Bandwidth throttling petition launched

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 1 Jun 2007 at 10:49

A Dundee engineer has launched an e-petition on the Prime Minister's website to campaign against slumping broadband speeds.

32-year-old Lee Sexton claims ISPs are 'clearly throttling speeds' at peak times to reduce network congestion. Several ISPs, such as Virgin Media, have implemented so-called traffic shaping policies where subscribers who exceed a daily download limit have their download speeds cut in half.

'Customers are being ripped off,' Mason told PC Pro. 'They're paying for a service that they're not getting.'

Mason claims he was compelled to act after his BT connection speed was reduced to a 14Kb/sec crawl when playing online games. 'I need peer-to-peer software to download patches for World of Warcraft. I was having to leave my PC on all day just to download a patch,' he claims.

And download speeds aren't the only problem. 'There is also the green issue that the Government is so happy to enforce on us,' Mason says. 'Our PCs are now being left on overnight for days-on-end to get what we are paying for. What is this doing to the environment?'

Mason says he plans to send letters of complaint to his MSP and MP. Although he candidly admits he 'doesn't expect anything to come from it.'

You can sign his e-petition here.