BT Dropping Fair Use Policy?

Heard BT are dropping their fair use policy, but have no idea if it's just a PR stunt as they seem to be saying "we're dropping it" but then "but we will still stop excessive users" and "it doesn't affect most of our services".

Anyone able to sum up what's going on in a couple of sentences?

no idea m8 however ALL ISPs who quote unlimited/unthrottled will have clauses and the one that springs to mind Bethere, even they have a clause in theirs! Personally would hate to have my service ruined by a select few downloading 24/7, but maybe I`m being selfish .

They will still run traffic management, but rather than affecting you more if you go over a mythical figure, they will simply use the management to avoid any protocol chewing too much capacity overall

I have always been a little curious about those that download the
total content of the internet. What do they do with all that data ?

- Alex

Well someone buys the 100 DVD cakes that the supermarket sells

In reply to a post by RSTSGeek:

I have always been a little curious about those that download the
total content of the internet. What do they do with all that data ?

- Alex

They keep it until that evening when it gets deleted before doing another download overnight ...

In reply to a post by RSTSGeek:

I have always been a little curious about those that download the
total content of the internet. What do they do with all that data ?

- Alex

Careful now, when I asked that of someone on here I had the strangest conversation, had abuse thrown at me and wound up getting the thread locked.

Oops.



http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/bt/f/3880279-is-100...

and

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/bt/f/3749034-speed-...

Thanks for the prompt warning shtu. It wasn't my intention to upset anyone.

I'm still fairly new around here, as a poster, and I don't want any "flame war".

I think I will tread delicately around this one, for the time being !

Cheers - Alex

Much cheaper places than supermarkets

In all honesty we as a family are what I would call fairly heavy users, online all the time, kids on youtube/facebook. The wife does all her uni work online using the uni servers and I do a fair bit of browsing and gaming online. On my last check a month or so back we did about 40gb maybe less.

Mr G i would say that 40 gig in a month isnt that heavy anymore, now i know im a heavey user Mrs does Uni work on line i do a lot of i player esp now F1 is back a lot of streaming via the sky player alot of on line gamming and quite a bit of downloading overnight this months usage so far is 126 gig.

To be fair i like Bt retails management system dosent interfere with streaming or gamming stops people like me down loading stuff during peek periods so i can game and stream i just leave my down loads overnight.

You put to me to shame kris. I thought that I was a heavy user,
with an average of around 60 gig a month.

Just curious, but how did you manage before BT removed the FUP ?

They would surely have been limiting your bandwidth with the figure
that you have just quoted.

- Alex

fup uised to be 100 gig a month then went to 300 rember if you went ober the 100 gig mythical figure they simply restricted your peek time bandwith to 1 meg wich is fine for what i used it for peek time. i run my donwloads overnight when i go to bed and turn the machine off in the morning before i go to work, i have to say i have yet to breeech 200 gig and would be suprised if my personal usage ever does however as the kids get older the familys usage might get over that amount.

As i said once you get used to the traffic management sytem its ok.

Have a mate who has been known to push a terabyte (1000GB) in a calendar month.

A few hundred a month, especially on FTTC, isn't hard.

In reply to a post by orly:

A few hundred a month, especially on FTTC, isn't hard.

I've now had Infinity for a week and at midnight yesterday the checker was showing 95.83GB, we often have a couple of radio streams running, web browsing, email and some downloading. There are 3 computers running 24/7 though (not downloading 24/7 though).

Edited to add, Online backup service too which is still doing the initial backup.

Edited by TheHorseman (Fri 15-Apr-11 12:48:24)

What you downloading ?? 100GB is a huge amount , even game patches etc I would be toiling.This month will be a wee bit heavier for me as I downloaded Rift and WoW to see if my PC would work on it so there was nearly 20gb and for the record I need an upgrade ASAP See if I get any money for my big 40 birthday that i can put towards my purchase

In reply to a post by RSTSGeek:

Thanks for the prompt warning shtu. It wasn't my intention to upset anyone.

