Big Time plan removal

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Big Time plan removal

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729 posts

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#332061 20-May-2010 08:34

Its a very sad day.

Telecom innovated and i was happy to support them in that, unfortunately it failed.

It was great innovation, its a plan that no other ISP tried. Take a step back before you shun them because fundamentally they were the only one to try it and for me it worked perfectly. Its just a pitty that it was killed by the minority.

I don't see how its a "slap in the face" as some users put above, they tried and failed but at least they tried! I hardly calling that letting your customer base down, would you rather they ran a loss for you? They are a business after all.

freitasm

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#332062 20-May-2010 08:39

ArcticSilver: Its a very sad day.

Telecom innovated and i was happy to support them in that, unfortunately it failed.

It was great innovation, its a plan that no other ISP tried. Take a step back before you shun them because fundamentally they were the only one to try it and for me it worked perfectly. Its just a pitty that it was killed by the minority.

I don't see how its a "slap in the face" as some users put above, they tried and failed but at least they tried! I hardly calling that letting your customer base down, would you rather they ran a loss for you? They are a business after all.

Telecom wasn't the first one to try an "unlimited" plan, but certainly a "managed" plan. WorldxChange experience already had shown people will try to get all they can eat - and more.

I always find interesting people downloading terabytes of content every month, when it's clearly impossible to anyone to consume those terabytes.

It's either a case of extreme hoarding or someone that wants to have as much as possible to keep their rations up in private sharing services.

Either way, as said before, a few will cause problems to many.

I think Telecom should start thinking of a plan with decent allowance. 20GB and 40GB doesn't cut anymore. I am personally on a TelstraClear 80GB plan and with iTunes, online backups, four PCs at home we use something between 70GB - 100GB a month.

The answer is to offer a 10GB plan for low end users, 40GB plans to average users and perhaps a 160GB plan to heavy users.

freitasm

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#332063 20-May-2010 08:41

Shock: Only yesterday it was fed back to you by your cutsomer that "Relationships should be about loyalty - let be BENEFIT from being a long term customer - wow me with customer service #TNZSum ". That was from your own twitter feed Telecom, then this happens. I don't think you are listening.

Interesting point. At what time your experience with a plan (service) is so bad due to the other users that you put the responsibility on Telecom? When they decide to manage for everyone? Or when they decide the plan is inviable to continue being offered?

And if they didn't decide to remove the plan, keeping it at non-broadband low speeds to limit the impact in the overall operations? Would you say Telecom was giving you "good customer service" in this case?

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#332067 20-May-2010 08:47

ArcticSilver: Its a very sad day.

Telecom innovated and i was happy to support them in that, unfortunately it failed.

It was great innovation, its a plan that no other ISP tried. Take a step back before you shun them because fundamentally they were the only one to try it and for me it worked perfectly. Its just a pitty that it was killed by the minority.

I don't see how its a "slap in the face" as some users put above, they tried and failed but at least they tried! I hardly calling that letting your customer base down, would you rather they ran a loss for you? They are a business after all.

I can't agree more. This was a plan replacement targetted at normal users who wanted certainty when it came to pricing. There is unfortunately a big difference between users who may range from 20GB - 100GB per month and the growing number who's claim to fame was hitting 1TB per month. These people without a doubt were heavy torrent users who were downloading illegal content and see no moral or ethical issue with this. WHen their activities impact on other users what realistic options are there to solve the issue?

muppet

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#332068 20-May-2010 08:49

I find the reason given for it's demise interesting:

"The management of traffic on the plan has become particularly difficult and we simply cannot keep it in market."

I'd love to know what's so hard about it? In the UK, Virgin Media have a huge cable network and offer unlimited data plans (with the right to get mad at you if you really chew up way, way too much)

They use a method of throttling you, if you go over a certain amount of data at certain time periods of the day. This link explains it.

So if Virgin can do it with a much larger customer base (nb: I can't providing supporting numbers for this statement, but I think it's safe to assume it's true) I'd love to understand why can't Telecom do it with Big Time? Are the patterns of usage maybe really different in NZ? Is it the fact so much more traffic is "International"? Does the design of the network make putting a "choke point" difficult?

I doubt I'll ever find out the actual answers, but given that there's so many boxes for sale that'll do subscriber traffic management, I find the "too hard" reason interesting.

obligatory: ra ra disbelief, how can do you do it again, loyal customers ra ra ra.

k1wi

484 posts

Ultimate Geek

#332071 20-May-2010 08:52

When I look at my usage on bigtime since switching over to it on launch day I can pretty much say that 95% of my extra usage was to other NZ'ers in the form of upload and a significant proportion of my download shifted from int. sources to national sources.

Just as users speculated how free UL would decrease Telecom's int. bandwidth (through more local sharing), I'm predicting for the average big time user (and not those rorting the system), there will be an increase in int. traffic for their plans, despite the decrease in datacaps.

I'm not sure how a lot of customers are going to adjust from having the freedom of no caps to excessively limited data caps.

Maybe a good step, particularly for those who signed up to Telecom just for big time, is to make upload uncounted again. Even if it is just for publicity step.

