On sign up, a customer would read this in the T&Cs:

Acceptable Use Policy

You also agree to abide by the rules and guidelines set out in the IDNet Acceptable Use Policy (as available and amended from time to time)

The AUP is available on a link from the same page as the T&Cs.

I don't like the use of the term unlimited either, and with WBC coming, I hope it will be dropped as the potential for even larger bandwidth usage is significant. However, I do feel that the information was there to be read by the OP. I know I read both the T&Cs and the AUP before signing up myself.

A lot of bitter customers ?Almost as many people wanting a lunch they don't pay full price for

Its somewhat naive to believe that the removal of the 'unlimited' from advertising will somehow solve the problem of people at the top end of the broadband downloading competition, and give larger limits. It will not.

All that will happen is that hard caps will be put on the download limits, and everyone over that will be throttled or charged (the 1% who go over the top) and the other 99% of us won't notice or care.

In reply to:

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All that will happen is that hard caps will be put on the download limits, and everyone over that will be throttled or charged (the 1% who go over the top) and the other 99% of us won't notice or care.

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Exactly. Nobody can possibly complain about that.

Unlimited should mean what it says, especially on a premium-priced product, even if unlimited use of it would make a huge loss for the ISP. That is their problem for an invalid pricing structure.

Was it free or just cheap flights if you bought a Hoover vacuum cleaner? That cost Hoover millions, but there was no way they could get out of the contracts with the customers. So why should OfCom and the ASA let ISPs?

IDNet's only get-out is the one-line sub-clause in their T & Cs banning use that adversely affects other users. I doubt if the OP's usage did that! That would only come about if many users did it at roughly the same time.

some isps have a cap and still throttle so I dont think 99% will stop moaning if thats the case. It would depend on how low the cap is set and if they throttled whilst within the cap.

For a �15 broadband product that has a burst speed of 8mbit on ipstream I would call a 10 gig usage limit reasonable providing there is no form of protocl based traffic shaping whatsoever and the customer can use that 10 gig how they pleased.

An isp can apply in cap one of 2 ways, either set a cap that is profiteable (would be a very low cap), or set a cap that isnt profitable if fully utilised but is profiteable on an overall basis with lighter users subsidising it. The former is typical on PAYG type products.

Personally I find zens products better than BTs even tho they higher priced and appear to be lower capped, when in fact zens 50gig cap beats BTs 40gig FUP'd unlimited product. Lower quality capped products such as entanets adsl1 packages are still better than fake unlimited products as you know your limits with no protocol based shaping.

aaisps products are probably the best available on ipstream, their peak caps are premium priced but dont suffer congestion and again with no protocol based shaping, their off peak is very generous. So it is entirely possible to offer a capped product and have a happy customer base, the problem is it requires a bit too much honesty for some exec's liking. I have no problem with unlimited products as long as the isp honours them, if someone downloads 2tb then they should be prepared to write of the loss.

correct, ukonline have that same clause as well, its unlimited but they say they will take action if other customers are affected by high usage. Luckily for ukonline customers that clause to have not be needed to come into affect.