Virgin.net scam

[Paul Orrock]

Roger Burton West wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 28, 2006 at 06:36:28PM +0000, Paul Orrock wrote:
> 
>>I'm obviously missing the point here. I can stick with my existing package 
>>which gives me true unlimited download with no FUP at ?24.99
> 
> But new customers can't, after today.

Agreed but, I certainly wouldn't put Zen, who are being very upfront 
about their caps in the same league as tiscali and others who don't 
actually mention any kind of figure and use the word unlimited.

>>Pay for what you use, people ! Broadband is a privilege, not a right.
> If you don't want people to use their N megabit/second continuously,
> don't sell it to them as "N megabit/second, always on". Honest
> advertising is (at least nominally) a requirement, not an option.

Using Zen as an example, the service is sold as "up to 8Mb/s, always on, 
20Gb usage cap" with no mention of the word unlimited. This to me is 
honest advertising.

Tiscali's unknown usage figure with "unlimited" usage but "we'll set 
your bandwidth as we want to" is semi-honest advertising. They do always 
say it's subject to a fair usage policy but they do not limit how much 
you can download, just the speed.

The Vodafone example using the word unlimited for the data volume and 
then saying well actually we mean up to a gig is blatantly false 
advertising.

> See my initial question: who is still offering bandwidth cleanly, rather
> than having a monthly capacity limit (usually hidden somewhere nice and
> far away from the headline bitrate)? One answer, in five hours from now,
> is "not Zen".

As a home service they still offer their 256Kps home service but to most 
people (inc me) thats not really broadband so I take your point.

I think you will rapidly find that no company can afford to do that 
since the people actively looking for that kind of service are going to 
be the one type of customer an ISP doesn't want (from a business cost 
model).

I would be interested to know how much people are prepared to pay for 
2Mbps unlimited broadband. I bet it's not as much as it would cost to 
provide a constant 2Mbps link.

regards,

Paul