RE: "It's either a case of extreme hoarding or someone that wants to have as much as possible to keep their rations up in private sharing services."

I don't think this is the case, private sharing services are always limited by upload, and there is no way you can upload more than a couple hundred GBs a month.

Kilack

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#332075 20-May-2010 08:56

I just looked back at my usage on this plan, the first month was pretty _large_, I think it was just novelty though of being able to download anything.
After that first month my usage dropped rapidly and now was just averaging around 60 gigs a month which I personally think is reasonable. Not sure what kind of data telecom were hoping the average would be...

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#332076 20-May-2010 08:58

Kilack: I just looked back at my usage on this plan, the first month was pretty _large_, I think it was just novelty though of being able to download anything.
After that first month my usage dropped rapidly and now was just averaging around 60 gigs a month which I personally think is reasonable. Not sure what kind of data telecom were hoping the average would be...

That would be a great piece of information... Doozy, if Telecom had a "soft cap" or "fair use policy" or "expected rate of use" what that would be?

crazed

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#332077 20-May-2010 08:59

ArcticSilver: Its a very sad day.

Telecom innovated and i was happy to support them in that, unfortunately it failed.

It was great innovation, its a plan that no other ISP tried. Take a step back before you shun them because fundamentally they were the only one to try it and for me it worked perfectly. Its just a pitty that it was killed by the minority.

I don't see how its a "slap in the face" as some users put above, they tried and failed but at least they tried! I hardly calling that letting your customer base down, would you rather they ran a loss for you? They are a business after all.

While I'm not happy with the closure of the Plan, I have to say I expected it to happen. It was easy to see the plan was being used by some way outside the scope and design of the Plan so to be honest its not a surprise, just an annoyance for those of us who liked the plan.

I'm happy that Telecom have decided to drop the excess charges on the Pro Plan from $20 per Gig to $2 per Gig, that explains why I wasn't called back yesterday when I asked the question about the justification of $20 a Gig on the Pro Plan.

CraZeD,
Your friendly Southern Geeky Fellow :P

Byrned

455 posts

Ultimate Geek

#332078 20-May-2010 09:03

I've been on Big Time since it has launched and yes, there's been a few hurdles, but I mainly liked it for its certainty that I could just keep going without having to think about the bill.

But as been mentioned above, it has been killed by the few once again.

What I would like to to see from an ISP is an 'unlimited' plan with a soft cap of say 100GB. If you regularly go over the 100GB amount you will be asked to move or be moved to one of the other plans. You could even have 2 or 3 versions of the plan, each with there own softcap, and price.

I know it's not really an unlimited plan but I can't think of a different name for it right now.

Any chance of something like this?

shiroshadows

165 posts

Master Geek

#332080 20-May-2010 09:03

Tsk tsk. Telecoms digging it's own grave.

People will be raping the service/plan more than ever now, just before it drops dead.

freitasm

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#332081 20-May-2010 09:05

freitasm:
Kilack: I just looked back at my usage on this plan, the first month was pretty _large_, I think it was just novelty though of being able to download anything.
After that first month my usage dropped rapidly and now was just averaging around 60 gigs a month which I personally think is reasonable. Not sure what kind of data telecom were hoping the average would be...

That would be a great piece of information... Doozy, if Telecom had a "soft cap" or "fair use policy" or "expected rate of use" what that would be?

By the way, I've created a "Show and tell" on "How much broadband is too much?"

C4NCER

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#332082 20-May-2010 09:05

Why not just keep bigtime going but 'manage' all traffic for people that have done more than say 500gb in a month down to dialup speeds?

When i signed up for bigtime i knew what i was getting in to, and have been happy to put up with slow traffic at some times knowing that my internet bill will be the same each month without having to micromanage my usage.

MikeB4

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#332088 20-May-2010 09:14

For me it shows Telecom is being honest and responsible. Bigtime was a pain for them and the consumer. I do not think the consumers truly understood the concept of the Bigtime plan.

Kudos to Telecom for making the decision it cannot have been easy.

johnrutter

51 posts

Master Geek

#332090 20-May-2010 09:16

Hi doozy,

It is disappointing that Telecom are cancelling the Big Time plan. I can't believe some people would average 1TB a month on data!!

I thought Telecom did an excellent job with the Big Time Plan compared to my previous plan (20GB Plan with Vodafone). My father is still on the Vodafone 20GB Plan so now I may have to go back to that plan.

I found web browsing at the same speed as Vodafone, watching YouTube video's (even HD versions) was much faster than Vodafone through your caching system. With Vodafone our family was using up 20GB half way through the month just for web browsing and YouTube.

The only downside to the plan was that TVNZ on Demand and other video sites were slow.

Overall, the Big Time Plan was better than than Vodafone (20GB) Plan.

When the BT Plan has been disconnected, will Telecom be providing a better alternative for someone like me who uses around 50GB - 70GB per month? I have 5 internet users in the family and I don't think 40GB is enough for me.

Thanks for providing an excellent plan!! I'm not looking forward to going back to Vodafone but if there are excellent alternatives, I will definitely stay with Telecom.

Kind regards,

John

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