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.

De Rebel

Originally posted by kamobe
If the British/Americans/Random race don't have capped broadband [/B]

Many countries do have caps in place, or a mix of capped and uncapped services.

Dustaz

Brendan, no offense but its a bit of a silly vote as everyone is going to just vote for no cap.

I am firmly in the dahamsta camp on this (always have been always will) and if all of the people screaming "omg caps are a disgrace, i wont even consider dsl until theres no cap" would do just a little bit of research, then they would see that capping/throttling is a very common occurance in broadband implementations around the world.


Clearly a 4gb cap is too low for most people and a cap of 10-30 would be a lot more acceptable but remember that eircom wanted to cap at 1gb originally, so in the space of a year we have quadrupled the cap and halved the price. Its called competition. and it will keep happening as long as there are willing customers for broadband.

matthiku

Originally posted by De Rebel
(...) 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 (...)

Tbh, I don't think this is a good suggestion. Why would you settle for €100 for a product which is available for €30 in other, comparable countries?

I think we shouldn't employ errcom's offer as being reasonable. Although I would agree that it is a step in the right direction, we shouldn't forget the main point of the whole struggle (by Ireland Offline, for instance): to get a decent friaco/broadband offer which would really ignite the Irish Internet usage.

Xterminator

Anything under 10 gigs is silly.

I want to be able to use the new faster connection, without fear of ridiclously high charges per mb, after some unrealistic arbitrary point.

And 4 gigs is a joke. If your getting 1mb in 16 seconds, then
you could exhaust your limit in approx 18 hrs.
Now for an always on service this is foolish.

(Of couse being eircom, they probably want it as an always on, never used service!)

I would buy this product if the cap was 10 gig or higher. otherwise, I'll wait.

On a lighter note, i recently switched to Esat for my calls, and I am now waiting fro the day i can pay my line rental to someone other than Eircom too.


X

SkepticOne

Originally posted by kamobe
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??

Stating the obvious here, but what they have is competition. Capped services are unpopular even though they guarantee speed for light users.

longword

Originally posted by kamobe
HOW THE F*CK Can you abuse the service!?!!

Do the math. 512kbit/sec shared with 50 users. Or even 20. Tell me how many gigabytes per month each user should get if it's divided fairly. Please show your work in the margin and have the assignment on my desk by the end of the day.

De Rebel

Originally posted by matthiku
Tbh, I don't think this is a good suggestion. Why would you settle for €100 for a product which is available for €30 in other, comparable countries?

I think we shouldn't employ errcom's offer as being reasonable. Although I would agree that it is a step in the right direction, we shouldn't forget the main point of the whole struggle (by Ireland Offline, for instance): to get a decent friaco/broadband offer which would really ignite the Irish Internet usage.

My mistake, the second line was intended to read 1Mb/1Mb, uncapped, 1:50 - for them that need it. ( i.e. SHDSL ). Damn cut and paste.

Also, regarding Ireland vs the Rest, I did say for starters - if we get the right quality of service and an acceptable bitstream price, then competition and market penetration/maturity will take care of price.

Dustaz

I think everyone here who wants an 24/7 uncapped servers for "linux distro" purposes should be put on the same switch. See how long it takes to get Lord of the Rings at 1.6kp/s

bk

Originally posted by Dustaz
Brendan, no offense but its a bit of a silly vote as everyone is going to just vote for no cap.

It is Brian, not Brendan :cool:

I disagree, I think we are actually seeing a lot of different opions, with a lot of people going for a reasonable cap.

Personally I would agree with yourself and dahamsta, a reasonable cap with throttling if you go over it. Eircom's cap and its charging if you go over it is just more of Eircoms greedy mentality and has nothing to do with curbing abuse of the servce.

So I believe this thread has been useful in gauging peoples opinions and the results are suprising.

BTW, people are asking what you would need a big cap for that is legal, well I can think of many things.

1) online gaming, in particular Xbox voice system will eat bandwidth.

2) streaming video, music and radio

3) open source software (Linux ISO's, OpenOffice etc.)

4) There are now sites that actually legally sell music and video for download.

5) Any person who is involved in an open source project and who needs to do lots of CVS checkouts. (this would also go for commercial software developers working from home).

6) Various graphics designers, web designers, etc.

matthiku

Originally posted by Dustaz
I think everyone here who wants an 24/7 uncapped servers for "linux distro" purposes should be put on the same switch. See how long it takes to get Lord of the Rings at 1.6kp/s

I understand you point, but we should be careful with this kind of arguments. You will always want to have the "heavy users" and the "light users" mixed on a switch - because one day you are "heavy" and me "light", the other day (or night) it's vice versa.

If you start to segregate a certain kind of internet usage (which could be named "broadband"), why do you lobby for it in the first place and condemn it's real usage afterwards?

Let's be congruent and efficient in our struggle for a decent competition and affordable prices (possibly imposed by ComReg) for Internet access, so that it becomes a normal part of our life.

Mr E

God almighty you're all a bunch of whining maggots. 2 weeks ago everyone was still moaning about paying for internet access per second. Within the space of 2 weeks, FRIACO and broadband are now actually within reach, and you're STILL complaining?!?

Jesus Christ, folks.... will you chill out? This has been a HUGE month for Irish internet access. I admit we've been crawling compared to other EU countries, but we have to walk before we can run.

