Unlimited plan, or something similar.

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Unlimited plan, or something similar.

PaulZA

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#127019 26-Jul-2013 20:47

Hi there.

I was reading broadband offering in other countries.

Some countries where data is exensive, and providers often have a monopoly on cables coming ashore, (Including South Africa), have unlimited internet on almost all provider offerings.

I know Telecom's tried it several times, and it's been disaterous, then How come Slingshot has had it for so long, and there's been no reports of people abusing the services to download "Terabytes of data unrestricted" Even Orcon offers unlimited internet across their fastest UFB plans.

I was just thinking, we have 500gb in place we never exceed that, however that's only because we go to extreme lengths to watch what we download.

What's stopping Telecom from having another attempt?

Since they stopped offering it, several providers have launched uncapped offering, and as far as I know of nobody's able to get round their shaping policies, it sounds like to me that the guys in charge of setting those shaping polices didn't know what on earth they were doing.

If Unlimited on Telecom isn't an option, why can't telecom add something to remove data caps, or even double the data limit (ie, 500gb to 1tb) offpeak like from 6pm, to 6am or something?

what do you guys think?

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#866844 26-Jul-2013 20:51

Well first of all, if Telecom did increase from 500 to 1TB, not many people would be able to use that much anyway.. Saw some report saying that average NZer used about 20-50GB of data a month.

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michaelmurfy

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#866885 26-Jul-2013 23:00

Personally I use approx 120gb per month, others I know use well under 500gb, those who download over 500gb are either doing something dodgy or should be on a dedicated bandwidth plan (depending on what they're actually doing) - personally, I like to think of not having unlimited data as a way to keep it fair for everyone, if you're doing under 30gb you have the option to pay $75/mo, if you're doing more you can up your plan, go on VDSL or Fibre.

You've got the option to pay 50c/gb after the 500gb if you're really needing it which isn't all that bad, else you can request your speeds to be limited.

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raytaylor

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#866902 26-Jul-2013 23:16

Other providers have invested very heavily in p2p and http caching equipment.
If one person torrents a file, such as a popular movie, the isp will serve it up to all others on their network from hard drives rather than the upstream connection on the southern cross cable.
This effectivley halves their upstream/backhaul costs.

For example, I can give you real world statistics that over a sample of 180 customers, they used 26.755gb of http data on Thursday 25th July
Of that, 3.517gb was cached http data (youtube, http objects, windows updates) served up from a caching system

So about 13% bandwidth efficiency with caching there.

That same sample of people also used 17.821gb of torrent and p2p data. Now thats where the big savings come from.
This sample isnt behind a p2p or torrent cache, but the p2p world is full of repetitive data. For example, many people will download the same tv show within the cluster, and many will download the same movie.

When your customer base is one that enjoys heavy use of torrents, you can double or triple the thruput easily. Telecom's customer base unfortunatley, although big, would have less of a proportion of p2p users and therefore telecom can make less bandwidth savings through caching.

Im going to be frank here

Slingshot (one isp with unlimited plans) has alot of students, younger users who stream tv shows and popular torrent content. I would guess the typical slingshot "unlimited" customer might download 20gb of actual internet data, the rest being served up from youtube and torrent caches.

More of telecoms customers will be people who use less cachable content (perhaps they are little old ladies) and therefore the bandwidth savings through caching that allow these unlimited plans to exist dont scale well with telecom.

Its a demographics issue and as a result, a user on slingshot who downloads a terrabyte of data may only be downloading 20-30gb from the actual internet, the rest is served from caches.

I dont work for slingshot, and I have not seen any of their statistics (they are not published as far as I know) so this is all just a slightly educated guess.

Regarding offpeak: Slingshot tried it a few years ago- I use them for my flat internet. As soon as 1am came around, the normal 3 megabit service instantly dropped to 256k. Was horrible.
When they brought in the torrent caches, the problems were pretty much solved.

