Pay As You Go Broadband?

[Steve]

Back in the days of dialup (my sympathies to those still burdened with it,) various pay as you go options were available, as is the nature of a telephony based system. However, broadband has always been a subscription affair. Not any more, it would seem.

Bulldog Start@ctive costs £15.50 a month (inc VAT) for a 4 Meg service and includes 400 minutes online each month. Extra time online costs 2.5p a minute. It's only available in London at the moment, although the company plans to increase the number of exchanges getting its LLU treatment.

It looks like an interesting idea, but it remains to be seen whether this will be successful or not. Read the full article over at The Register.

[davidstone28]

My first thoughts are that its an horrendous deal for anyone other than very light years.

Just over 6.5 hours of online time per month is absolutely nothing. If all you were to do were to send some emails and read 1 online Sunday newspaper, each week for 1 month, you're allowance would be gone.

Even if you were to do a rocket download, pulling down a 1.4gb file is going to kill a third of your allowance (anyone care to do the sums?)

And what sort of streaming needs 4gb of bandwith?

I'd hazzard a guess that Bulldog are clearly counting on the fact that people are going to bite into the 2.5p/minute service, which is easily going to bring the price up to 4gb pricing levels.

I'm sure there's a niche for this service, but I don't reckon its suitable for the vast majority of users.

[Ruggerbugger]

Absolutely no way! What happens to online gamers? What about services that update themselves? Web-connected plugins for desktop sidebars? Clueless users riddled with spyware? People sharing 700MB DivX movies?

[këö¬t]

I never liked the per minute idea. Charge me per megabyte if you're going to charge me.

[Howard]

How ridiculous.

"Light users" aren't gonna want that sort of bandwidth for their uses; email occasionally and maybe looking up a couple of websites. For these purposes, NTL's £16 300K broadband is more than sufficient.

[spazman]

I cant help but think that UK broadband is going backwards with all these 1gb monthly download limits and pay as you go service. Thay all sort of defeat the whole point of having broadband in the first place. Whats the point in a 2mb connection when you can only download 1gb in the whole month.

[mrpete]

2.5p a min could easily waste your money away IMO. Like spazman said, it does feel like BB is going backwards with limits and now Pay as you Go.

[aidanjt]

I cant help but think that UK broadband is going backwards with all these 1gb monthly download limits and pay as you go service. Thay all sort of defeat the whole point of having broadband in the first place. Whats the point in a 2mb connection when you can only download 1gb in the whole month.

I completely agree with this wholeheartedly.

the UK was one of the first countries in Europe to get broadband rolling, now our services are not only slower than our European counterparts, but acctually more expensive compaired to services that offer twice as much bandwidth!!!.. check out prices in sweeden compaired to here, its rediculous.

[unrealrocks]

This is daft ... and its getting dafter, lol.

[Marcos]

I thought this "Pay As You Go Broadband" would be £/GB surely

[exAndrzej]

Dear Hexus Massive,

Is my calculator working properly ?



10 hours a day (I work more - but I am happy to cap it at 10)
5.5 days a week (for a laungh - let's say I get 1.5 days off at the weekend - good behaviour etc)
4.3 weeks a month (roughly)
236.5 Multiply together to get our BDOG factor
14190 Now x 60 for minutes
13790 Less the generous 400 minute allowance
344.75 Multiply the remaining minutes by 2.5p
£359.75 Add in the important £15.50 initial charge

Did I miss anything ?

Sounds like a minor matter of £4,317 a year and you are home and dry

(for some reason I am thinking that this level of payment - with an initial deposit of a few thousand (4?) - would mean that a home user could stick to a simple, unlimited ADSL connection for about £20 a month and be driving a nearly new top-spec Jag instead... http://www.greattradecentre.co.uk/ca....asp?Id=218922)
The service might be phenominal - but the decision process seems a little more complex than first meets the eye

Can anyone else suggest cool things that can be done for around £4,000 a year ?

[Spud1]

it is rediculous tbh

Its almost as bad as when BT introduced bandwidth caps, another step backwards.

at least bulldog are only offering it as an optional service, unlike BT forcing it upon their customers (consequently we left bt as i expect did many others)

[exAndrzej]

I have checked with an un-named Bosnian who shall only be referred to as 'Fudzilla'

He told me that instead of normal broadband and a Jaguar (as I suggested earlier), you could instead have normal broadband and a decent flat in the centre of Sarajevo (home of the winter Olympics in 1984)

[TiG]

It makes me laugh that you guys don't have a sales mans head on, LOW light fee, followed by kill fees after using the service.

These things exist all over the place and broadband is no exception. imagine a 15 year old kid that wants bragging rights at school...

I've got a 4mb connection, yet the kids parents don't want to pay £40 a month, so he finds this service, parents who have no concept of the computer life their kid leads racks up said bill. Even if its one month bill they have made a very nice tidy profit. (enough for a year of a normal subscribers for less hassle)

Sure its not repeat business, but it certainly is a business model...

TiG

[aidanjt]

TiG: If the hardware industry operated the same as the telecommunications industry you wouldn't say the same thing.

[Lee H]

stuff that for a game of cricket PAYG BB - I'd be skint each month as mines NEVER disconnected at all. Even if my PC is idle doing nothing apart from Seti@home & protein prediction its still connected and what I deem as normal usage - i.e downloading freebies from sourceforge and listening to shoutcast/radio 1 would make any router groan and strain with pain

Add the the fact games take a LOT of my time.

Sorry bulldog - I've got your 2 Mb link now, stuff the PAYG and concentrate on what you are good at ; Kicking BT's ass with superspeeds via LLU ( 4 Mb eta - sept )