We have to take one step at a time. We aren't going to be able to instantly match the broadband packages that established broadband countries are offering. A 4gb cap isn't great, but its a good start. When demand increases and the wholesale product is announced, the ISPs will no doubt come up with packages to suit everyone. Leechers will probably have to pay a little extra for their addiction, and thats fine (for starters). Remember - we are still years behind other broadband-enabled countries. Stop comparing our capabilities, packages and prices to theirs. Its not a fair comparison. Its going to be a while before we are at their levels. Large caps and no cap at all will come eventually (they HAVE to, with on-demand music, TV and video becoming available).

Take a deep breath, step away from the keyboard and go and get some fresh air. Stop nitpicking everything.

- Dave.

Bard

Originally posted by TmB
God almighty you're all a bunch of whining maggots. 2 weeks ago everyone was still moaning about paying for internet access per second. Within the space of 2 weeks, FRIACO and broadband are now actually within reach, and you're STILL complaining?!?

It's a pressure group. That's what pressure groups do. They lobby and complain until all their objectives are met.

Jesus Christ, folks.... will you chill out? This has been a HUGE month for Irish internet access. I admit we've been crawling compared to other EU countries, but we have to walk before we can run.

Agreed, but we'll be up and walking (or running) sooner if we keep the pressure on.

This has, however, been the most positive announcement regarding DSL I've seen come out of eircom yet. Here's hoping that legal wranglings with ComReg don't slow things down and that they actually implement what they are promising ON TIME.

MDR

God almighty you're all a bunch of whining maggots

Pardon me if we are all justifabily paranoid about the whole area of Irish Telecoms. Complacency is how we ended up here in the first instance, everyone should keep moaning, bitching, fighting, squabbling, campaigning, lobbing ... nothing should be good enough, our members should _NEVER_ be satisfied .... its is only way to accoplish anything , especially in Beloved ireland.

Mr E

Originally posted by Bard
It's a pressure group. That's what pressure groups do. They lobby and complain until all their objectives are met.

Point taken, Bard. Its just irritating for me to see that after a MONUMENTAL two weeks, we've made a HUGE leap forward, and people are still bitching. I've been reading all the related threads in this forum since yesterday, and the moaners STILL seem to outnumber the people who are pleased with this weeks progress.

- Dave.

Mr E

Originally posted by MDR
Pardon me if we are all justifabily paranoid about the whole area of Irish Telecoms.

No disrespect intended to the hard-fought and tireless efforts of IOFFL. I just want everyone to get along.

I'm going to shut up now.

- Dave.

matthiku

everything is said whatever TmB's comment may have triggered.

so let's go on moaning, bitching, fighting, squabbling, campaigning, lobbing and so on....

Dustaz

Originally posted by matthiku
I understand you point, but we should be careful with this kind of arguments. You will always want to have the "heavy users" and the "light users" mixed on a switch - because one day you are "heavy" and me "light", the other day (or night) it's vice versa.

Yes, i know, just my equivalent of TmB's reaction i think

captainpat

A lot of fear is being expressed of the demon Kazaa users who will gobble the bandwith. While there is too little experience in Ireland of Broadband to experience any of the potential performance problems which high-volume users could cause, other countries have had BB with and without Caps for a long time. What is the experience elsewhere?

In another thread, someone told of a Swedish friend with 512k performing slowly due to contention (?). This wasn't explained fully, and the responses were more aimed at praising Swedish broadband as the Promided Land!

Seriously, the U.K. have uncapped BB and a similar Entertainment culture to ourselves. I'm sure MP3 and Movie downloading is flourishing. (If someone knows different, why is it?). Does this lead to the frequent collapse of the network? Is there any evidence to back the proponents of Caps that they are needed to keep acceptable performance available?

I suspect that the overall bandwidth available is enough to cater for the worst cases for a long time to come, and the capacity will be expanded as required. In regarding Caps as a means of enhancing and controlling performance, we are falling into the Eircom mode of thinking, where everything should be billable. This is "per-second" all over again, except that we get 142 hours max (of download time @ 64 KByte/Sec) included in our monthly fee, with a charge of up to €10.00 per Hour at €0.03/megabyte cost potentially chargeable above the Cap. Now, I know that in practice, it will take far more hours to use up the Cap, and that nobody could be charged 55.00 per hour because you cannot download that volume in an hour, but the charges are still horrendous, regardless of the percentages used. In full flow, a download will achieve about 60KBytes/sec. So, a Megabyte will be loaded in 16.7 seconds. This is your €0.03 worth, or €0.18 per minute. You'd laugh at this pricing in Dial-up. Why roll over and accept it because it is being charged at a faster rate?

My vote: NO CAP

My alternative: Throttling the speed to 25% for the remainder of the month, at no extra charge. This will at least allow the connection be used.

dahamsta

Its just irritating for me to see that after a MONUMENTAL two weeks, we've made a HUGE leap forward

Well, no we haven't. We MIGHT have made a huge leap forward. We've made the mistake of counting our small flightless birds while still encased in a calcium carbonate outer covering too many times to get complacent now.

adam

Bard

Originally posted by matthiku
everything is said whatever TmB's comment may have triggered.

so let's go on moaning, bitching, fighting, squabbling, campaigning, lobbing and so on....

Oh thanks matthiku

and... "lobbing"? ... you throwing things at eircom now?