I'm still fairly new around here, as a poster, and I don't want any "flame war".

I think I will tread delicately around this one, for the time being !

Cheers - Alex

Doubt anyone would get upset really (except mil), that was a bit tongue-in-cheek. Just still amuses me, that's all.

Ahem.

My household averages 170GB a month these days. In the age of High Definition, a movie can set you back 8-15GB. MP3s set you back 7-9MB in 320kbps quality, and even photos are stepping up on Flickr to 5MB+ So it's not hard to see that a family of four, plus guests stopping by can consume what other people think is a large amount of data.

But here's another way of putting it. If I went to your house, and your neighbors house and said why are you sitting in your living room with the heating on 24C in the middle of summer, when they don't need to as its hotter than that outside, i'd expect the response of I'm paying for the gas, so its up to me how much and when I use it. All fair enough, and the same goes for broadband.

Moral of the story: A broadband connection is always on, and can be used by more than one person, at the same time, for different uses, each having different demands on the overall network.

Lots of love - KK

Edited by deleted (Fri 15-Apr-11 21:23:31)

All fair enough, and the same goes for broadband.

Ok Asbestos flame suit at the ready Your example of gas use is all fair and square if broadband was PAYG but its not is it you pay a set amount each month with no extra charges ? Now if I`ve got you all wrong and this was not what you meant then apologies

I like watching the old tv shows that can be found on the Internet Archive, some of the series can be quite large downloads.

I have come to the conclusion that the heavy internet users watch alot of films/TV

In reply to a post by TheHorseman:

I've now had Infinity for a week and at midnight yesterday the checker was showing 95.83GB, we often have a couple of radio streams running, web browsing, email and some downloading. There are 3 computers running 24/7 though (not downloading 24/7 though).

Edited to add, Online backup service too which is still doing the initial backup.

I think I am right in saying BT count uploads towards the usage.

Not relevant to the FUP any more, but relevant to the reported figures. And very relevant on the 40GB options.

In reply to a post by MrGrumpy:

I have come to the conclusion that the heavy internet users watch alot of films/TV

They do, and when they get fed up with that they do a lot of Linux installation work, those install DVD's are around 4GB each don't you know. However, it's none of our business what they use their internet connection for

I have been hearing the same old stories for years, ever since I was with PlusNet and they introduced the "bad boys pipe"

Probably and in the case of internet archive users legally too.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I think I am right in saying BT count uploads towards the usage.

Not relevant to the FUP any more, but relevant to the reported figures. And very relevant on the 40GB options.

Yes, uploads are counted. The 40GB wasn't an option for me. The radio streams use around 1GB per 24 hours I think.

In reply to a post by Squirrel:

In reply to a post by MrGrumpy:

I have come to the conclusion that the heavy internet users watch alot of films/TV

They do, and when they get fed up with that they do a lot of Linux installation work, those install DVD's are around 4GB each don't you know. However, it's none of our business what they use their internet connection for

I have been hearing the same old stories for years, ever since I was with PlusNet and they introduced the "bad boys pipe"

Seconded been on this board for years now and not so wet behind the ears as they say There will be some whom are whiter than white but the bare facts are that the sole reason for those downloading 100s of gigabytes of stuff every month has got sod all to do with legitimate use. Old argument anyway.

If you decide one night to have a marathon and watch a series of some TV show it can easily rack up plenty of gigabytes.

Downloading updates, game patches, music and all sorts does to.

Multiply it by 2, 3, 4 or more depending on the size of the household and it's very easy to see bandwidth disappearing

Depends really.

If there are several people using the connection it's perfectly conceivable to use that much completely legitimately.

and if I download a programme via Iplayer on one machine, and want to watch it on a different machine, the copy protection wont allow me just to transfer it, so have to download again

Yep Miami vice series 1-5 equates to just under 50 gig

Quite right as well

however it has to be said that i have in the past used over 100 gig in a month legitimatley.

