The CAP - Vote

bk

Eircom are saying that there will be a 4GB cap on their service. I think this is awful, on the IOFFL survey and other surveys people state that one of the best things about DSL is that they will always know how much it will cost and therefore budget for it.

However with the 4GB cap, Eircom is simply moving from a time based charging system to a data usage charge system. Customers will simply end up data watching, instead of time watching.

Almost all DSL services have no cap or a very high cap (e.g. 30 GB - which I believe is quiet fair). So why should we be any different.

However it is not too late yet, Eircom haven't actually realised a retail product yet, plus UTV, Esat and Via haven't made any decisions yet. So now is the time to make your voice heard on this issue.

So vote for one of the following options (maybe a mod might make this a poll?) and maybe they will listen to us:

1) No Cap

2) 4 GB cap

3) 30 GB cap

4) Other Cap

And also would you choose which DSL service to get based on the cap offered?

1) Yes

2) No

Come on, get voting and lets see some people power.

kamobe

NO CAP. I'm not paying if there's a cap. It's that simple.

BoneCollector

Although i would like it to be no cap

Resonable would be 10GB+
absolutely no less
cost per extra MB should be 1c

Dazzer

No Cap but I would'nt mind paying 10/15 Euro extra for this service.

Thorbar

I'd say no cap at all, once a cap goes past 10 gigs its kinda pointless anyway.

Tazz T

I'm not taking a DSL product with a cap on principle. When eircom introduced it, they set the standard - just another way of fleecing the customer.

When a wholesale price is set, I'm convinced some sensible company will see no cap as the way to win market share and that's the company that'll win my business.

carlos

a 30GB cap would be plenty for most users, I would be hard pushed to find that much mp3, divx movies etc, to use up all that!

maybe in the first month you might but after that the novelty would wear off

bk

Just to remind people, most DSL services in the UK aren't capped, those few that are usually have a 30 GB cap (that is why I mentioned it).

Personally I would like to see no cap, but 30 GB would be a reasonable compromise.

Also which DSL service I will get will absolutely be based on the cap offered. 4 GB is ridiculous, even for dial up.

scojones

NO Cap. You should be paying for the speed, not how much you download at that speed. A 3 gig cap a month is like saying "You can have this toaster that makes toast 30 times faster than the toasters available to you - but you can only make two slices of toast per day." And for me that's not good enough. I like my toast

bk

Originally posted by Tazz T
When a wholesale price is set, I'm convinced some sensible company will see no cap as the way to win market share and that's the company that'll win my business.

That is exactly why I started this thread, we need to let them know this and I believe UTV will listen to us and maybe the others.

JohnK

I would not pay for anything with a cap!

Bard

Bit of a pointless thread/vote to be honest - surely anyone given the choice would go for a product with no cap rather than a product with a cap if they were similarly priced.

SkepticOne

If you wan't to encourage companies to have a no cap product I would suggest the answer

"I doubt if I would download much. Maybe 1 - 2 Gb. However, I don't want to have to worry about it so, I'd rather there wasn't a cap with surcharges for extra data."

Pimp Ninja

Obviously the ideal situation is no cap whatsoever on any service.

Personally I wouldnt mind so much if it was a 3 gig cap for €30 a month (512K line), with the option to up your download limit for around €5 for another 3Gig.

I heard somewhere of a system in place like this. Where if you went over your monthly cap you could purchace extra 'modules' The alternate option was the service dropped to a 128K service, after your cap had been reached.

Maybe I dreamed this up, but its a good idea.

Chaos-Engine

NO CAP or something huge such as 50GB/month...

The CAP is the main reason I never got DSl from Eircom last year. It is still not likely that i will get DSL until I can get a service with NO CAP or something usable like 30GB+ CAP.

As for the charge. 1c for 1MB is too much. I mean a 512K line means that every 2 seconds I owe them a cent...

Iol NOlimits is more prodictable than Eircom's CApped DSL...

MDR

Me thinks a 10 gig cap would be fairer to all concerned ....

Scottish

BT in the UK considered implementing a cap there recently - 3 gigs - A DAY.

Agree with most of the people here - I don't want to move from clockwatching to megabyte watching.

This should be about encouraging people from all walks of life to have access to the net. This just further imposes high, uncertain charges and perpetuates the idea that net is for those that can afford it. This country already has enough of a gap between rich and poor, lets not allow them to further entrench an information gap.

Synkronite

I know I'll get burned for this.. but...

I personally agree with a capped ADSL product. Although I might be inclined to think 4Gb is too little, anything over 10Gb is just madness. The cap isnt there in an attempt by companies to get bad publicity, rather its an attempt to avoid that.

Id rather pay €55/month for capped 512Kbps ADSL knowing that KazAa and other bandwidth hogs arent abusing the high speeds messing it up for the rest of us.

I know Im ordering eircom's ADSL as Ive already passed the linetest. And in fairness you're paying double what you are for your dial-up No Limits / Netsmart / UTVip and getting speeds 10x faster.

maxheadroom

Originally posted by Chaos-Engine

As for the charge. 1c for 1MB is too much. I mean a 512K line means that every 2 seconds I owe them a cent...

Isnt a 512K line 512 KiloBITs a second? Which is ~ 64Kbytes a sec. Which gives you 1MByte every 16 seconds


As for the poll - No cap, or if that's not possible a huge cap like 30 GB.


Also, it would be nice if the cap was only on downloads, not uploads...

bk

Originally posted by Bard
Bit of a pointless thread/vote to be honest - surely anyone given the choice would go for a product with no cap rather than a product with a cap if they were similarly priced.

