was built by the sweedish government. Sweden is also the exception rather than the rule when talking about bandwidth/price comparisons. Sure it's certainly no harm at all to aim for that, but we aren't there yet.

dub45

oscarBravo wrote:

The product manager has explicitly said that they reserve rights regarding excessive usage. I'm curious as to what you are asking for: do you want a cap? Do you expect a completely unlimited service for €35? What exactly is it that Smart could tell you right now that would make you happy? If you want a product that meets your definition of "uncapped" (which from what I can see means that you reserve the right to download at 2Mbit/s 24x7) I suggest you investigate a leased line.

The simple fact is that what Smart are saying is contradictory, mutually exclusive etc etc. People here have experience of a similar offering in the past and are making the queries I feel as much for Smart's benefit as their own. Smart cannot have it both ways - the website cannot state there are no monthly limits and the product manager state there is a fair usage policy without stating what that will be - it is Alice in Wonderland territory and it is not good for Smart to start out with a major fudge on what is a big selling point for them.

And its not that people are expecting a completely unlimited service for 35 euro Smart have offered it - 'no monthly limit' means just that!!!!.

I wonder would the advertising standards authority accept their approach?

dub45

Moriarty wrote:

No it's not. That's what a leased line is - dedicated, uncontended bandwidth along with a SLA. They cost big bucks for a reason.

There are loads of ISPs across europe that operate with caps, and far far more (all) that 'reserve the right' to dump customers that are using excessive amounts of bandwidth. What 'excessive' means is entirely down to what they decide, usually based on how much you're costing the company.

This is the attitude smart are taking which is far more flexible than strict defined caps, and yet you want to cut off your nose to spite your face by demanding that smart define specific caps.

Yes but do these Companies advertise their products as having 'No Monthly Limit'? It would be easier for all concerned if Smart dumped that statement.

CiaranC

Moriarty wrote:

Sweden is also the exception rather than the rule when talking about bandwidth/price comparisons.

Fine. Look at Cegetel, Wanadoo, Telecom Italia, Tiscali, NC Numericable, Libero, TP S.A Poland, Free, AOL, 9Telecom or Club-Internet. No caps on their high end products (5Mb-20Mb down, around €30-€60 typically).

Sure it's certainly no harm at all to aim for that, but we aren't there yet.

Looking at how Paddy Consumers mind works, I wont be holding my breath. Suggestions like renting a 10 thousand euro a year leased line from a monopoly for services not even nearly equivalent to the above and the like.

oscarBravo

CiaranC wrote:

Fine. Look at Cegetel, Wanadoo, Telecom Italia, Tiscali, NC Numericable, Libero, TP S.A Poland, Free, AOL, 9Telecom or Club-Internet. No caps on their high end products (5Mb-20Mb down, around €30-€60 typically).

Just checking a couple of those at random:

• wanadoo UK: three 1Mbit services, from £17.99 to £27.99 per month. The difference between the packages: a usage allowance varying from 6GB to 30GB.
• Free UK: 512k service - don't see any faster data rates than that.

I've only quickly glanced at some of the others, and other countries in which these two operate, but my European languages are not up to the task - but feel free to provide links.

Steve S

I've checked a couple of French providers.

Wanadoo is offering 'up to' 8mbps down with 'at least' 160kbps up on a 12-month contract for €39.90/month with the first 6 months at €29.90/month. It's ADSL and there is no mention in the T&C that I can find of any caps.

Noos, a cable provider is offering 'up to' 10mbps down on a product called Noosnet 'illimité' (unlimited, no limits) with free installation and free modem rental for €34.90/month (less, if you also get cable TV). However, the fine print of the terms and conditions has this language (my translation): '"unlimited" internet access means that the customer benefits from a service with no time limits. It does not mean that the customer will have a permanent connection (with no interruption) nor unlimited volume [of transfers]'. Unclear what the upstream bandwidth is.

Free has an 'unlimited' ADSL2+ offering at 'up to' 20mbps downstream and 1mbps upstream for €29.99/month, including 'unlimited' and free telephone calls within France (not counting overseas territories) as well as a television over the same connection (which, when in use, drops the downstream bandwidth on the internet connection to 2mbps). There is no minimum length of contract on this product. There are also user-adjustable (via web interface) latency/interleaving settings. There is no mention in the T&C that I can see about volume caps.

These offers make even Smart's welcome new product look like a bad joke.

Moriarty

Not really. Smart's effectively costing €10.50/month since they're paying your line rental. You're not comparing price points fairly imo.

uteotw

Garfield

I find the "unlimited" broadband advertisment and the fact that Smart will deal with user with excessive download completly incompatible and basically false advertisment.

Question to Boards users: what the consumer association that deals with this in Ireland ?

If in the contract you don't define what "excessive" is in term of GB usage then this is not valid.

On the road the speed limit is defined and you are fined for going in excess of that limit.

So if Smart wants to get covered against high download users you have to define a monthly download quota.

chorus techy

They don't necessarily have to quote usage allowances - so long as someone's downloading does not affect other users. Because, at the same time, if smart quoted say, 50 GB as the monthly allowance, there would be people out there who's attitude is "Well I'm paying €35 for 50GB so I'm going to use it", and they will purposely download rubbish just to fit their cap, when they might only use a few GB per month. Most people, even heavy downloaders like myself, would only use 30GB at most every month - I think this would suffice and is a lot more than most people would download, so it is pretty unnecessary for download limits.

Thats only my opinion

Moriarty

They don't "have" to. You want them to. There's a difference.

Sponge Bob

Moriarty wrote:

They don't "have" to. You want them to.

Netsource got the bad flak for Throttling their Hogs BEFORE they amended the T&C's and BEFORE they admitted they were doing either .

Most ISP's have problems with about 5% of their users , up to 1% are a serious problem .

Recent Hog Hunts in the ISP sector include.

Tiscali in the UK brought in a 30Gb Cap and booted off about 500 out of 350000 punters , thats 0.2% of their customer base who used between 30Gb and 150Gb a month.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/09/tiscali_hogs/

Plusnet in the UK did a Netsource on it and put the Hogs onto a Hog HJell pipe where they contended with each other......only. Thats what Netsource did too. Again this affected 0.3% of their customers. Plusnet had a few fat mud covered hogs lying on the lawn making the place look bad.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/16/plusnet_broadband_hogs/

According to industry figures, the average usage per subscriber is 7 gig a month. But some of those collared in PlusNet's clampdown are gobbling up a whopping 500 - 600 gig a month, a spokesman told The Register.

Plusnet is very similar to Smart in how they started off on the UK market, around August last year . They launched a Cut Price 2Mb service

"Plus.net is reporting brisk interest in its new cut-price entry-level broadband products after announcing yesterday that it would begin offering 2Mb ADSL for under £20 from today."

Only 3 Months later they had to deal with the Hogs .

Hogs, like Taxes, will always be with us . I fail to see why the T&Cs's should be unduly restrictive for the other 99.whatever% though. Lets hope the Smart read a few T&C's and that they warn the Hogs to get their noses out of the trough before they court bad publicity when they crack down....as it seems one must.

Garfield has already said , in this thread, that 20Gb is cool and 100Gb is excessive. We'll see what the final figure is in time .