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Orange removes broadband Fair Use Policy

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Long time readers of GEEK! may know the Orange complaint I made in late 2009. In the past, I’ve also written to Ofcom and complained about the vague FUP that gave no details as to what they defined as “unlimited”.

Well, finally, Orange have removed their FUP and now supposedly no longer limits the amount of data people can download. Orange claim that they now offer totally unlimited downloads.

Previously, Orange would contact you if they believed you were using an excessive amount of data in a given month. If they believed that you were not taking action following their warnings, they would throttle your connection to almost unusable speeds during peak periods until they were satisfied that you had changed your ways.

I love what they’ve written though: “Some of the other broadband providers out there track and limit your speed if you reach a certain amount of data, we don’t.” Of course, they would know that – because they used to be one of the few providers that actually did it!

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

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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.