| [ADSL] BT Broadband Unlimited?!?! Ok, so whilst sharing accommodation it is a common problem to find that everyone you live with uses the internet for a variety of things (watching films/tv, streaming music, playing a number of online games).
As technology goes the common thing nowadays specially for a lot of people who play games is digital downloads, my math maybe wrong here but if you live in a household where 3-4 people play games and buy games on a regular basis, watch video and buy music and film downloads...
How is it possible for a company such as BT to claim to offer an Unlimited Broadband service? (yeah I know with a specific "Fair Usage" capacity)
The problem arises when they can not provide the maximum speeds they advertise, and not only that but they will cap your download rates if you for example "watch too much digital TV" that is simply not provided by them (NOT BT vision) or buy and download too many games?
As a simple example lets say a household was to buy 10 copies of various games that will take up on average 7GB space each, all this in a month. That would be around 70GB of downloads.
Add to this the fact that people will watch a variety of shows using the BBC's own IPlayer, but this household may have a number of HD televisions so, why watch standard definition programmes when you can just watch the HD content? O_o
So taking into account the BBC's own bandwidth meters we are told the speed necessary for this will be above 1mbps (so there is no constant choppiness) lets say you watch on average 4 maybe 5 hours of tv per day (this is just one tv... one person)
I think your downloads are getting pretty high by now...
But wait your household also has access to IPods/Itunes O_O An average of 10-20 albums per month (no feat, not for anyone who really likes their music)
On average each album has lets say 7-10 songs, each song encoded as a normal MP3 is an average of 5MB.
That is another 0.5-1GB average for one person per month.
We've not taken into account any browsing or online gaming bandwidth...
By the end of a month your downloads will be reaching around 100GB or more...
From BT's own fair usage policy pages:
»bt.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/bt.cfg/p···cats=346
According to ofcom's own report:
»www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4014···ort.html
The broadband speeds offered by BT are much lower than expected and I am pretty confident a lot of people will pay for their so-called UNLIMITED package so they can get the maximum speed available and they can have the luxury of not worrying that they have a 10-20GB a month cap.
But then, even if you do pay for this extra service and complain to BT themselves that you are still not being provided with the right speed and your package should not cost you this much...
You will receive e-mails telling you to stop being naughty and using their bandwidth so much or else they will slow you down...
How is it possible for them to offer such a service when a user can easily go above 100GB in this case...? If their so-called unlimited downloads have got a very clear limit, why is it possible for them to advertise this service as unlimited? even if they add small print that basically tells you their Unlimited value is simply up to them to decide as and when they want to.
I would love to see some feedback on this, as at the moment it seems a hot-topic and I know a number of people being affected by it. |
