NTL Download Cap

gnashrr

I was inquiring recently with NTL to find out if my area had coverage yet. I'm with Irish Broadband at the moment and although I like many others have had some teething problems I cannot fault their current quality of service. IBB also provide SDSL (same upload data transfer rate as download) which is great but for a price of €48.50 per month for Breeze 2Mb and confirmation from their NetOps department that they have no plans to increase their speed anytime soon I have started to look elsewhere. With NTL offering 6Mb for €39.99 I think I could soon get over the novelty of ASDL. IBB also have one other ace up their sleeve, 'NO CAPS', which brings me to my question, has anyone ever broken their NTL download cap, what's more has anyone ever broken it multiple times and what was the consequence?



I spoke with one of NTL's sales assistants about this matter and she told me that when a customer breaks their cap they're just sent a letter of correction asking them not to do it again. I'd like to hear from someone who has done this, preferably multiple times before I sign up.

Tar.Aldarion

Broke it by a lot every month, nothing happened. I may have been lucky though. Had NTL for a year.

Diabolus

I break mine all the time.
Never had a problem.

RE*AC*TOR

i got a letter once, politely asking me to play nice. I still reckon I've broken it plenty since.

Its a great broadband service overall though, wouldn't touch IBB.

Cabaal

Probably managing 100GB+ a month on mine and no problems,

CiaranC

I often do 100GB without issue.

CountryWise

so basically they never add on charges to the bill? they just notify you to be good?
My landlord pays the NTl bill but i pay the additional BB cost so dont want him to get cheesed off if he sees additional prices on the bill

watty

Morelikelu to cut off persistant offenders or throttle their connection speed.

CiaranC

This thread is from July. NTL have since started throwing people off their service for breaking the pathetic 40GB cap.

I give myself another month before Im thrown off myself.

Mistmyr

NTL changed ownership earlier this year and around Aug/Sept things began to change for the worse.

Before Aug if you broke the cap you were indeed sent a letter of warning and that was all.. now however since Sept i believe we have seen a number of final warning letters go out as well as a number of disconnect letters.

Do a search here and you will see a long list of problems with the current setup of NTL,
1] The cap is now including upload & download,
2] They have provided noway for us to monitor our usage,
3] Traffic is being routed all over europe right now leeding to high ping times.
4] Customer service is almost nonexistent right now.
The list goes on......

Its a pity because they had a rock solid service for the 3 years that i was with them but the past few months were painful anyway thats just my 2$ worth..

Misty

watty

1) is inevitable for any non-premium service
2) That's not very fair. They should fix that.
3) The routing / peering is likely to get priority in getting sorted as that is bad for them too.
4) I think they closed a call centre. But was it much good when you could get through?

They have increased customers by 20% over last while and are doing huge effort to upgrade, esp. in ex Chorus areas. I imagine it will be disruptive for a while till they have finished untangling the rats nest they inherted from the two companies.

CountryWise

There customer service is a complete joke, you cannto get through and when you finally do after 5 hours on hold they allow your call through and hang up!
ok so basically you do get warned if your downloading too much..........

Tar.Aldarion

I loved NTL, now thay are terrible. Woeful customer service, woeful ping etc, waiting to be disconnected.

Mistmyr

CountryWise wrote:

ok so basically you do get warned if your downloading too much..........

Before Sept it was all just warning letters but since then i know of 2 people who have been cut off and from the posts here on the forums they were not alone...
Ok I agree that some people were Hammering the downloads but a friend of mine was on 6mb service and his latter said he DLed 44GB for the month and they cut him off,
Also he had never received any warning letters up to that point.


Misty

mandrk

The cut-offs in mid september certainly helped my NTL connection, my Blueface VOIP was usable again. But as expected in the last week or two my blueface has started to deteriorate again ... surprise surprise. So I logged a call with NTL customer support and someone from Broadband support rang me back the next day.

For once the chap actually seemed to know what he was talking about and was able to correlate the times I was having problems with whatever usage graphs they have in their hands. He wasn't sure if usage was still being monitored or if it was just a clampdown at the time!!:eek:

He also understood the latency issues and ridiculous routing through Holland & England. He asked me to e-mail him some trace route numbers as they were gathering numbers to pass on to .... whoever!!! I'm not holding my breath.

I also asked him about NTL's intention to launch their own VOIP service. He said it was currently on trial in an area of Dublin but he also acknowledged that they need to resolve their routing issues prior to rolling it out. So some light but I'm worried about how long the tunnel is!!

Rich