My steam file folders containing my legit PC games contains over a 100 gig of data last time i formated my main hard drive i had to redownload oll of steam again, so whilst i dont disagree that most of us heavey users are d/l stuff we probablky shouldnt be it can be done very easily legit.

In reply to a post by MrGrumpy:

no idea m8 however ALL ISPs who quote unlimited/unthrottled will have clauses and the one that springs to mind Bethere, even they have a clause in theirs! Personally would hate to have my service ruined by a select few downloading 24/7, but maybe I`m being selfish .

Mine is unlimited and unthrottled, When they say unlimited it is unlimited, not like other ISps who use the unlimited word and then you read though the small print and find out that it is not as unlimited as you think it is

In reply to a post by mikesmotors:

Heard BT are dropping their fair use policy, but have no idea if it's just a PR stunt as they seem to be saying "we're dropping it" but then "but we will still stop excessive users" and "it doesn't affect most of our services".

Anyone able to sum up what's going on in a couple of sentences?

BT FUP is not a problem, the problem I had with BT is their traffic management, some days I could not even use Iplayer and yet I was well below their FUP.

BT is awful, never go back to BT if I can help it.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

In reply to a post by MrGrumpy:

no idea m8 however ALL ISPs who quote unlimited/unthrottled will have clauses and the one that springs to mind Bethere, even they have a clause in theirs! Personally would hate to have my service ruined by a select few downloading 24/7, but maybe I`m being selfish .

Mine is unlimited and unthrottled, When they say unlimited it is unlimited, not like other ISps who use the unlimited word and then you read though the small print and find out that it is not as unlimited as you think it is

Have you got that in writing? Does it say that in their T & C ?

In reference to adsl24.co.uk/aup/:

What about excessive network usage?
If it's felt that any customer's activities are so excessive that other members are detrimentally affected, ADSL24 Internet Ltd may give the customer generating the excessive web traffic a written warning (by email or otherwise). In extreme circumstances, should the levels of activity not immediately decrease after the warning, ADSL24 Internet Ltd may terminate that customer's services.

In other words, run it "unlimited" 24/7 and you'll probably be cut off.

BT are not dropping their FUP. They are dropping their 300gb per month usage limit. Usage is now going totally unlimited, though only 0.5% broke the 300gb limit. They are continuing to request fair use in evening peak hours, in that users refrain from sharing large files etc. I should imagine that is auto-renewing contracts also get outlawed, many will be returning to BT.

The powers that be are not interested in those that download because they can never prove the end user by IP alone, they only monitor the uploaders.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8483482.stm
Sites that I use a lot can burn up bandwidth without downloading, but unlimited broadband is a lot cheaper than Sky.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/watch-online/
http://www.mypremium.tv/
http://www.livescorehunter.com/
http://www.tvcatchup.com/channels.html
http://wwitv.com/

Edited by deleted (Sun 17-Apr-11 21:59:42)

In reply to a post by MrGrumpy:

Have you got that in writing? Does it say that in their T & C ?

Not as such because each of their services are different, so they got it on the info of each product.
You look at their site and you will see that they don't block ports or traffic manage any service. But they do have limits on some, mainly the ones that uses the BT network.

Their Cable and Wireless service is 100% unlimited and unthrottled. A mate of mine who uses the same network but with another supplier went above 600gb for three months ina row, nothing was said.

In reply to a post by orly:

In reference to adsl24.co.uk/aup/:

What about excessive network usage?
If it's felt that any customer's activities are so excessive that other members are detrimentally affected, ADSL24 Internet Ltd may give the customer generating the excessive web traffic a written warning (by email or otherwise). In extreme circumstances, should the levels of activity not immediately decrease after the warning, ADSL24 Internet Ltd may terminate that customer's services.

In other words, run it "unlimited" 24/7 and you'll probably be cut off.

That is in their Acceptable Usage Policy, i think it would take some doing to do that unless you was really doing something illegal.

what i like is that there is no traffic management so everything works as fast as it can.

And what about water meters? Some would not have them as it'd mean higher cost. Just like when you go to a all you can eat buffet a fat guy going in with an empty belly for £10 may eat 5 times more than a thin guy paying the same £10.

