http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2740621.stm

Users have vented their fury after it emerged cable company NTL is imposing download limits on its broadband service.
The company now limits its customers to one gigabyte of downloaded data per day despite advertising that an advantage of broadband is "unlimited surfing".

Subscribers say the limit amounts to as little as two-and-a-half hours of use a day for a service that says it is "24/7".

NTL says the move is necessary to help all of its customers get a consistent service.

Broadband has generally been sold on the basis that it is "always on" and is a much faster way of downloading pictures, videos and music.

But NTL's terms and conditions now limit downloading to a level consistent with "normal use".

It defines the one gigabyte limit as equivalent to "200 music tracks, 650 short videos, 10,000 pictures or around 100 large software programmes downloaded per day".

I too live in a village, but a couple of people got together and have managed to get BT to lower the level required for Broadband, and set up a web page, to encourage everyone with an e-mail (or 2) addresses to register. Now in just under a year we have now been told by BT that we have reach the level to get it. (I must admit I have more than one telephone line, and registered all of them to assist in reaching the limit - and I may have registered them more than once.......) Although BT is slightly more expensive, I'm going to stay with them - they provide a pretty good service and I never have any problems.

I wonder how the streaming data we all have from, prices, charts etc will add up each day - more than 1Gb? I don't know, but I'll probably find out soon enough!!

I've received 222Mb since 7 am. It's easy enough to check, just double click on the two little green terminals on the bottom right of your screen.

Legilly
streaming data doesn't normally take up much bandwidth (compared with refreshing an entire page for example) so you have nothing to worry about

cant see what all the fuss is about personally, this will only affect those who are probably downloading for commercial or dubious reasons

FWIW, I can confirm that streaming data from MoneyAM is very bandwidth efficient. Basically, only the changes to the information are sent (the 'deltas' in techspeak, hence the DeltaStream(r) trademark for the technology).

If anyone is concenred, I can get you some typical numbers but downloading normal web pages is very much more expensive in data terms.

Derek (IST and MoneyAM)

Ntl clarifies broadband rules

Ntl has apologised to its UK customers affected by the limitations it has imposed on its broadband service, admitting that the information was poorly communicated.
Over the weekend the cable firm decided to restrict downloads on its fast net service to one gigabyte per day, the equivalent of around 200 music tracks.

Consumers were angry that the service - which was advertised as unlimited access to the net - had been changed.

Ntl has since removed the term "unlimited" from the service and promises to be flexible in its enforcement of the new rules.

All internet service providers are wrestling with the problem of how to make broadband attractive to customers in terms of price and bandwidth and still make money.

Most are operating on wafer-thin profits already and some analysts think that tiered pricing - charging different amounts depending on how much bandwidth people use - is the only way forward.

Bandwidth hogs

"As more and more people download music and video then ISPs will have to move to this. It makes sense for heavy users to pay more," said Jill Finger, analyst with research firm IDC.

haystack,

ntl may have appologised seeing the negative impact and knowing how desperately they need customers. but as one of our colleagues here stated is this the thin end of a wedge? ntl and others, including telewest, desperately need money and would seek any excuse to bolister their very weak finance and balance sheets. telewest is 5 billion in the red! and all these cable companies are banking on theri broadband as their mainstay.

in a few years time our tv, radio, fridge, washing machines security systems will all run through internet connections! they would then be able to name their price if not strictly regulated.

I've got Pipex. I checked last night and after 13.5 hours continuous on-line, I'd received about 150MB.

well, i checked my usage this morning and it worked at 7mb/hour. and this has been for the first hour of market opening using streaming monitors and looking all over the place and playing some music from the internet for a good measure.

hilary in post 18 above has reported near twice my rate. maybe she has downloaded some heavy streaming stuff.

eitherway, 1 gb seems like a very generous allownace. and this puts to question the assertion by haystack that 1 gb amounts of 2.5 hrs of surfing, unless of course this has involved downloading video tracks using a fast system. certainly not ordinary surfing.

the problem with cable broadband is that unlike the wired broadband is that your speed relies on how much others using the same cable connection, your neighbours, do make of the system. and in a crowded uran area such as london this should matter a great deal.

the speed of broadband available in the uk run typically at the bottom of the range at 500kb/s. in the usa speeds up to 6 times this are available and in between as well. the more you pay the faster connection you obtain and the bigger the limits.

by the sound of it ntl have not been unduly unreasonable, particularly in view of their very cheap price of 15/m, chaper than many dial up 7/24.

There is hope out there.............

Firm slips broadband cable through gas pipe

No-dig option keeps the traffic flowing

By Paul Hales: Wednesday 02 April 2003, 16:28

PRIVATISATION was a great thing in the eighties. We had a phone company, a gas company and an electricity company supplying "utilities" to our homes, and everything was working sort of OK. But there weren't shareholders making loadsamoney and the members of the board weren't aggressive enough so didn't get million-pound pay packets. So they all had to go -- flogged off to the highest bidder.

Now the gas company sells electricity, the electricity company sells gas, the phone company makes a fortune out of us and the trains don't work.

But competition means that there are also loads of companies competing for our business, so all as it should be in an advanced capitalist society. But one of the drawbacks of this system is that they all have to dig up the road at one time or another to supply us with our needs.

The cable company NTL dug up a stretch of road for a mile and a quarter between the Bedfordshire village of Barton le clay and my own ex-haunt of Sharpenhoe. This was all well and good except that there was such poor demand in Sharpenhoe for cable that the cables never got fed through the yellow plastic pipes laid for the purpose. When I sought Broadband from BT for a village ten miles for the nearest exchange, they laughed their socks off. And when I asked NTL about the cable and they too fobbed me off admitting that although they'd done the digging they never laid the cables. The tw**s.

Now, not every cable company will dig up the road for nothing. And now some won't have to dig up the road at all, thanks to US firm OFS Optics

OFS Optics, formerly a division of Lucent, is set to install its cables to supply buildings in Long Beach, California with broadband, in a mile of natural gas pipeline.

The company says its DuctSaver FX cable, developed by Sempra Fibre Links, a subsidiary of Sempra Energy can be installed inside a pipeline while gas is still flowing, eliminating the need to dig up the road. It is therefore "quicker, less costly to install, and less disruptive to traffic and urban-planning schemes".

The DuctSaver FX cable is an all-dielectric fibre cable measuring 5.8 mm in diameter. It is designed to run in utility lines, existing city ducts and gas lines and has been successfully deployed previously in the US and in Europe, the company says.

Can't see what the problem is. Fluck Em!!! If you signed up to unlimted service and it is now limited, tell them to come and pick up the equipment and stop paying them. Bastards. I hate this kind of mentaility; 'We asked our customers what we needed to do to make our service more efficient and they said - maybe restrict times allowed on line (mamby pamby bunch of a@@holes). Not 'INVEST SOME MONEY IN GETTING BIGGER AND BETTER BANDWITH THEN!!!!!'

A few of my friends and i went on xbox live in Jan. I was the only one that could not get NTL, so had to have a 512K connection from BT, they all got 750MB from NTL - my 512k connections runs faster!!!! Now they are telling them, that if they play on xbox, they will be subject to extra charges!!! I say stuff em; they are bloody p&*cks.

Short the aholes into hell and don't waste an atom of mucus on their sorry pathetic burning carcuss when they get there.

ChaosT,

Forever the diplomat!

Actually I completely agree with you!