News - Brits waste 700m buying unsuitable broadband packages

[HEXUS]

Millions of consumers waste cash by choosing broadband on speeds not needs.

Read more.

[oolon]

So they mean they are going to introduce a service with a lower bandwidth cap, actually looking at the price, the "basic" package seems some what similar to other broadband offerings. For the more expensive ones the FUP kicks it at 50G so your paying double the price for 2.5 times the quota again some what similar to other offerings. Basic level is better than Zen 20 rather 10, however the mid and high option look very similar when you look at the FUP. It would be better if O2 just stated the obvious and put its download caps on paper.

[scaryjim]

ime the bandwidth caps for standard usage packages are pretty irrelevant. I normally churn through about 10GB of usage in a month and I watch a lot of catch up TV and listen to a lot of catch up radio, and my other half goes through game demos like there's no tomorrow, so we're hardly light users. I've only broken 20GB of total usage a couple of times when I've deliberately made full use of the free overnight bandwidth my package provides to pull down Steam games

The 50GB FUP on the top end package could be an issue for a serious downloader, though, I guess...

[TooTay]

50GB FUP is simply not enough for my household, and I can see how it can not be enough for most modern family households. I had to switch from Zen because we continiously went over the monthly limit, we had to pay on average an extra £12 in download limit purchases on top of the £34.99 per month to be able to continue using the internet for that month.

There are three people in my household who use the internet and we all work full time jobs, between watching youtube, iplayer, downloading games demos, patches and sometimes full digital copies of games, we exceed 50GB in general use. We manage to accomplish this on a rather meager 3.5MB connection.

Saying you are not a light user is kind of relative, I do not think anyone in our house hold is a heavy user yet we easily manage to exceed the 50gb limit when none of us download movies, music, use bit torrent or illegally download software.

Perhaps for the uneducated/disinterested consumer these FUP will suffice but with the way modern culture is changing and as the technology changes with it, I think we are going to have to assess these soon to be archaic FUP's.

[Millennium]

Isn't this just a price hike and a new FUP from o2? If so that would be a real shame as i've been using them for 18 months without any problems up to now. Here's hoping they dont force you onto the new scheme.

[rabbid]

In our impartial survey we found that by telling you that most other people use less and introducing a lower cap package to replace our existing starter package, then we can increase our revenue by moving almost everyone to higher packages?

What bitrate & resolution are those catchups that you watch and roughly how many a week would you say you watch?

[petercook7]

so if 2/3 of people dont use their speed then why have such low caps?

[Goldfish92]

Well that is disappointing. I used to recommend O2 home broadband to friends but after looking at these 'new' packages it does indeed seem like just an excuse for a price hike...
I'm currently on their Pro package and would be paying an extra £2.50 a month for LESS functionality as there no longer seems to be an included static IP address.

Bye bye O2, think I will just go with BeThere direct when it comes time for renewal.