'Unlimited' broadband issue still unresolved!

[adam]

Recent government's response to the 'unlimited' broadband issue throws a fair amount of light on many sides of the issue. First, the government has not sided with these 9000 naive customers who are surprised to know that unlimited packages have in fact some limits.

Certainly, I am not one among them. Even the government is aware of the limits of unlimited deal, when it says 80 percent of domestic customers fall well within the limit specified by a broadband provider and the remaining 20 per cent fall outside of it, perhaps because they are using a domestic package for business use, then it ("unlimited") may be considered a reasonable claim. So, if you get any mail from your ISP, that you have used more than your download limit of your unlimited package, you may be either using your home broadband for businesses or watching some IPTV. So, you are also partly to blame, this is what we have to learn from the government's response.

Secondly, some ISPs may have 'forgotten' to publish their fair usage policy as in the case of Orange recently, or some ISPs deliberately do it to mislead the customers. When the small print says that 'unlimited' packages have certain download limits, why they should be called 'unlimited' packages at all? I cannot find better word than 'misleading' for such advertisements.

Thirdly, the government directed Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to handle the issue on a case-by-case basis. One should remember that ASA declined to resolve this issue many a times in the past. So, what outcome can we expect this time?

The central question remains - Will the ISPs who claim their packages are unlimited when infact they have some hidden download caps, be penalized?

[JenniP]

I signed that petition and I fell about laughing when I got the response. I used to have an "unlimited" service, I knew there was a fair use policy but I was never told this, and with the amount to throttling and traffic shaping I dont think I could of gotten near it.

Now I have a capped service with no throttling or shaping and I know as long as I stay under my cap I can hammer the thing as much as I like, but with a 330GB a month cap I would have to, to get near it.

Yes I pay extra but for my money I get more, so I'm hoping the "Unlimited" either means what it says or quietly disappears and hard caps appear for everything, if you want to be a bandwidth hog pay for it, although the charges should be reasonable.

Jen

[Hazel]

I seriously hope they are, but it might be a while.

Demon used to offer unlimited bandwidth, but they changed it when they upgraded all customers to 8mbps connections. My limit is now 60GB, as i'm paying for the HomeOffice broadband. More accurately, they now have a fair use policy.

You'd have to download 2GB a day for 30 days in a row to be hit with any limits. The only way you could probably physically do that is via torrents, which throws rather a lot of suspicion on what you might be doing with them :P.

Basically, if you're using more than that then you should be upgrading to a business plan. I think that is a perfectly reasonable policy.