UK won't follow Aussie broadband usage cap
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Posted in Music and Media, 8th June 2001 10:06 GMT
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The UK's three major broadband suppliers have told The Register they have no plans to introduce any usage limits for customers.
Neither BT, or cable companies ntl and Telewest currently impose quotas, all three told El Reg today.
And none of them have any plans to impose any usage restrictions - although none was prepared to rule it out completely.
The assurances follow in the wake of the decision by Australian broadband provider, Telstra BigPond, to limit the amount of usage for residential users to just 3GB of data a month.
BigPond said the limits - due to come into force on July 5 - were imposed because a small number of users were effectively hogging the service.
BigPond reckons its decision will not hit the majority of users. However, the move has angered users, who've set up an online petition to try and get BigPond to reverse its decision. Several readers have told El Reg that the petition is no longer accessible from a Big Pond account.
Some critics have suggested that it would have been simpler to simpler to evict the five per cent of users BigPond said were abusing the service.
The events in Australia raised some concerns among broadband users in the UK that operators here might follow BigPond's lead and impose restrictions. ®
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