Metropol

Move to zen. £24.99/month, 20GB cap, no traffic shaping (UNLIKE PLUSNET), superb technical support, superb reliability.

and no, i am not a zen employee. kevhal is.

i must say, i quite like of plusnets throttling. by far it's the fastest isp i've ever used, in the end it helps to control arseholes who leave their pc downloading mp3's and dvd's 24/7. there is just no need for that, and it ruins the service for everyone. it's this reason why these limitations are in enforced in the first place. somebody who uses 40 gb of traffic a month (over 1gb a day) should not be using a residential product and should be paying commercial rates.

btw, a blinking dsl light on a creative blaster modem means that adsl isn't working on the line. when my adsl was activated the modem reported the line status as 'showtime' (and the light stop blinking) even though i wasn't able to login. there is a generic bt username you can use (i forget what it is) to test adsl functionality to your exchange which all providers should provide access to. you then get a bt wholesale status page telling you everything is ok.

Dr Lobster* wrote:...who leave their pc downloading mp3's and dvd's 24/7. there is just no need for that

Could you clarify why there is "just no need for that"? If listening to lots of music is what you enjoy doing, then leaving your comptuer to download it would seem like a necessary thing to do. Providers have to wake up to the fact that a digital lifestyle leads to increasing amounts of bandwidth being used and a measly couple of GB just doesn't cut it. What is the point in having an 8MB/s broadband connection if all you are going to do with it is check your emails once a day?

the bt logins don't work on datastream, which is what tiscali (and resellers) and NTL (and therefore virgin net etc)

you can try them anyway but they probably wouldn't work
speedtest@speedtest_domain is the username
password ignored

bt_test@startup_domain
password ignored

cdd wrote:

Dr Lobster* wrote:...who leave their pc downloading mp3's and dvd's 24/7. there is just no need for that

Could you clarify why there is "just no need for that"? If listening to lots of music is what you enjoy doing, then leaving your comptuer to download it would seem like a necessary thing to do. Providers have to wake up to the fact that people are using increasing amounts of bandwidth and a measly couple of GB just doesn't cut it. What is the point in having an 8MB/s broadband connection if all you are going to do with it is check your emails once a day?

Because Mr and Mrs Average want that. They want 3539583459083590348593845903485Gb/sec for 10p a month, with no caps, excellent reliability and excellent support, when it's not necessary. No contention too.

These days people are cheapskates and say "£20 a month for broadband!!!!?!?!?! hahahahaha I'm not paying that - i'll go to brand x who are £10 a month and i will moan when my speeds are slow, the support is terrible, traffic shaped, etc"

cdd wrote:

Dr Lobster* wrote:...who leave their pc downloading mp3's and dvd's 24/7. there is just no need for that

Could you clarify why there is "just no need for that"? If listening to lots of music is what you enjoy doing, then leaving your comptuer to download it would seem like a necessary thing to do. Providers have to wake up to the fact that people are using increasing amounts of bandwidth and a measly couple of GB just doesn't cut it. What is the point in having an 8MB/s broadband connection if all you are going to do with it is check your emails once a day?

if you're leaving your computer on downloading music, 24 hours a day, for days on end how many mp3's is that do you think?

how much music could one person possibly listen to?

i'm not against people using their broadband for iptv, voip, downloading music, dvd's software etc etc, but there comes point where there has to be a consensus on what is reasonable.

like any network, there is a limit to just how much traffic can flow across the internet at any one time and if something isn't done to alter the behaviour of heavy users, we're all gonna have 100mb pipes to our homes but with download speeds of a few kilobytes like the good old days.

it's not a case of internet providers 'waking up' people have to realise that if you want to download large amounts of data, you're gonna have to pay a premium for it. why should i (and other users) put up with a substandard service because selfish people leave their pc's on for hours every day downloading more music and files than they'll ever listen to or need?

40gb of mp3 files (of average length/encoding) would be several weeks of music played back-to-back. it's excessive, it's selfish, and it ruins it for everyone.

moo wrote:

cdd wrote:

Dr Lobster* wrote:...who leave their pc downloading mp3's and dvd's 24/7. there is just no need for that

Could you clarify why there is "just no need for that"? If listening to lots of music is what you enjoy doing, then leaving your comptuer to download it would seem like a necessary thing to do. Providers have to wake up to the fact that people are using increasing amounts of bandwidth and a measly couple of GB just doesn't cut it. What is the point in having an 8MB/s broadband connection if all you are going to do with it is check your emails once a day?

Because Mr and Mrs Average want that. They want 3539583459083590348593845903485Gb/sec for 10p a month, with no caps, excellent reliability and excellent support, when it's not necessary. No contention too.

These days people are cheapskates and say "£20 a month for broadband!!!!?!?!?! hahahahaha I'm not paying that - i'll go to brand x who are £10 a month and i will moan when my speeds are slow, the support is terrible, traffic shaped, etc"

I have nothing against making people choose a package which suits their needs - it is not fair that people who download more should pay the same as people who just browse the web to check the weather and send mail -- but I do not see why people object to the principle of large amounts of downloading, especially when it has been paid for. I am on a 20GB package with F2S which has served me very well, but the starter package for #13.99 supports speeds of up to 8mbs with a cap of just 0.5gb/month!

cdd wrote: I am on a 20GB package with F2S which has served me very well, but the starter package for #13.99 supports speeds of up to 8mbs with a cap of just 0.5gb/month!

but a couple of years ago, you'd pay more than that for a dialup service which disconnects you every two hours, where it would be impossible for you to download that amount of data (without leaving your phone line tied up for days on end). i don't understand what your point is.

some people want a fast connection, but don't use their computer for more than occasional browsing and email checking. that price is certainly in line which what people have paid in the past.

