Advice - Broadband

[jack]

Thanks to everyone who volunteered suggestions. One of the most helpful was Tim who said "The NTL website lies to you. If you ring them up they say there's no set-up cost, and give you a free phone for a year." which is quite a good deal.

Another question -- does anyone know if services are genuinely unmetered? For instance, NTL doesn't *mention* a download limit, but I'd assumed that if there truly wasn't one they'd advertise it, and if they didn't it meant they just 'mysteriously cut you off' after a few gig.

Comments

[atreic.livejournal.com]

I assume if there was one the four of us in Rivendell would ave hit it, and afaik we haven't. This is hardly concrete evidence though ;-)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

LOL. Good point. Did Matthew say you used Zen? Though I suppose with that many people in the house the cost becomes moot :)

(OK, obviously nowhere is *truly* unmetered, but I wonder if services which don't mention a cap are 1GB a month and don't say, or only cut you off if you *really* take the piss, or charge you per MB but only tell you at the end of the year by $evil.legal_dodge)

[senji.livejournal.com]

It gets a bit slow sometimes, but it doesn't look like a download limit to me.

[senji.livejournal.com]

We were on Zen; but aren't any more.

When we *were* on Zen we ran download at bandwidth cap for a fortnight and got abotu 60GB for our Debian mirror... No problems.

Update - NTL

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Buried on the NTL website is a terms and conditions linking to a FAQ that says "normal use" is 1GB/day and if you go over they'll just gently suggest you throttle back. It actually sounds reasonable; I only wonder why the NTHell they couldn't just *say* that rather than trying to conceal it.

Re: Update - NTL

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

I have friends with a 1mb NTL line who warez probably a gig or more a day consistently, and they've not had any suggestions that they cut back.

Re: Update - NTL

[senji.livejournal.com]

I suspect that the answer is that that policy is a stick they can use to hit people if need be; rather than a hard-and-fast rule.

[theinquisitor.livejournal.com]

We maxed out a plus.net line for a month, with nary a reminder. That was their unmetered deal.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Us to, actually, um, we regularly max out the 2Meg/256... and they have yet to dare to tell us to stop it (look, when you're paying the fuckers 70quid a month...).

I think that companies that have a limit have to tell you about it, but what you are looking for is 'uncapped' - unmetered just meanst that you pay monthly rather than per Gig/hour whereas uncapped means - we have no limit.

Re: Update - NTL

[satanicsocks.livejournal.com]

Our NTL connection was a warez machine for a year. We did know about the alleged cap beforehand, but never got hit with charges. However, googling about it a year ago did suggest some people had been hit. I think Cambridge NTL probably have too many people to chase up though ;)

Our ADSL is uncapped, btw, although this poxy BTopenworld 1GB-month deal isn't. ARGH.