Alot of moaning and groaning!

Mutant_Fruit

Instead of watching the phone bill, counting out the pennies, people moved to the "unlimited" usage packages for dialup, and started counting the hours they were online instead of the price.

Now instead of counting pennies or hours, they are now counting megabytes. I fail to see how this is much different to what we had before, we are still counting out our usage, being spareing with what we have, so we don't go over the fixed limit.

THe only true broadband will be when we can forget completely about limits, and being careful about how much we use the internet. Otherwise its just souped up 56k.

In otherwords, caps should be removed soon. It may not be possible now, but they need to go. We have just substituted one barrier for another one (albeit, a bigger barrier).

Moriarty

The argument can be made that if you want that sort of service a leased line is what you should be looking at MF.

Totally forgetting about the limitations of DSL provision for the moment, bandwidth still costs the ISPs money. They're already on a pretty tight margin with dsl services. Why should they be subsidising (because that's what it is) your net useage?

jesus_thats_gre

While caps do piss me off no end, I do appreciate the reasoning behind them being in place.. When people have something for nothing, they use it for the sake of it and generally take the piss. However, its the fear of going over a cap that worries me.

The charges that one incurs for every megabyte over the caps is terrible. I wish ISPs here would consider sellings bandwidth in bundles.. That is, you get your xDSL service and 10 gig download cap for say 40 euro. Then allow customer who want more bandwidth to pay 10 euro odd per extra 5 or 10 gigs.. And when you exceed your cap you are automatically billed for an extra bundle..

Obviously the idea needs refinement but it would be fair on everyone, even the ISP..

Mutant_Fruit

Moriarty wrote:

bandwidth still costs the ISPs money. Why should they be subsidising (because that's what it is) your net useage?

I see what your saying, which is why i said that removing the caps isn't possible now, but it should be done whenever it is feasible. substituting one cap for another is all well and good, but when you see people having to practically stop using the internet 2-3 weeks into the month because they went and download 7.8gb's in the first 2-3 weeks just isn't fair.

Caps's such as NTL's are ones i could certainly live with. 1gb a day is fine. Ok, i would probably have to cut back at times, but it is certainly very resonable.

An 8gb cap can be blown in less than 48 hours, if you so wish. 8gb translates to roughly 250mb a day. My Steam installation cost me over 2gb's of bandwidth. Thats over a weeks worth of allowance if i had an 8gb cap.

If ISP's even offered 10gb packages for 5-10 euro, they'd still make a profit on the bandwidth, thus giving the customer better value (in the customers eyes), and giving them more money!

Moriarty

The current cap system is pretty extortionate, but I believe that a well implemented system is the most equitable way to provide broadband to people cheeply.

Sweeden has much higher (>70% iirc) income tax levels. Ireland is one of the lowest direct taxation economys in Europe. We get what we pay for.

Moriarty

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

I see what your saying, which is why i said that removing the caps isn't possible now, but it should be done whenever it is feasible.

I don't see any need for caps to be removed at any point in the future, just modified so that they're fair.

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

substituting one cap for another is all well and good, but when you see people having to practically stop using the internet 2-3 weeks into the month because they went and download 7.8gb's in the first 2-3 weeks just isn't fair.

You could make that argument about anything in life. 'I get a weekly pay cheque of 300 euros, but I can spend that in minutes if I want to! This is clearly unfair, I'm not being paid enough!'. It's not an argument for the increase in the caps, it's a demonstration of the lack of control some (a lot) of people have over themselves.

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

An 8gb cap can be blown in less than 48 hours, if you so wish. 8gb translates to roughly 250mb a day. My Steam installation cost me over 2gb's of bandwidth. Thats over a weeks worth of allowance if i had an 8gb cap.

I'm tempted to say 'So what?'. The ISPs don't provide you with a dsl connection specifically to play games, or install valves latest mod, or anything else. They provide you a connection to do what you want with, but specify limits on the total useage you're allowed. It's not their problem if you can't do everything you want.

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

If ISP's even offered 10gb packages for 5-10 euro, they'd still make a profit on the bandwidth, thus giving the customer better value (in the customers eyes), and giving them more money!