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AppleJackXD

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#866914 26-Jul-2013 23:45

I don't download much anymore since limewire got shut down. Im more just playing my games an hour or two a day and mostly watching youtube and tv shows. I never go over 120 gb . I do download mods for my games occasionally. Im on 120 plan moving to VDSL2 next weak on 150 gb. If i was downloading big like i used to on Limewire data cap would be a problem. Unlimited would be nice though : )

eXDee

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#866924 27-Jul-2013 00:12

PaulZA: Hi there.

I was reading broadband offering in other countries.

Some countries where data is exensive, and providers often have a monopoly on cables coming ashore, (Including South Africa), have unlimited internet on almost all provider offerings.

I know Telecom's tried it several times, and it's been disaterous, then How come Slingshot has had it for so long, and there's been no reports of people abusing the services to download "Terabytes of data unrestricted" Even Orcon offers unlimited internet across their fastest UFB plans.

I was just thinking, we have 500gb in place we never exceed that, however that's only because we go to extreme lengths to watch what we download.

What's stopping Telecom from having another attempt?

Since they stopped offering it, several providers have launched uncapped offering, and as far as I know of nobody's able to get round their shaping policies, it sounds like to me that the guys in charge of setting those shaping polices didn't know what on earth they were doing.

If Unlimited on Telecom isn't an option, why can't telecom add something to remove data caps, or even double the data limit (ie, 500gb to 1tb) offpeak like from 6pm, to 6am or something?

what do you guys think?

-Slingshot has a lower media profile than Telecom, who copped a lot of flak for poor unlimited plan performance. Theres plenty of people who complain about slingshot unlimited performance while their capped plans are fine (different bandwidth pools). Despite their aggressive caching, some friends who i switched their flat to Snap went from always buffering youtube videos to being able to stream 720p sometimes (or at least 480 flawlessly). And this is on a sub 10mbit line. The experience went from something of frustration of a year and a half of slingshot to enjoying using internet within the week.
-People do download terabytes of data, and this is only those who mention it online on certain websites. Plenty of high users dont do this and i know several flats that approach 1tb per month of usage.
-Orcon has had quite a few performance complaints as of late, improving but i'd still rate their performance below telecom.
-Leechers cost a lot of resource that multiple other customers could be using. It's in telecom's interest to have those who use close to 1tb or more of data off their network IMO.
-Offpeak data caps add a bit of complication to both conveying the offering to the customer and in the metering system to run it. People want super simplicity. Telecom is pushing simple, nearly guaranteed performance at a reasonable price and doing very well with it.

Jump ship to another provider. Plenty of others do what you want.

sbiddle

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#866965 27-Jul-2013 08:13

Why should internet be a fixed price for unlimited data?

You can't get flat rate power and not every restaurant is a fixed price buffet..

kingjj

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#866966 27-Jul-2013 08:14

Or you could go back a year, get a Tivo from Telecom and enjoy uncapped interwebs for a large part of this year and counting... Even with our usage not measured, we still struggle to exceed our normal data cap each month (per my own counting).

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Kirdog

202 posts

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#866990 27-Jul-2013 10:26

What we had in Russia in 2003-2007:

Limited plans:

Traffic: 200-400 Gb per month
Speed managment: High speed no speed managment
Additional data: 0.05 USD per GB OR Limiting speed to 256 kbps /
Price: 20 USD per month.
Limit plan Speeds:

SDSL : 6/6 Mbps
Ethernet: 12/12 - 36/36 - 80/80 Mbps

Unlimited Plans:

Traffic: unlimited
Speed managment: Speed managment very rarely happens.
Additional data: N/A
Price: 30-50 USD per month.
Limit plan Speeds:

30 USD: 2 Mbps / 2 Mbps
40 USD: 4 Mbps / 4 Mbps
50 USD: 8 Mbps / 8 Mbps

Connection methods:
SDSL
Ethernet
ADSL
ISDN

Nowdays we have all plans unlimited with speeds 50-800 Mbps symmetric and with prices from 15 to 50 USD. No traffic managment.

