No more "Fair Use Policy" on Orcon unlimited plans

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › No more "Fair Use Policy" on Orcon unlimited plans

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#953662 17-Dec-2013 12:25

Zeon:
HamishMacEwan:
Zeon: TBH I think its proven that the model doesn't work. It's not much different to the electricity market and unless you own generation capacity, you generally don't give everyone and his dog unlimited power unless they buy X% of that capacity.
It's completely different to the electricity market.

For a power company, the product, power, is generated by the operator, is finite, and can be exhausted.

You consume electricity.

For an ISP, the product, content, is provided by the customer and is infinite.

You don't consume bandwidth, you occupy it.

The power for an ISP is bandwidth and it is most definitely finite.

I would have thought so too, because the wires can only carry so much data at a time. It is a bit like a highway, a highway can potentially cope with unlimited cars, but too many cars on that highway at anyone time will cause it to slow down.

FireEngine

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#953664 17-Dec-2013 12:28

Zeon:
HamishMacEwan:
Zeon: TBH I think its proven that the model doesn't work. It's not much different to the electricity market and unless you own generation capacity, you generally don't give everyone and his dog unlimited power unless they buy X% of that capacity.
It's completely different to the electricity market.

For a power company, the product, power, is generated by the operator, is finite, and can be exhausted.

You consume electricity.

For an ISP, the product, content, is provided by the customer and is infinite.

You don't consume bandwidth, you occupy it.

The power for an ISP is bandwidth and it is most definitely finite.

From a network perspective obviously yes, it is finite however what we are really saying here is that no individual can actually affect the network as a whole, hence the Fair Usage policy (which must be written with an individual's usage in mind), became irrelevant - hence it had never been used. As it had never been used and was looking even less likely to be used in the future, it made sense to do away with it.

Still struggling to see why "the model is proven not to work"???

Regards FireEngine

freitasm

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#953673 17-Dec-2013 12:35

Orcon's issued a statement today:

Orcon’s unlimited broadband is unlimited, truly

Orcon has appealed a recent decision announced yesterday by the Advertising Standards Authority regarding a small technicality in Orcon’s advertising campaign. The internet company stands by its uncapped plans claiming that Kiwis can still ‘go for gold’ when it comes to data use.

Orcon CEO Greg McAlister says although it’s good the ASA is ensuring the industry is delivering what it promises, he wants to ensure Orcon customers that the Orcon unlimited plans are truly that, unlimited.

“While we have had unnoticeably small traffic shaping on peer-to-peer downloads in the past, there are now no implemented restrictions whatsoever on our unlimited plans so on those grounds we have appealed the ASA’s decision,” says McAlister. “Last week we even scrapped our Fair Use policy, which we had never enforced anyway.”

“Orcon customers are free to go crazy and use as much data as they want. We have some customers using nine terabytes per month on our residential unlimited plans which shows just how unlimited they really are,” adds McAlister.

The marketing campaign which launched in October saw Orcon join forces with Kim Dotcom, one of New Zealand’s most prolific internet users, to smash New Zealand’s restrictive data caps and fight the plight of third world Internet in New Zealand. Since then, the company has seen the demand for their uncapped plans soar.

FireEngine

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#953674 17-Dec-2013 12:35

Beccara: Doesn't matter what they say, $99/$129 for 30/100mbit and no fair use clause is asking for ~$600-2000 worth of bandwidth to be used 24/7, It may work for now whilst users on average are using less but good luck when average use is 500gb+

Thats the point, it isn't $600-2000 worth, its $99-worth ;-)

No-one drives along an uncongested road, doing exactly the speed they want to do, saying "hey, this is a poor road, it might not cope with future traffic levels"....especially when you can build a bigger road if necessary....sure it is our responsibility to manage the bandwidth to the demand, but thats just it, its our problem, not the consumers ;-)

Regards FireEngine

Beccara

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#953680 17-Dec-2013 12:41

FireEngine:
Beccara: Doesn't matter what they say, $99/$129 for 30/100mbit and no fair use clause is asking for ~$600-2000 worth of bandwidth to be used 24/7, It may work for now whilst users on average are using less but good luck when average use is 500gb+

