Unlimited

galactus

OK, I'm going to take the plunge @ home with BB.

Who offers unlimited downloads? I don't like the idea of a cap.

Sponge Bob

smart

nadir

I'm going for smart too, but be warned, I'm two months waiting for my connection, and still no joy. If you want it, order NOW. and you will have it somethime in the space of 1- 3 months, I'd imagine.

Skyuser

UTV for first 3 months. Then €6.

galactus

Smart aren't in my area :-( but thanks.

Do UTV give unlimited downloads, Skyuser?

Skyuser

Yep free for first 3 months and then €6 p/m extra after and you can cancel whenever you want.

optiplexgx270

IBB 2Mb package

ricey

Try here http://www.broadband.gov.ie/bbinfo/Broadband_WhatIs.aspx

And im going to get the 5mb 512kB package from here
http://www.netsource.ie/business/broadband.asp

johncorleone

Sponge Bob wrote:

smart

Who operate a Fair usage policy. Not quite the same as an "uncapped" service.

MunsterCycling

If you call over 1 Terabyte a download limit? Look on the smart broadband forums for this, they didn't even blink an eye!

johncorleone

MunsterCycling wrote:

If you call over 1 Terabyte a download limit? Look on the smart broadband forums for this, they didn't even blink an eye!

This is an unsustainable situation for the ISP (They're making a hefty loss on transit costs for anyone using anything like approaching 1TB). Don't expect it to continue.

zuma

1TeraByte us an insane amount of data and it must be impossible for anyone to get any use out of it unless they are streaming video on a 24 hour baisis!

GarfieldConnoll

johncorleone wrote:

This is an unsustainable situation for the ISP (They're making a hefty loss on transit costs for anyone using anything like approaching 1TB). Don't expect it to continue.

That's a fair point if:

1. Everyone was to do it.
2. That customer's downloads affected our aggregate transit capacity requirements.
3. That customer's downloads were subject to transit fees (not RedHat ISOs from HEANet )

Until then though, we're happy to have 1TB+ customers.

Garfield.

galactus

johncorleone wrote:

This is an unsustainable situation for the ISP (They're making a hefty loss on transit costs for anyone using anything like approaching 1TB). Don't expect it to continue.

Bittorrents aside, I don't think you're factoring in things like videconferencing, teleworking etc. In fact, using your rationale 1TB allowances will never be allowed!

1TB might seem huge now but things change. It wasn't that long ago that 1GB seemed huge.

It could be argued that ppople who are downloading what might seem insane amounts of data are in fact "early adopters": pushing the market forward.

Sponge Bob

The price of big pipes has stopped falling (as it did from 2000-2004) and may start to rise gently from now on.

the growth in BB generally has mopped up a lot of surplus capacity particularly trans atlantic and in Asia

johncorleone

GarfieldConnoll wrote:

That's a fair point if:

1. Everyone was to do it.
2. That customer's downloads affected our aggregate transit capacity requirements.
3. That customer's downloads were subject to transit fees (not RedHat ISOs from HEANet )

Until then though, we're happy to have 1TB+ customers.

Garfield.

The only point which is remotely valid is the 3rd one and it's highly unlikely that a majority of any users bandwidth is coming via a cheap IX port.

The fact of the matter is every customer which you take on who uses anything like 1TB per month is a loss leader for the company. What's the point in having a customer who loses your company money every month ?
(Other of course than to increase numbers of customers in order to appear to be a more attractive company to purchase in the future).

You only have to look to the UK to see that almost all of the previously uncapped services are now capped or have fair usage policies which kick in well below a couple of hundred GB. The only ISP's with uncapped residential services are the small regional ones with very few customers, the ones who shape traffic, the heavily contended services or the ones who charge business type prices.

More info here on the situation with caps in the UK here :

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/caps.htm

GarfieldConnoll

johncorleone wrote:

The only point which is remotely valid...

That's a fairly passionate view on things.

johncorleone wrote:

The fact of the matter is every customer which you take on who uses anything like 1TB per month is a loss leader for the company.

Hence the point about it only costing money (overall) if everyone was doing it.

johncorleone wrote:

(Other of course than to increase numbers of customers in order to appear to be a more attractive company to purchase in the future).

Genius. The plan is to sign up all the 1TB users in the country.

johncorleone

GarfieldConnoll wrote:

Hence the point about it only costing money (overall) if everyone was doing it.

Not so, for even a tiny percentage of users to be using this amount of bandwidth will cost the ISP money.
The ISP face increased commit rates from transit providers (or face higher rates on 95th percentile billing).
On the wafer thin margins which ISP's run on, supporting users who use close to 1TB doesn't make good
business sense.

bk

galactus wrote:

Bittorrents aside, I don't think you're factoring in things like videconferencing, teleworking etc. In fact, using your rationale 1TB allowances will never be allowed!

I videoconference, telework using VPN and VNC, frequently need to download Unix ISO's for work, big source code putbacks and bringovers and I rarley ever come closer to breaking NTL's 40GB cap.

Lets be honest here, the only reason only residential user would come close to using 1TB is for TV shows and movies from PTP.

The only person I could think of who might use this sort of bandwidth would be a person doing video/animation work from home.

Skyuser

1TB is hardly possible. I download loads of movies and tv show on P2P cause i'm on utv unlimited. I just can't use enough. Wouldn't even come near 50 GB.

zuma

Skyuser wrote:

1TB is hardly possible. I download loads of movies and tv show on P2P cause i'm on utv unlimited. I just can't use enough. Wouldn't even come near 50 GB.

Hahaha.....50Gb!

I have a truly unlimited package(eircom Business BB) and I can easily enough hit the 100GB mark in a month.

vinks

if there was an isp that provided a guaranteed level minimum of service, with a large or unlimited cap and a static IP address, i'd imagine there would be some creative and valid uses like setting up a lustre cluster for file storage/replication (for backup purposes) things like that chew up bandwidth.

with normal usage on a filesystem like that you could easily do 20gigs in a few days. its probably something i'd setup myself with a few friends for collaborating on work or keeping good backups for various things.

Skyuser

zuma wrote:

Hahaha.....50Gb!

I have a truly unlimited package(eircom Business BB) and I can easily enough hit the 100GB mark in a month.

Ya you won't be laughing when you compare our bills and yours is ten times my amount.

Blaster99

3-4 times more expensive, more like. Bad enough. Does Smart offer multiple static IP addresses with something like the 6Mbps service? This is a nice thing that eircom does that in my case is very useful, bordering on mandatory. IBB, god bless them, offers this also but I never saw the point as the one address never worked right.

Skyuser

Blaster99 wrote:

3-4 times more expensive, more like. Bad enough.

Erm no 10 times. Eircom BB 5Meg is €169 ex. vat. I pay €16. So really its more than 10 times after adding vat.