NZ ISPs can do limited speed - unlimited traffic plans i think. But at this stage i'm complitely happy with 500 Gb plan and download speed and qality of the service BUT i'm not happy with LOW upload speed :(.

Sorry about my English guys :>

mattwnz

20141 posts

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#867031 27-Jul-2013 13:37

There is no such thing as unlimited, and there will be fine print terms to put restrictions. I think some ISPs call it traffic priority, and they may contact very high users. Even countires who have had unlimited, have moved towards quotas. ^The quotas are so large now that I don't see it as a problem, and I am all for paying for what you use. It applies to other services such as power, water etc.

cbrpilot

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#867129 27-Jul-2013 17:31

Kirdog:
NZ ISPs can do limited speed - unlimited traffic plans i think. But at this stage i'm complitely happy with 500 Gb plan and download speed and qality of the service BUT i'm not happy with LOW upload speed :(.

Have you tried VDSL or Fibre?

My views are my own, and may not necessarily represent those of my employer.

Kirdog

202 posts

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#867137 27-Jul-2013 17:40

cbrpilot:
Kirdog:
NZ ISPs can do limited speed - unlimited traffic plans i think. But at this stage i'm complitely happy with 500 Gb plan and download speed and qality of the service BUT i'm not happy with LOW upload speed :(.

Have you tried VDSL or Fibre?

Of course :)

VDSL - Connection declined.
UFB - No fibre at my street.

Sorry about my English guys :>

Inphinity

2780 posts

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#867192 27-Jul-2013 20:10

michaelmurfy: those who download over 500gb are either doing something dodgy or should be on a dedicated bandwidth plan (depending on what they're actually doing)

Steam :P

Lias

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#867249 27-Jul-2013 23:27

Our house blows its 150gb cap every month with normal web surfing and steam.

No torrents
No online TV/video watching other than the kids using youtube a bit,

Can't even upgrade our cap because we're on cable so stuck with Vodafone and their horrible low cap high overage plans. Refuse to go back to ADSL, but due to get UFB early next year, so will finally be able to switch to a better provider. At this stage leaning towards Slingshot due to hearing very good feedback over their anti geo blocking facilities.

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lchiu7

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#867380 28-Jul-2013 14:18

Lias: Our house blows its 150gb cap every month with normal web surfing and steam.

No torrents
No online TV/video watching other than the kids using youtube a bit,

Can't even upgrade our cap because we're on cable so stuck with Vodafone and their horrible low cap high overage plans. Refuse to go back to ADSL, but due to get UFB early next year, so will finally be able to switch to a better provider. At this stage leaning towards Slingshot due to hearing very good feedback over their anti geo blocking facilities.

I was in the same situation with cable blowing the 150GB each month. And it was not torrents - just streaming Netflix etc. and Youtube.

I couldn't bear it anymore and ditched the cable (100/10) for ADSL2+ (14/1!). Actually it was fine since with most of the traffic being international, when I had both TCL and Telecom ADSL2+ going at the same time, the speed tests to the same international site were about the same. And both fast enough to stream Netflix or Vudu in HD. The difference was the Telecom plan had 500GB and in the first month I used about 280GB as we revelled in not having to worry about caps effectively.

I have since been upgraded to VDSL and and while the speed averaging 24-28Mbs isn't that flash it's fast enough to allow a couple of people to stream and no affect each other.

TCL/VF need to do something about their plans or people are going to jump ship when VDSL comes to their areas.

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sbiddle

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#867385 28-Jul-2013 14:26

lchiu7:
Lias: Our house blows its 150gb cap every month with normal web surfing and steam.

I was in the same situation with cable blowing the 150GB each month. And it was not torrents - just streaming Netflix etc. and Youtube.

...

TCL/VF need to do something about their plans or people are going to jump ship when VDSL comes to their areas.

You guys need to remember you're the exception, not the norm.

Average data usage in NZ is still in the 15GB - 20GB per month range, which is around a 25% jump in the past year.

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