That won't work until eircom do it. Any ISP that offers a noticeably bigger cap than the average will have all the heavy users jumping ship over to them, with a far smaller amount of average users to even out the load. That sort of service is unfeasable, as we saw with netsource last year.

fidel wrote:

if NTL can afford to have 1gb a day cap why cant the whole Eircom/Esat/Netsource/UTV cartel have the same,

Simple reason really: NTL own their own network from top to bottom. They can run their service any way they choose, modifying contention ratios, caps and speeds as and when they want. IOL, UTV, Netsource etc can only run the services and types of services that eircom say they can.

fidel wrote:

dont they all buy bandwith from the same supplier??

No, they don't.

CyberGhost

Can't live with a cap!

No cap!

Moriarty

CyberGhost wrote:

Can't live with a cap!

No cap!

Well I don't know about all of you, but I'm convinced now.

Down with caps.

Murray

Setting limits on BB usage is probably one of the reasons why Ireland is 2nd last in the OECD BB penetration - providers should offer different pricing options so consumers can get unlimited downloads and aren't worried they're going to be screwed at the end of the month, whereas more savvy users (i.e. those of you who voted in favour of caps) who know their usage patterns could be offered the discounted pricing plans with the cap. How do we expect broadband usage to grow in Ireland with these artificially-imposed limits? Thats like saying, you can get electricity from ESB, but once you've consumed XX watts in a month, we'll cut you off. Wake up eircom!!

Moriarty

Murray wrote:

Thats like saying, you can get electricity from ESB, but once you've consumed XX watts in a month, we'll cut you off. Wake up eircom!!

No it's not, it's like the ESB saying once you go over a certain amount (0 in their case) you pay for what you use. No more, no less.

Unfortunatly eircom have extortionate prices for exceeding their cap and the other ISPs more or less had to follow suit or get overwhelmed with heavy users.

Ripwave

fidel wrote:

dont we pay the higher taxes as well,

Where does this persistent meme come from?

Irish income taxes are among the lowest in the Euro zone.

boo4842

my 2 cents...

This whole 95% of customers never go outside the cap comment that always comes up is crap. I'd say 90% of internet users in ireland don't know what an ISP is or do anything other than send emails or surf like the same 5 websites. There is so much on the internet that 4GB a month doesn't cut it.

I've seen Moriarty's comments that everyone who goes over the cap must be doing something illegal, this is just wrong. I used to live in Canada and I use up a lot of bandwith downloading TV shows that I can't get over here. This is perfectly legal as long as its for personal use and not for profit.

I used to use NTL and found that 1GB a day was reasonable, although I would have to clock watch sometimes. Eircom etc will just gouge out what they think they can get away with. I was quoted e240 just to install eircom bb last year!

My friend in Canada has this product which costs less than e30 for 5mbs and no cap. Another friend in Japan has 5 times this speed for the same price.
http://www.shoprogers.com/Store/Cable/InternetContent/extreme.asp?shopperID=

Its like saying you can use your car enough to get to work and back, but anything more and you have to pay twice as much for petrol.

Moriarty

boo4842 wrote:

I've seen Moriarty's comments that everyone who goes over the cap must be doing something illegal, this is just wrong. I used to live in Canada and I use up a lot of bandwith downloading TV shows that I can't get over here. This is perfectly legal as long as its for personal use and not for profit.

Sorry, I've never - not once - said that. People that do either (a) don't know what they're talking about &/ (b) are morons.

CyberGhost

drane2 said that boo

If you're transferring more than 24 gigs a month and using eMule, it can be safely assumed that you're involved in some kind of piracy. So why should they provide the bandwidth for you to do this?

just watching trailers takes so much bandwidth!

My friend in Canada has this product which costs less than e30 for 5mbs and no cap. Another friend in Japan has 5 times this speed for the same price.
http://www.shoprogers.com/Store/Cab....asp?shopperID=

I think I'm going to be sick now!

GreeBo

Murray wrote:

Setting limits on BB usage is probably one of the reasons why Ireland is 2nd last in the OECD BB penetration - <SNIP>
How do we expect broadband usage to grow in Ireland with these artificially-imposed limits?

Errr so you are saying that all these heavy users who will exceed the caps are not taking up BB at all because of the caps?

Hmmmm. Errrrr. No.

CyberGhost

redoxan, I dunno what will Murray say but I will defenatelly say yes!

while the hell should I pay so much money, If I can't do what I want?

GreeBo

That makes no sense (to me).
If you DL so much that you cant deal with a CAP you are very unlikely to go to dialup.