Thats the point, it isn't $600-2000 worth, its $99-worth ;-)

No-one drives along an uncongested road, doing exactly the speed they want to do, saying "hey, this is a poor road, it might not cope with future traffic levels"....especially when you can build a bigger road if necessary....sure it is our responsibility to manage the bandwidth to the demand, but thats just it, its our problem, not the consumers ;-)

Pretty sure orcon doesn't buy 30/100mbit of transit for $99 :P Unlimited plans simply dont work long term, not until the cost of transit and providing the service drops below the retail price of the service.

Like i said it'll work for now but when average usage increases it'll reach a point where you have to buy more bandwidth than the product is worth or consumer speeds will drop

Most problems are the result of previous solutions...

All comment's I make are my own personal opinion and do not in any way, shape or form reflect the views of current or former employers unless specifically stated

FireEngine

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#953700 17-Dec-2013 13:11

Beccara: Pretty sure orcon doesn't buy 30/100mbit of transit for $99 :P Unlimited plans simply dont work long term, not until the cost of transit and providing the service drops below the retail price of the service.

Like i said it'll work for now but when average usage increases it'll reach a point where you have to buy more bandwidth than the product is worth or consumer speeds will drop

Once you move away from the tail to site ALL networks size their links based on actual traffic levels to deliver the service level desired, no one scales their core around EVERY tail pulling its maximum ALL the time. As I said, it is down to Orcon to manage the network based around actual traffic levels we see. And bear in mind that additional traffic doesn't mean bit-for-bit more international transit, the use of caches and peering etc makes demand vs supply way more complex than that.

Regards FireEngine

NonprayingMantis

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#953712 17-Dec-2013 13:31

freitasm: Orcon's issued a statement today:

Orcon’s unlimited broadband is unlimited, truly

Orcon has appealed a recent decision announced yesterday by the Advertising Standards Authority regarding a small technicality in Orcon’s advertising campaign. The internet company stands by its uncapped plans claiming that Kiwis can still ‘go for gold’ when it comes to data use.

Orcon CEO Greg McAlister says although it’s good the ASA is ensuring the industry is delivering what it promises, he wants to ensure Orcon customers that the Orcon unlimited plans are truly that, unlimited.

“While we have had unnoticeably small traffic shaping on peer-to-peer downloads in the past, there are now no implemented restrictions whatsoever on our unlimited plans so on those grounds we have appealed the ASA’s decision,” says McAlister. “Last week we even scrapped our Fair Use policy, which we had never enforced anyway.”

“Orcon customers are free to go crazy and use as much data as they want. We have some customers using nine terabytes per month on our residential unlimited plans which shows just how unlimited they really are,” adds McAlister.

The marketing campaign which launched in October saw Orcon join forces with Kim Dotcom, one of New Zealand’s most prolific internet users, to smash New Zealand’s restrictive data caps and fight the plight of third world Internet in New Zealand. Since then, the company has seen the demand for their uncapped plans soar.

changing the policy now is good, but the fair use policy wasdefinitely still there when the ads ran, which means the asa was absolutely right to come down on them for it. Don't see how they can appeal it really.

It's pretty simple IMO. Unlimited with a fair use policy that says "if you use too much data we'll do (x)" isn't unlimited. Simple as that.

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Screeb

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#953903 17-Dec-2013 19:25

Orcon:
“While we have had unnoticeably small traffic shaping on peer-to-peer downloads in the past ..."

I'm not sure how they can classify limiting torrents to ~160kbps as "unnoticeable".

I'm glad they don't do it any more, but that's just a flat out lie. Not the best idea given they're trying to defend themselves against a claim that they were misleading...

Sounddude

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#953939 17-Dec-2013 20:58

Screeb:
I'm not sure how they can classify limiting torrents to ~160kbps as "unnoticeable".

I'm glad they don't do it any more, but that's just a flat out lie. Not the best idea given they're trying to defend themselves against a claim that they were misleading...

