FTTC Value for Money

Hi was wondering why FTTC Monthly Caps are so low in comparision to the Speed/Price increase?

I'm currently on Zen active (Upto 20mbps (actual 4.5mbps)) 50Gb Monthly cap @ £25.52 (closer to £20 because I was going to move last year but got a discount to stay).

Ok now here's the thing Fibre active (40mbps (line estimate puts it at 36mbps)) 50Gb Monthly cap @ £36 not inc almost £100 connection.

Now the point is what's is the thinking of charging so much more for a product in which you can still only download the same amount in amonthly period? All this will do is hit the cap so much sooner.

Allegory time:- Full tank meaning 50gb monthly cap.

I Fill a Mini up with Petrol for £20 and travel 100 miles in say 2 hours.
I fill a Porche up with petrol for £40 and travel 100 miles in 30 mins.

I might get there faster but once the tank's empty what use is that 40mbps speed?

I really want to stay with Zen but the limit is brutally short as Fibre is meant to be fast and good for streaming/downloading but speed means nothing if you have an empty tank..

It's late and i'm partially drunk but this has been on my mind for a while.

My usage has not increased by changing to FTTC, but the speed of what I do has markedly improved. Not everything is about quantity of downloads, you know!

Paul

I know what you mean but i'm hitting the 50gb most months but that's because I consiously hold of downloading stuff.

No use in downloading faster in my sense i'm just going to hit the cap so much sooner.

Which raises the question why not stay on dialup?

The way traffic is charged for, means Zen to ensure they stay going long term generally need to charge the prices they do. This helps avoid horrendous congestion issues, i.e. keeps things downloading closer to what is technically possible on your line.

Now I know people will say that things don't slow down on BT Infinity, but for how long? Imagine if six months into their 18 month contract performance reduces to around that of an existing ADSL line.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Which raises the question why not stay on dialup?

The way traffic is charged for, means Zen to ensure they stay going long term generally need to charge the prices they do. This helps avoid horrendous congestion issues, i.e. keeps things downloading closer to what is technically possible on your line.

Now I know people will say that things don't slow down on BT Infinity, but for how long? Imagine if six months into their 18 month contract performance reduces to around that of an existing ADSL line.

That's FUD really. http://www.speedtest.net/result/1753989344.png

Ok now your just being too literal. Dial-Up is no good for gaming

You know what i'm getting at but the way in which the net is moving with most thing's gradually becoming download/streamed only it's only a matter of time before Zen starts losing customers.

Now I know people will say that things don't slow down on BT Infinity, but for how long? Imagine if six months into their 18 month contract performance reduces to around that of an existing ADSL line.

This is pure guestulation and scaremongering. Many peeps are well over 12 months into their 18 month contract with Infinity and have nothing but the best value for money deal to report on.

Imagine if peeps paid way over the odds for Zen FTTC and than found that Zen doubled the price, were taken over by TalkTalk and were under heavy attack by the Imperial attack forces that throttled them back to dial up speeds.

Imagine if Zen were highly overpriced TalkTalk resellers that took the first born of customers and offered then up as sacrifices.

Or worse still imagine if Zen offered hard capped, 12 month lock in 500GB services for over a thousand pounds per year against unlimited packages for a quarter of the price from household names.

Imagining is a game that anyone can play. The reality is imagining is a game that is a last gasp for those promoting providers that are seriously uncompetitive.

Edited by deleted (Mon 06-Feb-12 21:45:06)

Am I being accussed of promoting a provider that someone considers uncompetitive?

There should be nothing wrong with voicing what may happen, WBC has cost implications for the amount of data people use.

Zen has its limits, they don't suit everyone, but then there is a freedom of choice

It is a possible scenario, or do you feel it is impossible?

What does that speedtest show us? It could be a leased line for all I know. Its certainly not FTTC 40Meg

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

It is a possible scenario, or do you feel it is impossible?

No, it's fud.

What does that speedtest show us? It could be a leased line for all I know. Its certainly not FTTC 40Meg

It shows you are mistaken about a slowdown on BT Infinity.

OK so you have Infinity FTTP or on the 80/20 trials?

I did not say it was slow NOW, but in the past providers who get a rep for cheap unlimited quickly draw in the leechers, which can cause issues. For Infinity is fairly safe as the low price of Sky keeps most leechers heading that direction.

Indeed.

While what RamdomJointer says maybe true in a proportion of cases, I've also heard of cases where people have complained of slower FTTC service on various ISPs and been told its due to local exchange contention.

A work colleague of mine was issued with his MAC and told to leave by three cheap ISPs for loading his connection with P2P traffic 24/7, I think he is now on Sky.

It's interesting to see how many providers who have touted unlimited broadband have now had to bring in traffic management as they have obviously got to the point where they can't afford to just keep adding capacity and sooner or later Sky will do the same I'm sure.

As for BT Retail's Infinity FTTC being the 'best value', when you own the infrastructure you can always undercut your competitors as when all is said and done, Openreach and Retail are wholly owned by one holding company.

I'd like to see Openreach made a mutual non-profit. just like LINX, LoNAP or one of the other exchanges so that it can be owned by and accountable to, its customers, the ISPs and telecom service providers so that we have a level playing field.

Edited by techguy (Fri 10-Feb-12 19:33:16)

I like how people complain simultaneously about slow rollouts of the latest and greatest technologies and they complain about being asked to pay more to get the latest and greatest. I wonder if there isn't some connection there....

Cheap, fast, low contention. Pick two.

Edited by deleted (Fri 10-Feb-12 20:18:47)

In reply to a post by techguy:

It's interesting to see how many providers who have touted unlimited broadband have now had to bring in traffic management as they have obviously got to the point where they can't afford to just keep adding capacity and sooner or later Sky will do the same I'm sure.

No chance.

You Zen guys just don't get it

Dont get what?

Sky has bottomless pockets, or that the BT Wholesale pricing system makes unlimited expensive to provide?

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Dont get what?

Sky has bottomless pockets, or that the BT Wholesale pricing system makes unlimited expensive to provide?

Why sky does broadband.

I knew you were.

Why is sky into broadband?

As an adjunct to satellite deliver to ensure a place in an increasingly VoD world

When the Sky acquistition of Easynet was announced I did wonder whether their long term aim was to abandon satellite distribution and pipe it over their own network as its got to work out cheaper than renting transponder capacity on a satellite.

As for 'not getting it' it would appear some people understand little about the physical characteristics of the networks that provide their services.

Routers, switches, optical transceivers and even the DSLAMs all have limits, either how many connections they can physically support and the amount of data they can process, when these limits are reached the equipment has to be upgraded, via the addition of line cards, routing processor boards, or when a router's chassis is full, a new or additional router or switch.

Unsurprisingly, they aren't given away for free and an average carrier-grade router maybe upwards of 3 grand to buy depending on its capacity and features and your average SFP opitcal transceiver which is used for terminating a fibre link is generally over £300, if these upgrades are not done the company can either employ traffic shaping or just take complaints about slow service.

Now, if you are a company like BT, O2 or Sky and regularly make large profits from other parts of your busines or you are a publicly traded company you can absorb a lot of these costs thus keeping your customer broadband subscriptions low and employing staff to answer the phones that may not understand the technical details of what the company is providing aside from what appears from the script on their screen.

Or you can gp the other way, charge a bit more, employ staff that understand instinctively what they are supporting and selling and invest in a quality infrastructure and the future development of the business.

When problems occur IMO it's far better to deal with the latter than the former.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Why is sky into broadband?

As an adjunct to satellite deliver to ensure a place in an increasingly VoD world

It's simpler than that. Sky Broadband exists to sell Sky TV.