Virgin throttles national cable network

[gem]

From The Register

Virgin throttles national cable network
Tens of thousands choked
By Chris Williams Published Tuesday 8th May 2007 11:36 GMT

Virgin Media has quietly rolled out bandwidth throttling nationwide, after successful technical trials in the North West, which the ISP says means a group of heavy users will sacrifice high speeds for the benefit of the majority.

Speeds on the cable network will be limited between 4pm and midnight for traffic which Virgin considers "potentially abnormal". Virgin says the top five per cent heaviest downloaders among its three million customers will be affected - about 150,000 broadband users across the country.

Virgin has criticised rival ADSL providers for their "unlimited" marketing, where opaque fair use policies can mask a monthly GB download limit. It made it clear that national bandwidth throttling would be needed for its network, however, but argued that this increasingly common practice would be fairer than an unpublished monthly cap. Under its new regime, Virgin subscribers will not face restrictions on the amount they can download, but on the speed.

Customers on the "M" package will be throttled from 2Mb/s to 1Mb/s download speed and 128Kb/s upload once they have downloaded 350MB during the eight hour period. "L" subscribers will be allowed to run at full 4Mb/s speed until they hit 750MB, when downloads will be capped at 2Mb/s and uploads at 192Kb/s. Premium "XL" punters, paying £37 per month for 10Mb/s broadband, will be rationed to 3GB at full clip: anything more will come downstream at 5Mb/s and go upstream at 256Kb/s.

Virgin is in the process of upgrading the cable network for its top-paying subscribers to allow downloads at 20Mb/s. Theoretically, this speed would exhaust the 3GB limit in just 20 minutes.

While most now accept that technological limits mean bandwidth throttling is a necessary measure to ensure equality of access, Virgin customers have been getting in touch to criticise the limits for being too low. "M" customer Chris wrote: "I am on their 4Mb/s tier and it looks like I will be throttled as soon as I have downloaded 750MB, which in today's internet is next to nothing - not even one DVD. I use Skype with 2-way video most evenings to chat to my girlfriend when she is abroad...I certainly wouldn't say I am abusing the network - but Virgin Media would."

The imminent public release of Joost could fire a bigger revolt from customers. The P2P/streaming TV application downloads 350MB per hour, and Virgin will apply the new limits across the whole of prime viewing period, meaning viewers will trigger throttling very quickly.

Virgin PR chief John Moorwood told us: "We don't cut customers off, cap on bandwidth, or charge extra for going over a set limit, so our customers would still be able to use the P2P TV service at peak times if they were to experience traffic management controls - albeit at a slower speed.

"That can't be said of some other ISPs, who would be cutting off a connection or charging extra. As ever, we will naturally keep an eye on all significant internet developments."

The firm hasn't announced plans to tell users when they are going over their limit, and instead has advised customers to download a piece of trialware called DU Meter. Critics argue this would not help a modern home with several PCs, a Slingbox, and XBox, to easily monitor its usage without decent router setup skills - not a very Virgin Media "experience". Moorwood said developing a tool of Virgin's own is "something we might investigate long term".

Virgin's customer information page is here. Returning to everyone's favourite vintage internet metaphor, it promises "a lot fewer traffic jams on the information superhighway". ®

And The Scream! warned you about it yesterday here.

[CaNsA]

This is true.

It has come into affect because the people who only use the inet during peak hours are unable to veiw basic web-pages due to other users downloading at max speed.
Therefore in the interest of fairness VM have evened out the b/w for all users during peak hours.

[centaur]

What a ridiculous way to run an ISP 'service'.

I'd have thought that it was obvious by now from the examples of the old dialup 56k days that limits needed to be applied, but surely ONLY TO THOSE USING MAXIMUM BANDWIDTH ?

Here we are in a so-called technological society and having to put up with pedestrian service speeds compared to either the French (27Gb speeds ) or those in SE Asia (up to 100Gb speeds ).

If we MUST have 'rationing', surely we need only 'throttle' speeds to those using it, or better still, encourage them to pay more for a 'superior' service ?

Is non-cable likely to go down this route, like everybody else on here, my connection is terrible in the evenings. There is no mention of capping/throttling in their 'accetable use policy' so one assumes there is no limits and you should reccieve the maximum bandwidth at all times.

[John259]

Until recently Virgin Media's Acceptable Use Policy for ADSL services over a normal phone line quoted a monthly download allowance of 40GB. That is extremely generous but not "unlimited" as their advertising claims. This information was hidden deep in the terms and conditions and not easily found on their web site. I've just had another look and couldn't find it so it may have been removed or I might just have failed to locate it.

Unfortunately Virgin Media use the word "broadband" to mean cable by default which is extremely confusing. You really have to poke around to even discover that they still do phone line connections.

John

[everton66]

Will on line gaming (XBox 360) take up any of the daily limit?

I thought it wouldn't take long once Virgin took over from NTL. Go on then, take my connection back to the stoneage.

I think it says a lot about Virgin that this change was made without clearly contacting existing customers and the advertising still saying 'no limits'

Come on Virgin, be honest, lose the 'no limits' from the advertising guff.

[CaNsA]

In all fairness, on cable bbi there are no limits. However i bet you would complain if you were on of the majority that was affect by the people who max out the network, and you were unable to veiw a simple webpage. but instead you complain about getting throttled so that everyone can access the inet. I know its annoying, but do u think everyone should be able to use the web?
You cant please all the people all the time

[silver]

if throttling exists with the service then ppl are free to go elsewhere so long as they know the deal,. presume those who are already signed got / get the option to leave even if within some kind of contract period

tbh limiting speeds within a 8 hour period when a cap is hit doesn't look too bad in theory,. if all ISPs which throttle / cap adopted a similar scheme then it would make comparisions much easier,. many ISPs don't tell ppl how the capping and throttling work and leave ppl guessing when they will hit the limits..

Sil