The one thing regarding adsl24 not throttling is they sold the company to coms. Now did they sell as they realised that an untrottled network wasnt financially working for them? Who knows but certainly over the last few years more and more bandwidth is being used with streaming, gaming etc so maybe things werent working at adsl24 HQ

Plusnet are quite definite about it. It is truly unlimited. As are Sky and BT, possibly EE. I don't know about TT. Xilo I haven't checked their T & Cs.

Edit: Doesn't matter anymore I guess, I'm not on Coms much longer, I can hold out for a while. Shame to see an ISP I highly recommended to many, many friends end up like this though

Edited by deleted (Sun 23-Mar-14 23:22:01)

Fine for me (well fine as in throttled). Port 119 too

+1

Well said!!

Steve

Edited by stevepressman (Mon 24-Mar-14 01:33:13)

Hi Levi

Appreciate that you don't know me personally or professionally and may not have seen my engaging on the forums but before you make further personal attacks, I'd be more than happy to discuss with you individually as I have with with some other ADSL24 users.

Responding to queries on a public forum means walking an incredibly thin line. I have chosen to engage with users on this forum because I think its the right thing to do. All I ask is that there is a balanced view on issues rather than conclusions being drawn without all the detail and information available. I have responded directly to every single request into my PM box and will continue to do so. I have been able to resolve most issues and for those where it hasn't met customer expectations then we have gone our separate ways with a (virtual) handshake and even a smile.

I've dropped you a PM but appreciate as a casual user you may not check your box on a regular basis.

Happy to be part of this community and work with people to provide information and where possible find solutions. I hope that a mature approach can benefit everyone.

Just to recap, we HAVE been testing traffic management, we didn't tell the world, (which I apologised for last Monday) and DO need to publish the policy on our website once we have concluded testing.
There is NO personal vendetta against any single user, we are only concerned with balancing the network for ALL users.

I also appreciate that it used to be different but things change and we have to adapt to those changes. If we do nothing then the online experience for users will significantly impact a large number of customers. Having a measure of control is the responsible thing to do.
Not everyone is going to agree with what I have said or the policy's we wish to employ and that might cause a level of dissatisfaction.
I'll be straight with what we intend to do at the end of the test period and you have the choice to accept the changes or switch to another supplier. In an ideal world nothing would change and everyone would be happy but unfortunately for me, Coms and our users we do need to make some changes.
Of course I don't want people to leave but I have to accept & understand that some people will choose to do so as a result of their own user experience.

There will be a statement on our website later this week explaining what we are doing as per our obligations to the Ofcom code of practice relating to Broadband Speeds.

Thanks and once again, please do not hesitate to contact me directly if I can answer any of your questions or queries.

Paul

Thanks Paul. Can you link to the statement when its out as be interested to read it?

LeviActionslacks's post may have been rather badly constructed, but the core of what he is saying does appear to be true - and the core of what Coms have been saying does appear to be... well, lies.

On the ADSL24/Coms website FAQ page:

Will there be any traffic shaping on the Coms network?

A: No. Coms appreciates the need for transparent services and the network is free from FUP and traffic shaping

You have now admitted that there is indeed traffic shaping.

In an email dated 12-Dec-2013 from Coms:

There will be no adverse effect on your monthly usage limit, or maximum available broadband speed

The introduction of throttling/shaping has an adverse effect on maximum available broadband speed.

And in an email dated 21-Jan-2014 from Coms:

As promised there are no changes to your price or contract and your service won�t be downgraded in any way

The introduction of throttling/shaping is a downgrade in service.

Perhaps us users should be contacting Ofcom about this? Coms have promised no downgrades before the switchover from ADSL24 (and we have emails as documented evidence of these promises) and are now downgrading our service.

That's all well and dandy, but you haven't addressed this statement directly:

"As promised there are no changes to your price or contract and your service won�t be downgraded in any way."

Hi Shroompicker

Fair comment, I only addressed it by saying things have changed.

At the time of the statement there was no intention to change the price, contract or service in any way. We have been able to keep that promise for contract terms and pricing. Because of a number of reported issues with packet loss, this caused us to review the management of the network (service) during peak times in order to find a resolution.
This resulted in us investigating how other ISP's mange their networks and our network team using their own experience leading to the trial of traffic management software in order to resolve the issue.
We have been tweaking the profiles in order to get a balance and prioritise real time traffic. P2P and newsgroups have been impacted as a result and we will publish on our website what the policy will be when we complete testing this week.

Difficult argument to 'win' when addressing the issue of lying as service for some customers has changed. I hope that I can make the case that the intention is never to be dishonest and the speed of responding to real time events makes it easy for speculation & conjecture and difficult to manage but we will make efforts to improve this.
I can only apologise for this necessary change to those who are affected, as the intention is to ensure that as many users as possible get the best online service as is possible from our network. There are a number of users where this change will effect their online experience and I expect many of them will be dissatisfied by its not possible to please 100% of the base. Having worked in the industry for 20 years I've yet to see any business have 100% customer satisfaction but it doesn't make complaints any less relevant. When we have made mistakes we need to learn from them and some lessons are harder than others. We are learning and putting those lessons learned into practice.

Regarding Ofcom you raise an important point, the code is voluntary and neither Coms or ADSL24 were signatories to the 2010 code. I will put this right by signing Coms up to the code http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/telecoms/codes-of-p... as well as ensuring we have measures in place to manage and monitor our compliance to the code.

We have work to do, we haven't always got it right but we will continue to work hard to address issues and not sweep them under the carpet.

Incidentally there is a useful website we have found which might be of use to you regarding uptime of several services that the team are using in the diagnostic phase http://downdetector.co.uk/ hope it has some use for you all.

Thanks,
Paul