Yes, of course it is obvious to you and me what everyone wants, but it may not be so obvious to the management of the various companies.

It may also show UTV that if they bring in a no cap product like they have in the north and all their competitiors bring in a cap, then they will get a great deal of business.

theciscokid

ideally no cap ,

but realistically around 8 gb would satisfy me

hey bk, you should start a voting poll,

alot easier to weigh up opinions,

well we know everyone wants no cap, but we aren't going to get that, but a compromise could be possible

longword

Originally posted by Synkronite
I personally agree with a capped ADSL product. Although I might be inclined to think 4Gb is too little, anything over 10Gb is just madness. The cap isnt there in an attempt by companies to get bad publicity, rather its an attempt to avoid that.

Id rather pay €55/month for capped 512Kbps ADSL knowing that KazAa and other bandwidth hogs arent abusing the high speeds messing it up for the rest of us.

Agreed 100% Synk. IMHO 4GB is about the point where it starts to look reasonable for a low-end product and closer to 10GB would be nice. But past that and you're just inviting abuse. How many Linux distributions do you need to download in one month anyway?

theciscokid

films, no more linux iso's , god damn it

lots and lots of films

bk

Originally posted by theciscokid
ideally no cap ,

but realistically around 8 gb would satisfy me

hey bk, you should start a voting poll,

alot easier to weigh up opinions,

well we know everyone wants no cap, but we aren't going to get that, but a compromise could be possible

I wanted to, but it seems to be disabled for the IOFFL board. Probably only the mods can do it? Would one of the mods like to add a poll?

Praetorian

The novelty does wear off trust me.

The first couple of months i downloaded approx 50-60 gigs....Per month

10 Gigs would be reasonable. I mean come on...how big are your hard drives (ive 360 gigs in my main pc and its almost full)

It just means we are going to have to be selfish on the P2P. IE no leaving it on when we are not downloading our selves.

dahamsta

Agreed 100% Synk. IMHO 4GB is about the point where it starts to look reasonable for a low-end product and closer to 10GB would be nice. But past that and you're just inviting abuse. How many Linux distributions do you need to download in one month anyway?

I'm afraid I agreewith Synk too, always have done. I believe that the cap should be set at a higher level, and after that throttling should be used to discourage users. Additional data fees go completely against the entire concept of broadband.

adam

gurramok

There should be different products available for those that want caps and those that don't.
A 4gb cap is not that much, say goodbye to streaming over the net when your data watching all the time.
It is known in industry circles worldwide that the ability to download/stream plus gaming is the driving force behind take-up of broadband.
A 24/7 connection for just browsing web pages is not much incentive for people to migrate from 56k/isdn flat-rate(when it comes here).

Matfinn

I think a cap goes against the whole principle of broadband. They should nevewr have been introduced by anyone in the first place at all. Think about it. Some poor unwitting internet user will visit a site and have to download a load of animated gifs for ads, aswell as all the plugins they may need. Streaming video, one of the main reasons for broadband, will clock up the bandwidth fast.

Users who act the bollix on their broadband connetion should have their speeds slowed to 128k fir the rest of the month.

Personally, I wont get a capped product.

Matt

matthiku

Although I would personally go for, say a 10 GB cap, I would say it's exactly this kind of restrictions which will at the end only feed errcom's and others (the "incumbent" and the "incompetent"?) old arguments that "there is no need for broadband in this country".

Why? Because it will be restricting on the way people are going to use the internet for. I'm not talking about simple browsing and am not talking about downloading illegal stuff either. But think of companies trying to sell their media products (be it movies, music, software) over the internet, which has had already a huge increase in the states and other countries with decent DSL availability (without a crap-cap).

Why shouldn't we download our next movie from the internet instead of going to a Video lender? Why should we visit a music shop when we can download and buy the music over the internet? Same goes for Software. Or think about Linux. One distribution download (i.e. SuSE 8.1 with 6 GB) will happily overturn the proposed cap.


Another topic is telework. That is another area many people would benefit from; relying on always-on Internet, without the fear of piling costs.

With such a cap in place, most users, who do not have the technical insight, will most likely shy away from DSL. Then some months later, errcom will withdraw it's DSL offer (not that I really believe that), stating that there was not enough demand......

So I vote for: No CAP, No CRAP

kamobe

Id rather pay €55/month for capped 512Kbps ADSL knowing that KazAa and other bandwidth hogs arent abusing the high speeds messing it up for the rest of us.

kamobe pulls his hair out, IRC style

HOW THE F*CK Can you abuse the service!?!! This reminds me of the IOL letter. It amazes me that companies throughout the world can manage with such a burden. If the British/Americans/Random race don't have capped broadband - what makes our setup so f*cking inferior that we cannot have the same?? GREED is the only reason I can think of. If me downloading plenty, slows you down, then it's the telco's fault. Not mine.

They say themselves, take-up is low, and will stay low untill we have FRICAO. So if few ppl are using the service, why the hell should it be capped to guarantee speed to everyone? There'll be shag all on the same exchange as you.

De Rebel

I'd settle for a capped product, between 5-10Gb, with a low per Gb charge for the next 10Gb, and a penal charge after that. Also there should be an uncapped product, but it would be reasonable for the ato attract premium pricing. Otherwist the bandwith whores will bring the service to its knees.

So for starters if we had two products like:

€50 (inc VAT) =512/128 10Gb, 1:50 for the majority
€100 (inc VAT) = 512/125 uncapped, 1:50 for them that needs it

Hopefully when the market matures (2020 or thereabouts) there will be a selection of products.