And if you are.....
nose/face

CyberGhost

why not? if I don't do what I want to do, then I just check emails, browse couple of webpages - importants only, and that's it! I won't watch trailers and play games, I will turn of images and flash, it usually comes out cheaper

because I know if I get BB with a cap, I won't be able to stop myself! BB to me is like blood for a shark - watched finding Nemo?

so I'm always on a look out for an unlimited cap isps!

why should Ireland close it's eyes and accept caps and monopoly, when other countries don't?

I'm pretty sure Ireland gets enough bandwidth!

It's just that greedy a**holes like eircom

GreeBo

"if I don't do what I want to do"

Says it all for me.

Gonzo

everyone is getting edgy over this cap issue coz as it stands at the moment there is no happy alternative for the home user, basically theres fek all difference between the home starter packages and co called homeplus/advanced package. The caps on both are relatively small particularly eircoms and even worse theres only 512bps and thats it. The home starter packages are fine as they are for light users but the top home package are only marginally better, this has to change and change soon hopefully. Hopefully fingers crossed we'll see a big improvement to the top home package this autumn with an increased cap from 8mb to 30gig and a bandwidth improvement to 1mb, I think the time has also come for eircom/iol to offer the home user a 3rd home package offering of an uncapped service at a higher price again so at least theres an option for those who want to use broadband the way it was intended but ive a feeling that this uncapped offering could be a year or two away. There should also be a 4th option of 2mb for the home user for those who could avail of it. We should see changes to the current offerings this autumn but ive a feeling im gonna be dissapointed once again with still just 2 packages @ 512k each available for the humble home user and only slight cap increases but we'll wait and see what happens

Superman

Well this hass to be one of my most useful post to date!

can I get a gold star

jesus_thats_gre

redoxan wrote:

Errr so you are saying that all these heavy users who will exceed the caps are not taking up BB at all because of the caps?

Hmmmm. Errrrr. No.

It is perfectly concievable that people have decided against BB in this country because they cannot find a competively priced service that suits their requirements.. So yes, people have probably decided against bb because of a cap.

jesus_thats_gre

CyberGhost wrote:

I'm pretty sure Ireland gets enough bandwidth!

At that, does Ireland not own a large percentage of available transatlantic bandwidth, i.e. exceeding 25% ?

GreeBo

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

It is perfectly concievable that people have decided against BB in this country because they cannot find a competively priced service that suits their requirements.. So yes, people have probably decided against bb because of a cap.

I disagree. If you are the type of person who complains about a cap I hardly think you will pay the call charges asociated with dialup or simply avoid surfing altogether.
:eek:

LoBo

Moriarity: hear hear!

Now, don't we have some sort of regulatory body that's meant to oblige the incumbent to do just that?

edit- hear hear as regards your long post at the end of page 2 of this thread

Adey2002

I know a lot of people have slated the Company I am about to mention, but if its an uncapped service you're after, why not try Irishbroadband.
They are very busy at the moment, so it will take a while to get installed, and in the past their post-sales support has not been up to much, but they are improving all of the time and now seem to be offering a fairly reasonable service.
PLUS!! - I have been reliably informed that the basic package is being upped from 512k to 1Meg (both ways) imminently.

Adey2002

No, no caps on IBB.

Hellrazer

Christ,
What ARE you lot who are complaining about the caps downloading each month??

Ive the basic Eircom package which I use mainly for gaming and at the end of each month I usually have 2.5-3 gigs left of my cap.

Then I go looking for something to download and can never find anything decent to download so please tell me what it is that you lot are downloading(and point me in the right direction )Cos if people are using 16+ gigs a month them Im obviously missing something.

Ripwave

Adey2002 wrote:

why not try Irishbroadband.
They are very busy at the moment, so it will take a while to get installed, and in the past their post-sales support has not been up to much, but they are improving all of the time and now seem to be offering a fairly reasonable service.

Not in my experience - the service has gone to the dogs altogether ever since they started advertsing it in the national media.

As for their "technical" support? What a joke!

OfflerCrocGod

The problem is not that people are put off by the caps it's that the vast majority of ppl in Eire don't really see any need for BB - most of them just send e-mails and other little crappy stuff; they haven't a clue how incredibly usefull BB really is! There are also many ppl who don't even have a PC - these people are keeping us all back as they would rather stare at a TV for hours on end then do something usefull on a PC or on the net