The CAP - Vote

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?

Dustaz

Originally posted by bk
It is Brian, not Brendan :cool:

Oops, wrong user

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

Most seem to be pushing for uncapped however. Given the choice, I know thats what i would like.

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.

Sorry, thats completly untrue. I use my dsl for online gaming a hell of a lot and voicecomms are used often. The amount of bandwith used is nothing in comparison to kazza-wh0ring

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.

Lets not go there.
If i was an eircom droid i could probably make a fairly good argument about Business Expenses for commercial Software, graphic and web designers working from home.
Taxi drivers work for themselves and must pay more for insurance than other people. Its a business expense and its a hell of a lot cheaper than a leased line.


Again, I think the 4gb cap is horrible and I look forward to a much smaller cap. I just feel that there needs to be a devils advocate side of things pushed here.

crawler

TmB and dustaz - please remember we do not HAVE a product yet.

But as I said yesterday - this is all good news.

oeNeo

No cap.

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

More than likely yes.

nahdoic

Did anyone else think this would be about the Common Agricultural Policy before they opened the thread? Anyway ...

YOU SHOULD NEVER EVER BE CHARGED EXTRA IF YOU GO OVER A CERTAIN CAP.

A company that charges 3c for every megabyte over the cap has no competition and wants to milk you for every cent you got.

A cap is needed, to ensure a good QOS for all users. If you go over that cap and you're affecting other users, you should get a warning e-mail, your bandwidth should be throttled, you should not have to pay more for something that is already too expensive.

Winters

I would love to have NO CAP. it would really be great. Though at this stage i would settle for a cap as long as it is something hugh like 20+ GB. Thats as long as the price is somewhere around €50 (incl. VAT)