BT "MAX" Product Information

[Lee H]

Adslguide have further information regarding the newer BT "max" products, their cost, and of course the information on everybody's minds at the moment - Download limits.

For more info and a giggle check the following link ;

http://www.adslguide.org/newsarchive.asp?item=2570

[spazman]

Why does the term rip off spring to mind?

[peterb]

Why does the term rip off spring to mind?

Don't know - doesn't to my mind!

[rough_neck]

I'm currently on Zen 1MB which is no longer available, you now have two main products which imo have very good caps especially the Zen 8000 Pro. Apparently 80% of Zen users download less than 20GB per month so at least there looking at putting realistic caps on to coincide with their customer base.

With regards to cost if you want to download 24/7 be prepared to pay for it….

[peterb]

It isn't really a cap - you can continue diow3nloading at that speed, but once the allowance has been used, you just pay for anything over.

[G4Z]

Dunno about everybody else but im used to uncapped internet access, I am on Zen 2mb at the moment and I would like 8mb, but a 50gb cap puts me off.

i know some months I may get nowhere near it but other months I am gonna fly over that and I dont really want to pay £1 per gb for whatever I go over. Think il sit tight and get an unlimited 8mb service when available.

[peterb]

Think il sit tight and get an unlimited 8mb service when available.

You could be in for a long wait - or a very expensive service - the economics just don'yt add up for an unlimited service - any ISP offering it will either be out of business soon, or have a tightly controlled AUP...

[iMc]

It's so difficult to know how much bandwith is being used. I can monitor my downloads but I sit around with WoW open a lot of the time, and play alot of CS:S... how much bandwith does that use up?

With downloads I must hit 30Gb a month im sure. Especially since I share the connection with 2 other housemates and I don't really monior their useage... I know one of them streams a lot of video.

Hence the reason why I feel alot more comfortable with an uncapped service.

[weebroonieuk]

download bandwidth monitor or use your routers status page if you have one i presume you d o if your charing your access ?

[dambrogio]

can someone please explain. I read aol has no cap - so why switch to anyone with a cap? Surely there will be ISPs that will not CAP and take the total business. Like putting a water meter in - dont do it!

[peterb]

Most of the 'no cap' ISPs have acceptable use policies - if you download more than is considered acceptable, the spped is throttled or other sanctioins are taken. Zen is (strictly speaking) still not capped - if you exceed the monthly allowance on the new service you can buy more at £1/GB.

The economics don't add up for an uncapped service. A BT central pipe costs (I'm told) about £1.7M/yera. It has a capacity of 655Mb/sec, so would support 80 users downloading at max speed continuously. Cost per user £1,770/month (possibly plus VAT).

It isn't quite that simple because of contention ratios etc - assuming 50:1 then that drops to £35/month - but then the speed drops to 160Kb/s. So something has to give - and it is the capping that allows more users per BT central, while still allowing users an acceptable speed.

So to go back to our 80 users, paying 1,770/month - that allows them to download 4,800GB/month - downloading 24/7. Now it is unlikley that they will be doing that - but if you limit the download limit to 480GB, then that allows 800 users - so the price drops to £170/month. Limit the download to 48GB and the users go up to 8000, and the price drops to 17/month. Now that is more acceptable, although that is just the raw cost of the central pipe - then the ISP has overheads, support costs, and its own network to support.

Now this is a simplistic model - what if all the 8000 users are trying to download at once, for example? - well, the speeds will drop, so additional capacity has to be bought, and I don't have any of the answers as to how traffic is managed - but the bottom line is that uncapped 8Mb/s download is likely to be long term financial suicide for the ISP or prohibitvely expensive for the user.