How much can I download on BT Infinity ?

yesterday was my first day on BT Infinity option 2, I'm connected at 37 Mbit. when I checked my download stats I had done 17GB in a day. if I multiply that by 30 days I'm looking at a total of 500 GB for the month. Does this make me one of the "heavy users" as outlined in BT's fair usage policy. I know the 300 GB FUP allowance is being removed in April, but BT say they can still throttle "heavy users".

I guess what I'm asking is how much is safe to download on Infinity (outside of peak hours) before warning letters arrive in the mail ?

Edited by NVB (Tue 29-Mar-11 14:11:45)

The wording for the new policy arriving in April suggests no targeting of specific users, but more likely collective throttles on applications

Remember just because the new policy appears in April we don't know when in April, so you might still trigger the old 300GB policy.

So the celebratory response of many of the heavy users is probably premature?

They could soon find certain applications slower all of the time? Removing the FUP sounds like some clever BT marketing to me, unless they are planning some massive capacity increase overnight?

There are no "out of peak hours" on Infinity.

If you expect to download 17GB every day then you might fall foul of the speed reduction clause before it's removed.

I'd imagine it'll be hard to continue downloading that much every single day unless you have a rather large server full of hard drives and a very active newsgroup account...

In reply to a post by orly:

There are no "out of peak hours" on Infinity.

If you expect to download 17GB every day then you might fall foul of the speed reduction clause before it's removed.

I'd imagine it'll be hard to continue downloading that much every single day unless you have a rather large server full of hard drives and a very active newsgroup account...

I 'll limit my downloads to 300GB or less until the FUP is removed in April to avoid being slapped with the 30 day speed restriction for heavy users.

After FUP is removed, I don't know what will happen ...

/quote from BT:

"BT Total Broadband Option 3 and BT Infinity Option 2 allow unlimited downloads and uploads within the monthly rental price, so customers on these products will not be charged for over-use. However, this does not preclude BT from reducing your speed if you are a heavy user in order to protect the experience for the rest of our customers."

I don't know what BT consider heavy usage but on a 37 Mbit connection it's not hard for me to hit 500 GB in a month, I guess time will tell.

Interesting info regarding no off-peak periods on the Infinity products, It now seems pointless for me to wait until after midnight to schedule any heavy downloads. I thought (wrongly) downloads off peak did not count.

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Edited by NVB (Tue 29-Mar-11 21:39:04)

It may not matter to you but uploads also count towards the 300GB allowance by the way.

So it's a BT Total con!

"We are removing the 300GB FUP. It is just going to be whatever we feel like at any time." It is still an FUP, where Sky Unlimited has no FUP and Be's is not active - some people downloading terabytes per month.

How likely will it be that Sky or Be will continue this when they get round to releasing their FTTC products? And at what price? If they do continue with "unlimited" will they be up to the task of supplying enough bandwidth to cope with it as they will inevitably attract the leechers if they use it as a distinguishing feature in their adverts. Only difference is the users will be syncing 2-20x faster depending on the circumstances. Looking at Be's pricing, will they offer a 40mbit product for the same price as their top end ADSL offering at 22 quid? Will Sky do the same for 15 quid or 7.50 (if you use you Sky TV account to subsidise it). Would be an interesting proposition but given the speed/usage increases that these ISPs will see they'll introduce limits, raise the price, or see how it plays out and hope for the best. With the latter I'd imagine the quality would suffer in very short order.

With all ISPs you have a slightly different variation of the same choice currently. Do you go for BTs option which has some management and a vague "usage limit" or with other ISPs who generally offer restrictive peak times of around 12-16 hours a day and do everything when you're asleep. It's fine to have every port open if you slap a 30 or 60GB peak time allowance on it. Basically doing the same thing BT do, in a different way but, in my opinion, it's far more restrictive.

Even if BT decided to go with the policy of cutting everyone down to 2Mbit at all times as soon as they hit 300GB, you'd be able to shift about 1TB in any given month. This assumes you have a 40Mbit sync and cane it full speed from minute 1 of day 1. You'd eat the 300GB in just under a day. At 2Mbit for the rest of the month, you could move about 650GB for the remaining 29 days. (Hope my quick calculations are accurate). Note that BT, as far as I'm aware, don't actually do this level of speed restriction currently.

Realistically, I can't see more than a relative hand full of residential customers needing anything like this even with the comments about 4 people watching iplayer at once and all that. In our household there are multiple users watching TV, downloading all sorts, listening to spotify, gaming etc and we don't get near 300GB a month. There is also the fact that users at this high use level are basically being subsidised by the lower usage customers because there is no way you can supply that level of bandwidth to everyone for the price points offered by most ISPs. I suspect BT have ran the numbers since last year and can see that the numbers involved in "really big usage" are low enough that this "subsidisation" can continue in return for getting some positive spin out of saying their relaxing/removing the FUP/limits. It also means that people hovering around the "limit" can relax a little.

Or do you go to someone like Titan and hand over 140 notes or whatever it is to have an actual unlimited version?

From the survey i'm running it seems like BT have judged it pretty well in terms of what you get and how much it costs. Most people probably download a lot less than 100GB a month but at the same time would rather not have to watch the clock or plan out their usage like they would on someone like IDNet. Doesn't seem like anyone is in a rush to go with Titan for their unlimited package either. Be and Sky will probably pick up some of the customers that are waiting currently but BT have the advantage of being out of the gates early and locking people down into the 18 month contracts. They'll have picked up plenty of "converters" including from Be and Sky. How many of these people, in areas where FTTC is already available, will be left to convert to Sky or Be when they get their products out there?

They might have missed the boat unless they can actually provide products at comical prices.

Edited by orly (Wed 30-Mar-11 01:55:50)

In reply to a post by orly:

From the survey i'm running it seems like BT have judged it pretty well in terms of what you get and how much it costs. Most people probably download a lot less than 100GB a month but at the same time would rather not have to watch the clock or plan out their usage like they would on someone like IDNet.

I do agree there about BT having judged the market well, but i suspect there's a non-trivial proportion who believe that only BT supply fibre. But perhaps those aren't very well represented on this forum

I also wonder whether Plusnet will start to divert BT's share, having aimed their packages at roughly £4 lower than BT, on what otherwise appears to be similar offerings (except to the people desperate for a FUP >= 120MB).

A new survey might be needed in a few months. I wonder if you could get some trends from that...

From the survey i'm running it seems like BT have judged it pretty well in terms of what you get and how much it costs. Most people probably download a lot less than 100GB a month but at the same time would rather not have to watch the clock or plan out their usage like they would on someone like IDNet.

I agree they probably have. I do wonder however what will be happening in 18 months time. If they can sort their desperate customer support service then they may have a chance of hanging onto some of those customers.

I would like to take their packages, but broadband products aren't worth much if the customer service is terrible. That's the only reason I will be going with a niche provider. Even if they can't answer your problem any better/quicker (which I doubt )at least the experience won't be as frustrating as every single one those I've had with the BT call centres in the past. You've usually given up by the time you get past them and onto the people who can actually help.

But then maybe that's the intention!