I much love these arguments!

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

In reply to a post by orly:

In reference to adsl24.co.uk/aup/:

What about excessive network usage?
If it's felt that any customer's activities are so excessive that other members are detrimentally affected, ADSL24 Internet Ltd may give the customer generating the excessive web traffic a written warning (by email or otherwise). In extreme circumstances, should the levels of activity not immediately decrease after the warning, ADSL24 Internet Ltd may terminate that customer's services.

In other words, run it "unlimited" 24/7 and you'll probably be cut off.

That is in their Acceptable Usage Policy, i think it would take some doing to do that unless you was really doing something illegal.

what i like is that there is no traffic management so everything works as fast as it can.

therefore your service is not Unlimited?! There is an Acceptable Usage Policy! The punters on Be had the same argument, saying it was unlimited when in fact its not! There will be a cut off whether your ISP choose to use that policy is another matter!

In reply to a post by krazykizza:

And what about water meters? Some would not have them as it'd mean higher cost. Just like when you go to a all you can eat buffet a fat guy going in with an empty belly for £10 may eat 5 times more than a thin guy paying the same £10.

I much love these arguments!

Have to say no water meters up here Well if everyone went to the all you can eat buffet and ate as much as the big fat guy ( no offence to big fat guys btw ) The place would either put up prices so as to buy more food or it goes out of business? Sounds familiar doesn`t it! Of course they could do what Pizza Hut does and slows the procession of pizza`s coming out of the oven for their all you can eat Lunch buffet

But your assertion was that your service was unlimited. You mentioned it many times. Subtle alteration in your reply so you only mentioned management is disingenuous.

Obviously the AUP of your ISP disagrees with your statements. Treat it like a leased line for a while and see how long it is before ADSL24 is on the phone to you or writing interesting letters.

Why are you in a BT thread in the BTB forum writing this stuff anyway?

Edited by orly (Tue 19-Apr-11 02:35:48)

In reply to a post by MrGrumpy:

therefore your service is not Unlimited?! There is an Acceptable Usage Policy! The punters on Be had the same argument, saying it was unlimited when in fact its not! There will be a cut off whether your ISP choose to use that policy is another matter!

At least it is more unlimited than other ISPs and with no traffic management. the chances of getting cut off is pretty slim, try downloading 400Gb a month with Bt and you would soon get a letter or phone call, even if they say they have stopped their FUP.

In reply to a post by orly:

But your assertion was that your service was unlimited. You mentioned it many times. Subtle alteration in your reply so you only mentioned management is disingenuous.

Obviously the AUP of your ISP disagrees with your statements. Treat it like a leased line for a while and see how long it is before ADSL24 is on the phone to you or writing interesting letters.

Why are you in a BT thread in the BTB forum writing this stuff anyway?

Try doing 400Gb a month with BT and see where it will get you, they will soon be on your case.

Just because they say they are getting rid of the FUP, I am pretty sure that they will still complain if you use more than they want you to.

They also use traffic management which would not be so bad if it flipping worked. Plusnet could never get it working, Eclipse failed with it, and BT can't get it working either.

Why am I here? because it is a free country, well kind of

At least it is more unlimited than other ISPs

hmm is that a wee bit of back tracking going on Your definition is changing BT should employ you to write their T&Cs ROFLOL

It works fine for the most part.

You don't use BT, so how would you know?

Noise / Zyborg - you're here because you hate BT - you always have done. You don't provide any real advice because your judgement is clouded. You'll take any and every opportunity to knock BT however trivial it is.

I thought you'd given up on this crusade of yours - it seems you haven't which is not healthy in my opinion.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

They also use traffic management which would not be so bad if it flipping worked. Plusnet could never get it working, Eclipse failed with it, and BT can't get it working either.

Can't say I notice any management here on Infinity, I don't do P2P though and they don't appear to throttle Usenet.

