Big Time plan removal

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

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#332320 20-May-2010 13:12

So is the big time shut down a done deal? or is there a chance it can be saved with some changes?

Spomething like a soft cap where after 1 breach there is a warning, 2nd breach you're disconnected/slowed down for a period of time (1 month say).

And the traffic management stays also.

For 90% of Big Time users that may suffice, and reduce the incidence of "vampire usage" that we've seen talked about.

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freitasm

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#332326 20-May-2010 13:19

What I'd like to see coming out is a non-managed plan for heavy users, with clearly defined limits, and priced accordingly.

Perhaps a plan around with 120GB limit and overage charges? Obviously these days 10GB and 20GB plans don't do it anymore. But offering an "unlimited managed" plan for cheap is suicide - it was always to be like that.

Simple terms: you get what you pay for. It's not the kind of plan for the masses. If you want to live on the Internet, pay for the service. Otherwise, go play outside and have a little life.

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Hubchy

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#332333 20-May-2010 13:27

Telecom homes services director Ralph Brayham told The Dominion Post that "Telecom was the only internet provider offering an uncapped plan and a minority of customers were downloading thousands of movies a month. It had ended up with "all the vampires".". I also note that some users supposedly were downloading TB's of data a month.

I wonder if it would be physically possible to download 'thousands of movies a month' on the Big Time plan. Possibly those who were lucky enough to now have ADSL 2 enable might but I still doubt this. Many who have found that they can't get beyond 1Mbs on Big Time (let alone Go Large) might be forgiven for wondering if Telecom aren't simply inventing (or at least exaggerating) tales of great greed. Why would they do this? Simply to increase revenue. They can see that no competitors have yet emerged to offer such a plan so they have decided to can it.

I note that the greed arguments were around even when the Go Large plan was running. Have Telecom now suddenly found that there are vampires sucking from their delicate breast that weren't biting and sucking before? Telecom overtly introduced 'traffic management' when they marketed Big Time. It is surprising that this has seemingly had no effect upon the bloodsuckers among us (let alone the ordinary mortals).

If I am wrong perhaps Telecom would like to produce concrete evidence of abuse. Brayham's statement clearly implies that if there had been no abuse they would not have decided to withdraw Big Time. Perhaps they would care to state what is the level of data use per month they regard as the 'maximum reasonable amount', beyond which abuse is regarded as to occurring.

Perhaps they could then offer a substitute plan which would have this maximum reasonable amount as the cap. This would clearly need to be markedly higher than their other capped plans. Telecom insider(s) have stated here that Telecom are not interested in offering any such plan. I suggest that this is proof that the abuse argument offered by Telecom is specious. Of course, it can be argued that it is all 'just commerce' and Telecom don't have to provide any justification for what they do because it is a free market so 'anything goes'. It would have been interesting if they had taken than line with customers over the XT Network problems.

matts231

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#332335 20-May-2010 13:35

freitasm: What I'd like to see coming out is a non-managed plan for heavy users, with clearly defined limits, and priced accordingly.

Perhaps a plan around with 120GB limit and overage charges? Obviously these days 10GB and 20GB plans don't do it anymore. But offering an "unlimited managed" plan for cheap is suicide - it was always to be like that.

Simple terms: you get what you pay for. It's not the kind of plan for the masses. If you want to live on the Internet, pay for the service. Otherwise, go play outside and have a little life.

In my opinion, managed plans in general don't work. They could satisfy people who don't want excess usage charges by offering a choice between excess charges and 128 or 256k shaping.

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#332336 20-May-2010 13:41

Flashcards:
farcus: Telecom via AAPT in Australia have been expanding their unmetered plans. Why is it they are unable to offer similar plans here in NZ where they have a larger customer base?

Very, very simple - competition. There is some in Australia.

And maybe the fact the plan cost is pretty close to twice that of Big Time when converted to NZ$?

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#332339 20-May-2010 13:43

Hubchy: Telecom homes services director Ralph Brayham told The Dominion Post that "Telecom was the only internet provider offering an uncapped plan and a minority of customers were downloading thousands of movies a month. It had ended up with "all the vampires".". I also note that some users supposedly were downloading TB's of data a month.

I wonder if it would be physically possible to download 'thousands of movies a month' on the Big Time plan. Possibly those who were lucky enough to now have ADSL 2 enable might but I still doubt this. Many who have found that they can't get beyond 1Mbs on Big Time (let alone Go Large) might be forgiven for wondering if Telecom aren't simply inventing (or at least exaggerating) tales of great greed. Why would they do this? Simply to increase revenue. They can see that no competitors have yet emerged to offer such a plan so they have decided to can it.

There have been plenty of people bragging about exceeding 1TB per month. While some were not being truthful (and there have been photoshopped images out there) there certainly were users hitting these sorts of usage levels.

k1wi

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#332340 20-May-2010 13:46

matts231:
freitasm: What I'd like to see coming out is a non-managed plan for heavy users, with clearly defined limits, and priced accordingly.

Perhaps a plan around with 120GB limit and overage charges? Obviously these days 10GB and 20GB plans don't do it anymore. But offering an "unlimited managed" plan for cheap is suicide - it was always to be like that.

Simple terms: you get what you pay for. It's not the kind of plan for the masses. If you want to live on the Internet, pay for the service. Otherwise, go play outside and have a little life.

In my opinion, managed plans in general don't work. They could satisfy people who don't want excess usage charges by offering a choice between excess charges and 128 or 256k shaping.

Maybe they don't work here in NZ. They certainly seem to work in places like the UK.

I personally wouldn't mind a overusage speed of 256kbit, but the days of dial-up speeds are gone.

