BT doesn't choke broadband speeds* (*Yes it does)

I love the arrogance

So they only limit "a highly popular tool which people need their bandwidth for"

And they only limit it "during the times you would want to use it, being that you're a residential customer and not a business customer"


I appreciate their difficulty. They want to advertise the maximim possible bandwidth just like everyone else does, but they don't want to up the costs by increasing capacity at peak times.

It's not going to change until there is a blanket and enforced policy to ensure everyone has to "tell the truth". And the regulators appear to be bumbling fools who have no real clue as to what they're trying to regulate.

So the only realistic way forward? Be pragmatic, nothing is as good as it seems, beople will always over hype, accept that and move on.

Preferably to the least obnoxious provider.

By matbailie on 16 Sep 2009

Wow BT yet again causes me injury as I fall off the chair laughing. So internet speed is throttled at peak times between 5pm - midnight every day? In otherwords when 95% of people will want to use the service they have PAID FOR! You have got to love BTs Monopolistic viewpoint. Thats like buying a FULL gym membership and being told kindly not to come in peak hours as they are too busy! Maybe BT shouldnt be taking the new business if it cant support its current customer base.

By jamesv1001 on 17 Sep 2009

Empty threat

With a couple of visiting laptops in the house over the summer hols I hit the BT fair use limit (warning at 80GB, 1Mbs peak time speed restriction for 30 days if 100GB exceeded).

The warning e-mail was no-reply but if it had been I would have simply said that the other 49 people on my contended Unlimited Option did that to me for the other 335 days of the year anyway, so what was the threat exactly?

By Mark_Seven on 17 Sep 2009

Who are all you people?

I hate to say it, but I have to agree with the ASA. Sky's advert WAS misleading. It clearly implied that Virgin and BT automatically drop your broadbandspeed during peak times, which simply isn't true. It is true that they throttle a limited number of services during peak times, but your broadband service stays at full speed for every other service. Which is very different from what Sky was implying.

You may have a throttled iPlayer but you can still use other services at full rate while you watch your video, and in any case their cap is pretty light.

I've also got to ask who are all you people that get throttled, and what on Earth is it that you are doing?

I have three heavy web users in my house and we never hit the throttle ceiling for our ISP despite not being on a high use tarrif. We use video on demand, email, web 2.0, social networking sites and all of the usual stuff.

All I can presume is that you're either running an online business over a residential connection. In which case you should stop moaning and just pay out for a business grade connection without a cap. Or you're downloading movies illegally over P2P. In which case you're committing a criminal act and I have no sympathy whatsoever for you.

As for the legal file shares amongst you (Linux Distro downloaders, and so on), why not just schedule you downloads for off peak times? It takes about 2 minutes to Google and download the software to do this.

By Perfectblue97 on 17 Sep 2009

Irony

Mark_Seven:

You probably don't want to hear this, but the reason for these caps is precisely so that the other 49 people on your contended line DON'T kill your speed during peak times.

Imagine how you'd feel if a couple of students moved in down the street from you and downloaded from P2P sites 24/7. Without selective throttling your connection would grind to a halt and you'd be on the phone to BT screaming that you'd paid for braodband but were getting dialup speeds because of other people's illegal activities. You'd want something done about it, wouldn't you? Well, that's what throttling is for.

You and your friends were capped to protect the other 49 people on your contended connection. It's not unreasonable. If you have a legitimate reason for using all of that bandwidth you could always opt for a comercial internet connection. They are more expensive but don't have the same caps and restrictions that a residential connection has.

By Perfectblue97 on 17 Sep 2009

BT employees by any chance?

I find it strange that the people using peer to peer for legitimate reasons are tarred with the same brush as the illegal file sharers. I hate to burst your "1984" bubble but thats not good practice. Should all knives be banned just in case someone decides to use one as a weapon? Stereotyping, as Im sure you are aware leads to terrible behaviour including such things as racism. This is why it is my beief that throttling all peer to peer users is bad news.

By jamesv1001 on 17 Sep 2009

Hell is other people.

Perfectblue97, YouTube-junkie student offspring aside, the moral of the story is that even in the other 11 months of the year when I am not engaged in selfish or criminal acts like restoring a 53GB online backup to a replacement PC, my peak time speeds are about 1.2 - 1.5 Mbs, but after midnight things fly at 6.2Mbs. That tells me that during peak times it is the contention ratio and volume of traffic which is the dominant factor in broadband quality.

I accept speed restrictions on bandwidth hungry apps just as happily as I do NHS rationing: without it, the whole system would crash.

But my question is: is it working? If peak time broadband speeds sink toward 1.5Mbs even though iPlayer and/or BitTorrents is being restricted, then it looks like the system is unsustainable if HD video on demand is just around the corner.

The discovery that BT Unlimited Option has a monthly data cap really brings home the fact that many of the new web apps and services are severely curtailed by data limitations. With ADSL2+ rolling out next year, I quite fancied trickling about 200GB of scanned negs out into the Cloud. Why not, just to be on the safe side? And yet, increases in headline broadband speeds merely accelerate the rate at which you hit the buffers.

I do take the point that average users may get along perfectly well with the odd catch up on Eastenders, a Friday night on-demand film and 5Gb of free storage in their BT Digital Vault. However, even amongst the old duffers I know, this "average" use is always on the up.

So next May can I expect me and my 49 peers to be running 20Mbs ADSL2* with BT Vision, Cloud backups, YouTube streaming and all the rest and be anywhere other than 1.5Mbs at peak time? I doubt it.

By Mark_Seven on 26 Sep 2009