Sorry your post is bit confusing? We haven't shaped P2P for a while now.

Screeb

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#953968 17-Dec-2013 22:19

Sounddude:
Screeb:
I'm not sure how they can classify limiting torrents to ~160kbps as "unnoticeable".

I'm glad they don't do it any more, but that's just a flat out lie. Not the best idea given they're trying to defend themselves against a claim that they were misleading...

Sorry your post is bit confusing? We haven't shaped P2P for a while now.

What's confusing? The statement from Orcon claims that the P2P shaping was "unnoticeable" when it clearly wasn't. That it's no longer shaped is irrelevant. When it was shaped, it was extremely noticeable, contrary to the claim in the statement.

driller2000

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#953983 17-Dec-2013 23:02

in my experience - you eventually just run out of stuff to dl - and that's just on adsl2

have been on slingshot ayce for 2 years now and have dl'd like a crazy man some months around the 2 TB mark - sure i have had to build a server with 28 tb of storage + ext hdds in excess of 16TB to store everything

but once you have everything you want (+ spotify for music) you just run out of stuff to grab - which for me has resulted in average usage for the last 6 months dropping to approx 700G month

i can't get ufb where i am but will swap to vdsl soon - but more for speed - and i don't expect my volume to go up much at all

and i suspect many people will find themselves in a similar place with ufb eventually....

ps: the power analogy ain't valid - as isps pay for a pipe with a given capacity and then we users share this same pipe. in the case of power the retail companies sell to us on a per kWh basis (+ fixed charges) and the more we use, the more they have to pay the generator. so it's a different model.

gehenna

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#954060 18-Dec-2013 08:43

driller2000:
and i suspect many people will find themselves in a similar place with ufb eventually....

For me it's not about how much I can download, but how many things I can do at once without performance being impacted. EG at any one time there'll be someone playing Xbox live multiplayer games, streaming youtube, downloading torrents, browsing the web, viewing things on the iPad, etc etc. As it stands performance of all those things goes through the floor the more things you add to the mix. So I'm hoping UFB will allow for more concurrent streams of data usage, rather than letting me download lots of things faster.

FireEngine

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#954067 18-Dec-2013 09:09

gehenna: So I'm hoping UFB will allow for more concurrent streams of data usage, rather than letting me download lots of things faster.

Greater bandwidth is ideal for that :-)

Regards FireEngine

browned

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#954068 18-Dec-2013 09:10

NonprayingMantis: changing the policy now is good, but the fair use policy wasdefinitely still there when the ads ran, which means the asa was absolutely right to come down on them for it. Don't see how they can appeal it really.

It's pretty simple IMO. Unlimited with a fair use policy that says "if you use too much data we'll do (x)" isn't unlimited. Simple as that.

It is extra product advertising for not much money, they are saying that we lost, but now we have fixed the problem. The end result will be more articles on news sites and permission to run the Kim Dotcom ads again.

wuzy

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#954184 18-Dec-2013 11:52

driller2000: in my experience - you eventually just run out of stuff to dl - and that's just on adsl2

have been on slingshot ayce for 2 years now and have dl'd like a crazy man some months around the 2 TB mark - sure i have had to build a server with 28 tb of storage + ext hdds in excess of 16TB to store everything

but once you have everything you want (+ spotify for music) you just run out of stuff to grab - which for me has resulted in average usage for the last 6 months dropping to approx 700G month

i can't get ufb where i am but will swap to vdsl soon - but more for speed - and i don't expect my volume to go up much at all

and i suspect many people will find themselves in a similar place with ufb eventually....

ps: the power analogy ain't valid - as isps pay for a pipe with a given capacity and then we users share this same pipe. in the case of power the retail companies sell to us on a per kWh basis (+ fixed charges) and the more we use, the more they have to pay the generator. so it's a different model.

Same experience here. Getting UFB 100/50 just accelerated this process down to the point where I'm down to just 500GB avg. per month.
I'm now focusing more on productive (non-torrent) use with that 50Mbit upload during off-peak time instead.

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