Kilack

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#332343 20-May-2010 13:49

Hubchy: Telecom homes services director Ralph Brayham told The Dominion Post that "Telecom was the only internet provider offering an uncapped plan and a minority of customers were downloading thousands of movies a month. It had ended up with "all the vampires".". I also note that some users supposedly were downloading TB's of data a month.

I wonder if it would be physically possible to download 'thousands of movies a month' on the Big Time plan. Possibly those who were lucky enough to now have ADSL 2 enable might but I still doubt this. Many who have found that they can't get beyond 1Mbs on Big Time (let alone Go Large) might be forgiven for wondering if Telecom aren't simply inventing (or at least exaggerating) tales of great greed. Why would they do this? Simply to increase revenue. They can see that no competitors have yet emerged to offer such a plan so they have decided to can it.

I note that the greed arguments were around even when the Go Large plan was running. Have Telecom now suddenly found that there are vampires sucking from their delicate breast that weren't biting and sucking before? Telecom overtly introduced 'traffic management' when they marketed Big Time. It is surprising that this has seemingly had no effect upon the bloodsuckers among us (let alone the ordinary mortals).

If I am wrong perhaps Telecom would like to produce concrete evidence of abuse. Brayham's statement clearly implies that if there had been no abuse they would not have decided to withdraw Big Time. Perhaps they would care to state what is the level of data use per month they regard as the 'maximum reasonable amount', beyond which abuse is regarded as to occurring.

Perhaps they could then offer a substitute plan which would have this maximum reasonable amount as the cap. This would clearly need to be markedly higher than their other capped plans. Telecom insider(s) have stated here that Telecom are not interested in offering any such plan. I suggest that this is proof that the abuse argument offered by Telecom is specious. Of course, it can be argued that it is all 'just commerce' and Telecom don't have to provide any justification for what they do because it is a free market so 'anything goes'. It would have been interesting if they had taken than line with customers over the XT Network problems.

It is definitely possible and very probable. I could get full line speed to sites such as hotfile.com which host all matter of files, given that I can download at about 900kilobytes a second you can imagine how much data I could pull down if I wanted to.
As I said earlier I did pull a lot in the first month but then cut back to around 60 gigs per month as basically what is the point in downloading so much when its online anyway and you can get it later if you need it... that is why I dont understand these users that are pulling down terrabytes per month. It is just plain hoarding..

tdgeek

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#332345 20-May-2010 13:49

Hubchy

You make fair points.

BUT, in all fairness , please review these Big Time threads. You will see mentionings of high users and the Gb they got, mentionings of the known means to bypass traffic shaping. You will also see the effort we have put ourselves to, to get Big Time running.

If these extreme users were not there, there is no need for traffic management clearly. If traffic management was not as difficult as it has become, these extreme users would be controlled so that the rest of us enjoy the plan.

Unfortunately, we were not able to make it work as we hoped.

Timdotz

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#332350 20-May-2010 13:54

I'd like to know why shaping the traffic is harder than just cutting the speeds after reaching an imposed limit of something like ~300GB... ?

matts231

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#332352 20-May-2010 13:55

tdgeek: Hubchy

You make fair points.

BUT, in all fairness , please review these Big Time threads. You will see mentionings of high users and the Gb they got, mentionings of the known means to bypass traffic shaping. You will also see the effort we have put ourselves to, to get Big Time running.

If these extreme users were not there, there is no need for traffic management clearly. If traffic management was not as difficult as it has become, these extreme users would be controlled so that the rest of us enjoy the plan.

Unfortunately, we were not able to make it work as we hoped.

In a sense, it was Telecom's poor planning that resulted in this. They should have known that this would happen, being the first and only to introduce such a plan - I fail to see how the same company can have such a success in one country (AAPT's Unlimited 24x7 broadband) and a failure in the other (Big Time). The markets are not the same, but they are similar - you introduce an unlimited plan before anyone else, you /will/ be "the" ISP for those that love to download the internets, as they say.. Offering an unlimited plan with P2P traffic "managed" is somewhat suicidal - it can, in a lot of cases be impossible to distinguish P2P traffic, particularly if it is encrypted and you can't rely on that to sustain your bottom line. An unlimited plan at ~$50AUD is not sustainable in the long term, and one would have thought that would be obvious.

richms

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#332359 20-May-2010 13:59

Can people please remeber the difference between illegal content and unlicensed content. Nothing I download is illegal, most is unlicensed.

Richard rich.ms

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#332360 20-May-2010 14:00

Timdotz: I'd like to know why shaping the traffic is harder than just cutting the speeds after reaching an imposed limit of something like ~300GB... ?

Because people keep developing explots to get around the traffic shaping hardware/software. It's a continual cat and mouse game.

richms

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#332364 20-May-2010 14:04

hellonearthisman: They called it unlimited, but had no idea of what they really expected users to use. Why didn't they say 200GB cap, that would have stopped the rare 1TB+ users and would have made most of there other users more than happy. It doesn't sound like Telecom tried hard to find a working solution. -ok so that been covered...

I guess they will not be expecting their users to honour the contract fees for early termination.

Looks like Slingshot is the only ISP still trying to off an Unlimited deal, even if it is only between 1am - 7am or 2am - 8am. Maybe Telecom could have done something like that as it works for Slingshot.

It doesnt work for slingshot. A friend changed to it and had to change his work from home schedule because it is so useless in the free offpeak times.

I am lucky to get 2 gigs a night down in the free offpeak times, yet during the day I can max the line out on the same torrents.

Richard rich.ms

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#332365 20-May-2010 14:07

You have to wonder, if the few 1TB users were the problem why not kick them. Since that hasn't been done then why not limit Big Time to 100-120GB a month.

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