[H-GEN] ADSL/capping

Frank Brand fbrand at uq.net.au
Tue Sep 4 19:04:25 EDT 2001


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>
>> I'm not yet familiar with the ADSL offerings -- what is "the cap
>> debacle"?
>
>That would be when telstra (a few months back now) introduced download
>limiting (capping) to their freedom plan customers.


To be fair to Telstra, it was never unlimited, it was acceptable use. I
don't think anyone but the most rabid would claim that some of the massive
mp3 or video downloads I have heard about qualified as acceptable use. I
knew one guy who claimed to download two full movie videos a night...about
1300 Mb. Interestingly the people complaining about download limits don't
seem to bother about the download limits on normal ISP dial-in
connections...my UQConnect limit is 300 Mb per month...10 mb per day...about
2 mp3's a day or one Linux distribution download every two months that is.
Further, bandwidth is not a magic pudding that is always recreated. The user
overusing a link on cable and also possibly ADSL is actually depriving
someone else of that bandwidth. Personally, I would be really pleased with
an increase in bandwidth from 300 Mb a month to 3000 Mb a month. Another
point is that a lot of people I know were happy that Telstra nominated a
figure, ie. 3000 Mb, previously the unacceptable use policy was
indeterminate and nobody really knew how it effected them.


>as a customer, it's pretty unfair, though I don't actually go above the
>threshold myself.  It's been set to 3Gb per month whereas the plan
previously
>claimed unlimited downloads, however if you were to read the AUP carefully,
>it's actually an arbitrary limit imposed by Telstra as they feel fit.



Frank Brand


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