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[UPC] Cap and Fair Usage Policy
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Hi guys. I've been reading your posts with great interest. I'm currently with Digiweb (wireless not DSL) and for €46 per month I'm getting 8mb with a 40GB monthly allowance. Service is very good and overall I'm happy except that the download cap is too low are there are 6individual users and it costs too much to upgrade to a higher package. UPC had a door to door saleman going around in Carlow recently and he tells me that they offer 10mb download speeds with unlimited (fair usage policy) traffic. It only costs €35 a month if I recall correctly so it would be a much better deal for me. I'm just curious to know what UPC service is like? It might be good in Dublin, Waterford or wherever but has anyone had any experience of UPC Bband in Carlow? I'm somewhat reluctant to change from Digiweb as they have been very reliable, customer service is good & they also have a freephone number
. I previously had DSL broadband both with Perlico and Cinergi (later taken over by imagine) and they were a disaster! I had to get my solicitor to resolve a dispute with Cinergi.:mad:
Any comments on UPC service and reliability would be greatly appreciated. I need to make a decision soon as we have gone over our monthly limit by 40GB and our download speeds have now been reduced to 152kbps until be come back within out limit0 -
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well, I was in a similar position to yourself.
Chorus have been doing TV in my area for yonks so the cable was already there, but recently (towards the end of last year) UPC started rolling out their 20mbps cable broadband around Navan so I took them up on it.
it's been up and down, but what it seems to be is that it's a new service, so they put x amount of bandwidth/hardware whatever in the back end to cope with x amount of new customers.
then more and more epople join up and that back end starts to struggle with the load and speeds drop, but eventually they send someone out to add more on the back end and it goes back to normal again.
here's the complete history of my speedtests since I got it in November last year.
as you can see, it's hardly a solid 20mbps all the time and quite often has been particuarly bad, but it always works and i very rarely have any real problems with real world speed, be it downloads or browsing.
in case you're wondering how i got that info BTW, speedtest.net keeps track of your IP address and even though it's not techinically a static IP address, its unlikely to change very often (if ever) if you don't turn off your modem.
i took that historical data and saved it into excel and just created a table from there.
yes, I know i'm a geek. 0 -
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the 'up to' thing is there because they know that they can't guarantee certain speeds to every single person in the country who should be able to get it without picking their way through every mm of cable between their hub and your house to find the bottleneck, which would cost millions that they don't have.
it's an easy get out clause for all ISP's.
if you had a contract that said exactly 20mbps broadband service and they couldn't give exactly that to you, you'd keep at them to fix it until they could.
of course they also use it to hide contention at busy times as well, so it's win win for them. 0 -
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As far as im aware comreg dont actually regulate BB products.
This might be more a consumer watchdog issue, not sure of the exact body here in ireland. Perhaps advertising standards body.
However they do list in the T&C's a FUP exists and they are probably covered.
250G is very generous, however its impossible to know if what you have used is what UPC thinks you have used.
Course, they don't want to advertise 250Gb limit and a tool to check cos everyone would aim for it pretty quickly
I had a quick look to be sure - ComReg do regulate broadband services in Ireland, although I'm not sure about it's position with UPC since no phone service is offered.
Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland (ASAI) is a pretty pointless avenue to explore as the group has no legislative power.
The cap, as far as I am aware, must be listed in their T&C's - saying one exists isn't sufficient. I absolutely understand that some people will see the cap as a target rather than a limit if it is listed, however, on the flip side, users (particularly new users) need to monitor their own usage so they don't exceed fair usage and become the subject to this clearly unwanted warning letters
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the problem is, that it clearly states on their website that there is NO CAP on the 10 & 20mbps packages, but that it is subject to 'fair usage' and then don't tell you what they consider fair usage until after you cross their invisible limit.
this whole cap/fup thing has been done to death though. they won't change it of their own accord and if they were forced to, they might well just drop it to a lower figure to p1ss people off.
as for accurately measuring traffic, it's very easy.
just buy one of THESE (you'll find them cheaper on ebay) and flash it with THIS or THIS and it will keep a deadly accurate record of every single byte that passes in and out of your network and keep track of historical data over several months, as well as provide you with lots of pretty graphs so you can see how you're going. 0 -
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I have a problem thats similar to the posters here. I occasionally help out my sister with her computer when it comes to stuff she doesn't know much about (anti virus etc). She got a letter from UPC that she had downloaded 106.41 GB when shes on the light / value? package with its 20GB cap. Except she didnt download anything like that, she dosnt have torrents or p2p.
I know thats not the only way a body could download huge files but she never would hit the 20 GB in a month. Shes had this for years and its strange that it just pops up now. I myself am careful and have the same package but I havent gone over the cap recently anyway.
To quote the letter it says "We have found that this [that being other customers deterioration of service] is usually caused by a small number of broadband customers who continually upload and download extremely large files" Thats resonable but to me it begs the question what else could be causing it? I would have thought that downloading and uploading huge files would be the only thing that could cause such a large total! Or else downloading small files all day and everyday but even then....
I did a search and I found she has 14 files bigger than 10megs on her disk?
I have noticed that the only firewall was the windows one and am installing a decent one but could someone other have taken control of her computer and downloaded via hers so it wouldnt show up on theres? Im just perplexed and cant think of a good explanation except an unflatering one concerning UPC.
Theres another issue that she has the light pack that doesnt exist now apparantly. Shes paying 27.50 + 6 = 33.50 The 6 is standalone charge.
The value pack is the most similar to light which suposdly has 6 meg download but still 20 GB cap. Value pack costs 22 + 6 = 28. The 3 megs differance may be UPCs justification for the extra price but since it never gets to anything like 3 megs it hardly seems fair. They do like their fair usage.0 -
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