Dr Lobster* wrote:

cdd wrote:

Dr Lobster* wrote:...who leave their pc downloading mp3's and dvd's 24/7. there is just no need for that

Could you clarify why there is "just no need for that"? If listening to lots of music is what you enjoy doing, then leaving your comptuer to download it would seem like a necessary thing to do. Providers have to wake up to the fact that people are using increasing amounts of bandwidth and a measly couple of GB just doesn't cut it. What is the point in having an 8MB/s broadband connection if all you are going to do with it is check your emails once a day?

if you're leaving your computer on downloading music, 24 hours a day, for days on end how many mp3's is that do you think?

how much music could one person possibly listen to?

i'm not against people using their broadband for iptv, voip, downloading music, dvd's software etc etc, but there comes point where there has to be a consensus on what is reasonable.

like any network, there is a limit to just how much traffic can flow across the internet at any one time and if something isn't done to alter the behaviour of heavy users, we're all gonna have 100mb pipes to our homes but with download speeds of a few kilobytes like the good old days.

it's not a case of internet providers 'waking up' people have to realise that if you want to download large amounts of data, you're gonna have to pay a premium for it. why should i (and other users) put up with a substandard service because selfish people leave their pc's on for hours every day downloading more music and files than they'll ever listen to or need?

Your argument would apply well to .txt documents -- 800mb of plaintext is more than many would ever read in their lifetime. But it does not hold water when it comes to size intensive formats, specifically video files. A well encoded 800MB video file would provide 1.30 hours of entertainment, and broadband makes this possible. The same applise to one of Micro$oft's charming 200MB bug patches for their crummy software. And as broadband speeds increase and hard drive sizes become larger people will expect even greater quality such that the average video file would be around 7 or 8 GB. There will be increased proliferation of content delivery services once a market becomes available for it (and I´m actually surprised it hasn´t quite taken off yet!), and future DVD´s astounding capacity is testament to the fact that file sizes are only becoming larger. One day people will buy their 30GB DVDs online and have them delivered digitally in minutes. People may not have had an excuse to download 40GB of data per month 5-10 years ago, but it's different today, and becoming even more so in the future. Perhaps the idea of running broadband internet using a dated telephone system as its backbone should be reconsidered - people should not have to compromise on the amount of data they download just because the current system cannot handle it -- the system should be changed to meet consumers demands.
(By the way, am I correct in thinking that video is currently the most bandwidth intensive application of internet usage?)


Regarding my point about the Starter package (8mb/s with 0.5Gb cap) -- soemone who is that light a user of the internet does not need something that fast; the 2-3 seconds the user saves when loading a webpage does not seem like good enough reason to go for a package with such extravagent download speeds.

One other point to bear in mind is the reason that caps are here is because BT centrals cost a lot (pipes from BT to the ISP) and something like 78 8Mb users fill up a 622Mb pipe (at a cost of £1.7million), which is far less than what the ISP pays per pipe.

Because of this, 78 users maxing out with IPTV and VOIP would cost the ISP the same as 78 users maxing out usenet or p2p.

8Mb with a 0.5GB cap is really pointless. Why do we need 8Mb for cheap?
People looking to move off dialup and want something that works wouldn't mind 512k.

I just don't know what exactly is going on here.

I've received an email from Tiscali saying that my phoneline is now ASDL enabled.

I've hooked up my DSL router, found the necessary connection guff on the Tiscali site, set up my router for Tiscali, and yet it won't connect.

My router informs me that it cannot synchronize with my provider/exchange, leading me to believe that ADSL is NOT enabled on my line, and Tiscali have just sent me an email which is nothing more than lies.

I reckon BT have realised it would be too expensive to give me broadband, and have told Tiscali that "yep, that number is connected to ADSL - send him his shitty sagem modem", when really BT haven't enabled my phoneline, and there is STILL a loud buzz and static-like clicking on the telephone line.

I've also just tried calling Tiscali, but...wait for it... their broadband customer support phoneline is only open between 9am-5pm Mon-Fri. So I cannot get a response from Tiscali until Monday morning.

God help those who work in 9-5 jobs, because they'd have a hell of a task in getting through to a tech op at Tiscali.

I am absolutely sick to the back teeth of this farce, and I'm about to write a very strongly worded letter to Tiscali and to BT Wholesale/Open Reach and forward a copy to Ofcom along with a complaint.

I could understand these problems IF I lived in some remote farmhouse on Dartmoor, but I don't. This house is a 1982 dormer bungalow in a village with around 500 people, and just 1.6 miles from the town of Pembroke. It's truly maddening.

I'm moving back to Cardiff in 5 weeks time. At least then I'll be able to get back onto NTL with their trouble-free cable modems and download speeds of up to 8meg. *sigh*