Author Archives: GEEK!

ISPs should just tell us the bandwidth limit, and not claim “unlimited”

Leave a Reply

Following up from my investigation into which ISPs actually provide unlimited broadband, I am beginning to wonder why some ISPs advertise “unlimited” broadband when it clearly isn’t.

It confuses me – why can’t ISPs just advertise the amount of bandwidth that you are actually allowed to use rather than advertising a service that isn’t correct? Isn’t that some sort of fraud? I mean if I went out and bought five pints of beer and only got three, I’d be a little annoyed (honestly, I’m not like that – I don’t drink!, it’s just a scenario). It’s a similar sort of service.

Unlimited means something that has no limit. We all know that. So why are ISPs telling us a lie?

It just doesn’t make business sense to me. If you are an ISP, why do you want to tell customers they can download as much as they like when they really can’t? It just creates hassle – if users download more than you want them you have to send them a letter complaining that they are downloading too much, then another letter if they don’t have a reaction to your first letter, then threatening warnings about legal action, then court cases – it goes on and costs money!

Wouldn’t it just be simpler if ISPs just made it absolutely clear how much you can download per month without having to go through endless “fair use policies” that often don’t claim the usage allowances anyway? Aghh! This one is very frustrating.

[GEEK! Exclusive] UK Investigation: Unlimited broadband, true or false? ISPs put to the test!

Leave a Reply

The word ‘unlimited’ is an evil and unwanted word in the world of technology.

And when I say the world of technology, I more specifically mean the world of broadband. When looking for broadband the word ‘unlimited’ means nothing – you can never be sure. There’s usually a fair usage policy that caps you if you download a certain amount.

So, for your benefit GEEK! has been in contact, by phone, with all the big brands and put them on the spot. We asked them the question, and mention a response for each company below. Plain and simple. Oh and by the way, GEEK! only asked companies that claimed an unlimited service on their website.Bear in mind that GEEK! made sure that we mentioned if all downloads were legal and at fair times (not always in peak time – which is typically 6pm-12 midnight)

Test completed 17th September 2009 – all information was correct at this time.

Sky: simply told me that the unlimited package is totally unlimited, whenever you want to use it.

Be: unlimited package is unlimited, fair usage for peak times.

O2: unlimited, no fair usage on peak times, no throttling whatsoever.

BT: claim unlimited on option 3, after being on the phone for a worryingly long time I am told that there is no physical limit if high usage is within an off-peak time of day (eg not 6pm-midnight)

Orange: after being redirected a couple of times on the phone, I am told that the Home Select and Home Max “unlimited” packages come with a 40GB per month transfer limit (ie not unlimited).

PlusNet: after being cut off once, an advisor on the phone told me that their unlimited package was unlimited, however as a general policy the company implies that they perform “shaping” so that customers get an equal share of available speed. The advisor did give me this link which provides information about how they organise traffic “shaping”.

Virgin: after speaking to somebody on a dreadful line, I am told that there is no limit and that you can download as much as you want, whenever you want.

Tiscali: (surprisingly) I was very quickly connected to an advisor who told me that their unlimited package had a cap of 100GB per month at which point they would contact a client for excessive usage.

So there you go then – all the big major ISPs put on the spot by GEEK!, just for your benefit. GEEK! hopes that this test makes it a little easier to choose your broadband if bandwidth is a key point for you – which it should be. Many people do not know what broadband allowance they have, and if you are one of these people you really ought to make sure you do know, or you could face costs for running over your allowance.

That gives you a good idea about who allows what. All questions were asked over the phone and not on the internet (as only information is not always correct) and all information is correct at the time of writing. None of the companies said that they were planning to change their policies in the near future.

National rate numbers – I don’t get them.

Leave a Reply

I’ve never seen the point in national rate numbers. If you want to have a free phone service, you use an 0800 or local rate number. If you want to charge for a phone service, you use a premium rate number. Yes I know, apparently national rate numbers are shared cost, but what’s the point in that?

More than that, it bugs me why customer service lines are always 0870 or 0871 numbers. My webhosting company has one, many enquiry lines have them, and it just drives me mad.

I use Skype for most of my paid calls, mainly because it is easier for me as I already have a broadband connection supplied where I live, and Skype calls are much cheaper (in most cases) than BT calls. I have my own online number with Skype (which costs about £8 every quarter) and the unlimited country package which gives me unlimited UK calls to landlines (costing me about £3.50 per month). But that, of course, does not include 0870 numbers or any national rate numbers.

Believe it or not, it costs almost as much on Skype to call a national rate number than it does to call a mobile in the UK. What a pain in the backside. At the time of writing, mobile calls cost 16.6p per minute and calls to 0871 cost 14.8p per minute!

But that’s going off the point. What really gets to me is when business put in big bold letters “FREE 24/7 PHONE SUPPORT” or similar, when they are lying! They give you an 0871 number that costs me nearly 15p per minute to call! What a joke! It’s really frustrating!

And yes, I know we have sites like “saynoto0870” which might be brilliant for some people, but they don’t have all the numbers in the book and I’ve never managed to find a local number that corresponds to a national rate one.

In real honesty, I wish Ofcom would ban 0871 numbers and the likes, because I find them really annoying and I waste so much money every year calling them. They should make it simpler – we already have 0845 numbers and stuff like that, why do we need more?

We just need one band of numbers for freephone, one for shared cost, and one for premium. The end.

iTunes 9 Review – A definite improvement

Leave a Reply

As most of you will already know, the Apple conference on the 9th of September brought a lot of news to iPod users. As well as the new iPod Nano and “new” iPod Touch (I can’t say it’s new, all they’ve done is made a bigger size), Apple also released the new iTunes 9. Sadly I wasn’t able to get it right away as I’m going through small problems with internet bandwidth, which also explains why I haven’t been able to post reviews on the new iPod Touch/iPhone firmware yet – don’t worry I will get round to it as soon as I get my unlimited bandwidth back which, as far as I know, should be next week.

Anyway, as for the new iTunes, I am surprised to say that I’m actually very impressed with the new release. The new features aren’t ground breaking, but the new performance upgrades have finally arrived.

The new iTunes packs new features such as Home Sharing, which allows you to share your music between other computers in your home, and a brand new redesigned iTunes Store. Both of which work very well. I haven’t checked out the Home Sharing yet but from what I’ve read online it looks very good. The new iTunes Store is certainly very tidy and works very efficiently and I much prefer it over the previous version.

But I’m happiest about the much smoother performance. The load-up time has improved dramatically and actually browsing through the application is much more speedy.

What used to be a misery is now much easier to use and much less time consuming. I still don’t think iTunes is brilliant, but the new version has definitely made syncing my iPod much less of a chore.

Well done Apple, this is a big improvement.

If you’d like to download the new version, open up iTunes and click Check for Updates in the Help menu. Otherwise, you can head over to apple.com and download a copy from there for free.