Net awards targeted as NTL cap row enters another week

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From The Register

Net awards targeted as NTL cap row enters another week
By Tim Richardson
Posted: 17/02/2003 at 17:06 GMT

Angry NTL users are looking to hijack this week's Internet industry awards in London to protest about the cableco's decision to cap its broadband service.

E-minister Stephen Timms will be among 360 industry bigwigs attending the lavish event - dubbed the UK's "Internet Oscars" - at a swish London hotel on Thursday.

Acknowledging that this week's event might be targeted a spokesman for the Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA) told The Register: "Everyone has the right to protest."

Those behind the direct action are hoping that a demo outside the event will help raise public awareness while causing maximum embarrassment to the cableco.

Users had hoped that a wave of protests planned for Valentine's Day would help make NTL reconsider its decision to cap broadband use to 1Gb a day. At this stage, it's still not known whether the protests - including the threat of mass disconnections from the service - materialised to any great degree.

An online petition calling for NTL to overturn the cap has so far notched up more than 2,700 signatures. ®

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From The Register

NTL customers not 'tech' enough to grasp BB cap
By Tim Richardson
Posted: 19/02/2003 at 14:06 GMT

NTL decided not to inform its customers about its decision to cap its broadband service because it didn't think they were "'tech' enough to understand".

So says Kingsley Smith, the campaigner behind the Don't Pay NTL, who met Bill Goodland, NTL's Internet director, and Steve Upton (Technical/Network Manager) in Hook yesterday to discuss the cableco's decision to cap its broadband service.

According to Mr Smith, the decision to cap the service was taken by Mr Goodland. And it was he who decided not to tell customers because he "didn?t think they were 'Tech' enough to understand".

Details of yesterday's meeting can found here. ®

Now you know, you ........

[silver]

well - the way they have set the cap is a little confusing.,,.

previous post in thread:

"Therefore, we will only contact customers who exceed the daily data limit for three or more days in any consecutive 14-day period," he added.

if you see http://www.adslguide.org.uk/newsarchive.asp?item=995

So as long as you do not exceed 1GB (Giga Byte) on 3 seperate days in a two week period, then you are fine. Interestingly this is different to allowing a 14GB limit in the 2 week period, for example a user with a 1Mbps service could download 10GB on two days, and if they stay under the 1GB limit the other days, they would stay within the limits (a total of ~31GB of data). The unfortunate user who perhaps exceeds the 1GB limit to say 1.25GB on four days but stays under 1GB for all the other days is potentially affected (a total of ~14GB). Taking the mean total download per day over the 14 day period would appear to be fairer.

The good news is that NTL are looking at the position of users on the 1Mbps service, as to whether they deserve a higher bandwidth limit. Interestingly NTLs average broadband user only consumers 100 MegaBytes of bandwidth a day.

I tend to agree that 'Taking the mean total download per day over the 14 day period would appear to be fairer', also agree that the 1 meg option should be allowed more than the 1 gig day limit..

Sil

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Is it not a question of heads they win, tails you (the user) lose?
Or could it be that when they said

were "'tech' enough to understand"

they would have difficulity it explaining the cap 'rules'!