Jedi Star

According to a recent research by consumer group uSwitch 1 million users have come close or exceeded their broadband usage limit.

What did the uSwitch Survey say?

•    7.5m did not know their download limit
•    6.2m customers thought they had no usage cap
•    One million have reached or nearly reached their limit
•    22% of broadband providers advertise the true limits of their packages

However most of the users dont even know that until their services are cut-off by their respective ISP’s.

All the major ISP’s brand their broadband packages as unlimited however they also have these so called usage caps where the amount of bandwidth used by each user is has a limit.

Most of the broadband users are confused regarding these caps and not sure how they can track their usage.

Also with the need of broadband increasing day by day, having your broadband cut off is like having your electricity cut off.

Also even though these companies have these so called usage caps or Fair Usage Policy most companies have not stated what these limits are.

According to me no ISP should be allowed to tag their packages as unlimited unless they really mean so.
Its high time the ISP be transparent to their user or face their grunt after the disconnection.

But again what I think is the major grunt for these disconnection is faced by the Technical Support Staff for these ISP’s who themselves are not sure what are the policies as even they are not been kept informed regarding the same.

As per my experience in a Technical Support Center for an ISP, what I feel is if the ISP’s keep their customers in the loop they can have more happy customers who would stick with them for long.

If you check what the major ISP’s offer on their website you would find that most of them brand their services as Unlimited. For e.g.

•    Tiscali – advertised as unlimited, has fair usage policy but with unspecified excess, will cut off those deemed heavy users

•    Be – advertised as unlimited, unspecified excess, will not cut off users

•    Sky – unlimited with no usage barrier or cut off policy for those on its own network. 40GB monthly limit for other customers

•    Toucan (Tiscali in Disguise) – advertised as unlimited, with unspecified fair usage, will cut customers off

•    Virgin Media – unlimited but traffic of heavy users is shaped at busy times

•    Orange, advertised as unlimited, unspecified excess, will remove heavy users

•    BT, advertised as unlimited, unspecified fair usage, will not cut users off

•    AOL, 40Gb limit, will remove users who exceed it

•    Plusnet, 30Gb peak-time limit. Those exceeding their limit will be encouraged to upgrade

Usage levels are going to increase with more and more people using catch-up TV services such as the iPlayer and what these ISP’s need is to have broadband packages with unlimited bandwidth and no caps on the same. But I think these packages won’t come cheap.

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Posted under Broadband Help