In reply to a post by TheHorseman:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

They also use traffic management which would not be so bad if it flipping worked. Plusnet could never get it working, Eclipse failed with it, and BT can't get it working either.

Can't say I notice any management here on Infinity, I don't do P2P though and they don't appear to throttle Usenet.

yep have to concur but hey what would we know eh!!

You'd think, reading the ramblings of plenty of users on other ISPs that BT get you to ask permission to do everything and then inspect and stifle any resulting action like some kind of internet based view screen from the film 1984. I'm wondering why, after using the web, iplayer, gaming, general downloads, usenet and all that jazz that I haven't noticed it running like treacle. Do these others know something that I, as an actual user, don't?

Of course it's in the interest of others to do this. Their "unlimited" internet plans from their ISPs almost always cost more so they need as much stuff on their plan to be seen as better to make it look like a wise investment. Unfortunately they've just been duped into it because somehow they simply couldn't accept firing 25 quid a month to BT for what is actually a superb service.

Personally I've had people from Zen having a go. That's Zen who charge you over 40 quid to get a 50GB usage LIMIT and 2Mb upload LIMITED connection. If you dare desire 10Mbit upload, the cheapest they can manage is 66 quid! And don't be forgetting the activation charge either. Or hardware.

Then we've had the IDNet crowd crowing about how they're apparently the best ISP around. But for the same money you give to BT, they seem to think that a 15GB peak time and 45GB off peak allowance is "less limited". And don't be forgetting the activation charge either. Or hardware

Now it seems like an ADSL24 user has decided to have a go. What do ADSL24 give you for around 25 quid on FTTC? a 30GB "peak" allowance (sounds limiting to me). Almost farcically, peak time is 16 hours a day. Frankly, LOL. 2Mbit upload? Sounds less than the 7Mbit my line manages. Want 49 quid off me to activate it and won't even give me a router? Sounds like a pile of horsesh... to me. But of course they won't "manage" the connection when you use it. They've done enough restriction before you even get online. What if I decided to download 400GB when I felt like it using ADSL24? At 6.50 per 5GB over my allowance I think it could get pricey unless I "restricted" myself and only downloaded anything during the night when I tend to like sleeping. Imagine if I decided to use HD iplayer during the day when I'm awake? Heavens.

Basic BTB option 3 here with traffic management and works for me ok as i have said just dont try torrent or p2p during peek period

For an FTTC connection BT is unbeatable at the moment (& for a good while to come) with their price for Option 2 & all that goes with it. The deal I got was unbeatable by other ISPs that I tried before finally settling for BT for a new line & Infinity - free line installation, free installation of Infinity & £8 a month reduction for 3 months on the cost of Infinity.

My connection hasn't dropped since the installation on February 8th (2011). Speeds have been rock solid, both upstream & downstream since installation. I use Sky Player a lot (football, other sports & movies), which has been rock solid on the streaming & standard downloading. i-player, youtube & such like have also been running perfectly.

As for my Sky Unlimited connection, it does exactly what it's supposed to do 24/7 & is also rock solid. The price for my Sky connection would be hard to beat.

The difference between my Sky connection & BT connection is the throttling of p2p during peak hours, but it's no big deal as it's easy enough to download something via p2p during offpeak hours.

Overall I'm chuffed with my Infinity connection & the same with my Sky Unlimited connection. I've been nowhere near the BT 300GB limit though (don't think I have been close to 300GB on my Sky connection either & there's 5 of us using the internet in my house).

With a family you can soon get through the GBs, especially with an FTTC connection. I keep my daughters on my Sky connection, which serves them well - youtube, facebook, college work, i-player & so on. I have the sole use of the FTTC connection (it was my gift to me ... along with the new phoneline & a phone that I can actually use when I want to use it! It certainly beats having to use my mobile all the time for calls or asking the girls if there's any chance of using the landline!).

I used just over 41GB in the first week that I had Infinity. Now my use just goes up when I watch movies or sports on Sky Player for the most part. I did use a bit up when watching series 3 of Extreme Fishing though (sad, but true )