How would YOU fix this?

Given that a large number of folks are struggling to use VM's services in the way they expected to (probably as a result of the advertising), Lets take a positive approach and look for remedies to the situation.

This may take the form of truthful advertising or it may be related to infrastructure or a hardware/software fix which enforces caps on speed or possibly we go back to the dark ages and pay for each GB of download?

What do YOU think is the way forward?

My view

Unlike in some northern European countries, at sometime in the past it was decided that Fiber to the house was and would remain unnecessary.
The time is fast approaching when this is no longer true so the upgrade of infrastructure must now take a more expensive route of replacing a lot more of the hardware than might have been the case.

Selling new connections should be related to availability of bandwidth, not whether or not there is a cabinet nearby.

Selling should state not just the headline speed but the average speed from said cabinet

Service should include a minimum set of statistics below which the user has automatic right to either cancel a contract or seek assistance in resolving the problem and that within a given time.

If a connection has an expected use amount related to the contention figures used to calculate how many must share a given bandwidth let the customer know what that is then he can choose to limit himself at that point.

So, just a bunch of thoughts, kept somewhat simplistic, to start this off

Super fast fibre is not necessary if all were given the ability to have a constant 20mbps (for example). The more people are given then the more they will take.

Edited by deleted (Fri 05-Apr-13 17:27:13)

I'd be interested because, as I understood it, they stopped sending letters threatening disconnection etc. in order to retain their right to continue to advertise their service as "unlimited".

IMO what they should do is stop advertising "unlimited" and simply terminate the contracts of anybody abusing the service after the first warning. That way maybe there would be a lot fewer congested areas.

If you can scan it and email it to [email protected]

No need to hind any personal information, I will make sure that this is removed before publishing.

If you do publish please post a link in this thread.

I suspect it may just be the advisory letter which they do still send out but I wasn't aware that it contained any threats or offered a get out of jail free on contract termination.

Not entirely - they don't charge per GB (BT do on their capped sevices) or cap the download volume although naturally limiting the download speed has that effect if you expect to be able to download 24x7 at full speed.

In practice most normal users can download as much as they want with VM so long as they avoid the shaped protocols or take steps to avoid the shaping - apparently for NNTP just using encryption is enough. Simplest by far is to use HTTP or FTP which only has the STM to contend with and as we've discussed before that certainly only used to operate for both of us during the published evening period. I'm not sure if that remains the case with the new regime as I've been away from home since it was announced until yesterday afternoon.