Legality of Virgin Media traffic management policy

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@those who consider 1TB to be too much for a "residential" customer to download..

 

What about if someone watches BBC iplayer all day... or, in this day of multi-PC households, several people are watching several different programs simultaneously, continuously, as well as downloading service packs, patches, full unix/solaris OS dvds, voip and video calls, plus commercial VoD services?

 

A 2mb dsl service has the capacity to transfer 700GB a month, assuming uninterrupted 24/7 operation over a 30 day month.

 

An 8mb service equates to 2.4TB a month (2TB in reality). ADSL2+ upto 7TB (6TB in reality). 50MB cable? 12-14TB? And what happens when 100mbit is introduced? In excess of 20TB?

 

The problem with advertising "unlimited" and not defining "fair usage".

 

What is "fair" use of a shared network, which has been sold to you on the basis of full use of the available bandwidth on a point-to-point access technology? This harks to my first post here, regarding the "unlimited" decision.

 

Given the potential bandwidth figures above, what is the "fair use" of them, as a percentage?

 

Now, is that percentage figure a percentage of the possible bandwidth, or a percentage of what a given user can achieve?

 

To clarify that:- You answered "25%", for arguments sake. Take two users on the same ISP, paying the same tariff, on an "unlimited" DSL Max product. user A can get 8mb, so it is "fair" that he only transfers 600MB data a month (purely illustrative)... User B can only achieve a 4mb connection, limiting his monthly bandwidth to 1.2TB, and 25% of that is 400MB. Is that fair? Paying same costs for the same product but?

 

This is quite apart from what one is actually transfering. @conniff, you /appear/ to have fallen for the ISPs propoganda that anything above an arbitrary figure *must* be for downloading "illegal" films or "illegal" P2P use.

 

Why must they? Simply because you do not utilise your bandwidth in the same way others do, does not mean they are "guilty" of doing anything illegal or unlawful.

 

Should I ask how 1TB data = 10,000 films? According to so called scene rules the shortest a feature length film can be is 700MB (1 CD), = 1,200 divx films. ignoring the number of 1.5gb releases, you'd be hard pressed to find 1200 unique avi films in a month... Oh, and have you heard of HD? One is looking at 12gb+/film, 25Gb is not uncommon. And no, it doesn't have to be a pirated source either.

 

Apologies for overly long post. My own feelings, as an industry insider, is that the UK ISP market and the telcos have only themselves to blame for this problem. The warnings were sounded inside, long long ago. No one wanted to listen.

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Apologies, I just wanted to add another thought.

 

The telecomms industry classifies "fair usage" in two entirely different ways.

 

insofar as the PSTN is concerned, it is measured in connection time. Remember the fracas over Freeserve's "unlimited" internet over dial-up? It cut you off after 2 hours as people were hogging the access servers.

 

insofar as dsl is concerned, they have moved the goalposts. It is no longer connection time (ok, it is an always on technology), but data transfer, e.g. bandwidth usage.

 

This is another reason I'd really like the meat and bones of the "unlimited doesnt mean unlimited" decision.. I'd love to know how telecom savvy the plaintiff/solicitor was in that case.