Newnet: 'choice' between reduction in usage cap or price hike

[pctechxp]

Hi All

Received an e-mail this week from Newnet asking their customers to take part in a survey to determine whether they would tolerate a price hike or reduction in inclusive monthly bandwidth (I currently pay £20 for 10 GB) as apparently bandwidth is so heavily used that broadband provision is now becoming unprofitable (and I thought peering connections were free)

So with the exception of unbundled providers, can anyone recommend an ISP on a par with Newnet? (I don't want to leave as their network is quick and connections good but dont want to pay any more than 20 quid a month and my monthly usage is a maximum of 4.5 GB)

[mountainmachine]

Are they going down the route of uncapped between midnight and 4pm, thats what my isp do, plusnet. Thankfully i schedule my downloads so i dont get throttled by using my peak allowance.

[ikonia]

wait and see if/what newnet decide to to.

if your monthly usage is 4.5gb and they knock you down to say 5GB, then you'll be wasting your time moving.

[arthurleung]

(and I thought peering connections were free)

You are partly right, £170 per Mbps per month on a BT 155Mbps central, while peering is probably $10/Mbps/month for high volume, which is nothing in comparison.

If you really want to switch, I would suggest Zen @ £25 per month with 20GB cap with full speed anytime of the day. (I've pulled 800KB/s sustained at 8pm all the time), assuming you don't have the bunch of LLU ISPs available to you.

[directhex]

/me is uncapped on ukonline

[SiM]

go for be value
£14 for 8mbit down 1.3mbit up

[UltraMagnus]

i would just go for be unlimited... for 4 quid a month more you get a much faster download speed

[MadduckUK]

yep i would go be unlimited, after a check to see how far you are away from the exchange

[SiM]

If he is happy with 5gb per month then I doubt it would make much difference!

[pctechxp]

I'm keen to stick with them as I've used several ISPs and they seems to be the best in terms of speed (when you take BT out of the equation as they always slow the connection a bit) and they seem to have more peering connections than most along with a good connection to LINX.

I have raised a ticket to ask roughly how much more they are looking at charging if they go down that route as I'm not made of money but am willing to pay a couple of quid more for a quality service (I phoned Demon to ask about their packages in terms of length of minimum contract and what their traffic management policy was and I got two memebers of their own or perhaps outsourced staff on sales and technical support that couldn't understand a word of English!)

If you are going to outsource, at least make sure the folks answering the phones speak reasonable English so that knocked them off my list.

[pctechxp]

Thanks for all the replies


unbundling is available but I live with my parents at the moment and they aren't keen to move from BT (I pay them the BT line rental each month for the second line which they put towards the bill, BT wouldn't set up a separate account for the separate line)

Anyway I've known a few people that have unbundled and regreteed, particularly a couple of colleagues at work that went with bulldog so better the devil you know I suppose.


Anyhow, I got a response from somone who signed themselves as the customer care manager stating that they had no more info and the survey was just to get feedback from customers at present.

Regarding the comment about plusnet, the IDP I used to use, Namesco, used them as a transit bandwidth provider (they don't advertise this and I only found after running a tracert when things used to slow down in the evenings and things such as webcasts used to stutter) and that was the reason I left in the end though I must admit I have never used them as my acual ISP.

I might go to them as a last resort (my e-mail is hosted elsewhere so don't have to rely on their mail system which does seem to hit the buffers at least once a year from what I've read).

I have heard good things about UKOnline but can you get it on a BT line?

I'm going to sit tight with newnet and see what happens, unless I hear that they want to charge a small fortune or sell off their customers to Tiscali whcih seems to be the thing that smaller ISPs do as the Italians must have a large cheque book. (professionally I deal with lots of customers of that particular ISP and the fallout of their policies and so I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole)

Perhaps we could all club together to buy the equipment and colocation and create the mother of all ISPs, the hexus.net networking community 'for tech nuts, by tech nuts?

[MadduckUK]

Thanks for all the replies


unbundling is available but I live with my parents at the moment and they aren't keen to move from BT (I pay them the BT line rental each month for the second line which they put towards the bill, BT wouldn't set up a separate account for the separate line)

move from BT for the telephone side of it? they wouldnt have to. that would all stay as is.