Limiting users while promoting unlimited bandwidth
As of last year Virgin Media have started throttling its adsl and cable users, it claims that apparently 5% of its users use 95% of the resources, and throttling its users speeds to some extent no better than dial-up is the best case scenario for all involved.
As expected they have been an uproar that customers are paying for an unlimited broadband service only to have it limited in usage, Virgin Media still claims its broadband is still unlimited, however that argument does not hold much ground, in that dial-up is still unlimited, but what is the point of waiting a week for a download. It is the equivalent of having bought a top of the range sports car, and you are told if you use that top of the range sports car between the hours of 4 and midnight on a week day, and between the hours of 10 in the morning and midnight Saturdays and Sundays, you are going to be penalised by having to walk for the rest of the entire week simply because you used what you paid for.
What makes matters even more insulting in that for adsl Virgin Media customers on the up to 8MB adsl package it could take less than 20 mins to download 350MB, this apparently is the cut-off mark to determine whether you get throttled or not.
So using your unlimited broadband pacckage for 20 mins a day means you are going to be reduced to dial-up speeds for the rest of next week. Unless ofcourse you chose to be a vampire and only download after midnight, and don't work during a working day, because that apparently is the only time their throttling/bandwidth STM (Subscriber Traffic Management) does not apply.
As expected they have been an uproar that customers are paying for an unlimited broadband service only to have it limited in usage, Virgin Media still claims its broadband is still unlimited, however that argument does not hold much ground, in that dial-up is still unlimited, but what is the point of waiting a week for a download. It is the equivalent of having bought a top of the range sports car, and you are told if you use that top of the range sports car between the hours of 4 and midnight on a week day, and between the hours of 10 in the morning and midnight Saturdays and Sundays, you are going to be penalised by having to walk for the rest of the entire week simply because you used what you paid for.
What makes matters even more insulting in that for adsl Virgin Media customers on the up to 8MB adsl package it could take less than 20 mins to download 350MB, this apparently is the cut-off mark to determine whether you get throttled or not.
So using your unlimited broadband pacckage for 20 mins a day means you are going to be reduced to dial-up speeds for the rest of next week. Unless ofcourse you chose to be a vampire and only download after midnight, and don't work during a working day, because that apparently is the only time their throttling/bandwidth STM (Subscriber Traffic Management) does not apply.
Labels: bandwidth, Broadband, Broadband speed test, isp, STM, Subscriber traffic management, throttling, Virgin media
