Beware - Prospective O2 broadband customers, apparently the Fair Use terms will mean, if you exceed more than 40gb downloads you will have your account terminated [yes,this applies to unlimited accounts].

It seems Unlimited has a new meaning and the oxford dictionary should take note.....

As a BE customer, I will be livid if they apply this stupid fair use policy to BE customers.

Shame they didnt focus on sorting out thier Phone business first, so I wouldnt need a second handset on a different network just to be able to text a friend on verizon in the U.S. (who incidentally CAN text me on o2 - consistent huh?)

Trust them with my broadband connection? I think Not, Enta are up front about what I can do and how much of it I can do, Thats something the "unlimited liars" have yet to grasp, you breed better customer relations by being clear and honest. o2 broadband? Nothing to see here people... move along

I already have 24Mbps ADSL ownd by O2.

It's called Be*.

http://www.bethere.co.uk

But now, what we need is for somebody INTELLIGENT to be employed by OFCOM and ASA and to insist that it be used only to describe products that truly DO comply with its meaning.

But the chances of anybody intelligent ever being employed by OFCOM or ASA ???

I wonder if they'll be as shit as Orange....

1) Unlimited downloads! Yes, download as much as you want in any billing period!

2) Billing period is 1 calendar month.

3) Fair use policy: exceeding 40Gb downloads in any billing period will result in contract / service termination with effect from the end of the billing period.

There, that's got to count as unlimited.

"But the chances of anybody intelligent ever being employed by OFCOM or ASA ???"

Find the answer below. ;)

http://www.batterseapowerstation.org.uk/floyd/animals2.jpg

"As a BE customer, I will be livid if they apply this stupid fair use policy to BE customers."

BE has a FUP just like everyone else ......

Dont think a single ISP in the UK doesnt have one or some other nefarious management system in place .

It just isn't a FUP like other ISPs. BT don't want you to know this, but bandwidth is actually effing cheap. Be don't have to buy bandwidth from BT, so unless you are using hundreds of gigabytes a month, they don't truly mind. I have had months in the past with Be where I have probably exceeded 100GB (it is so irrelevant to Be users, we don't bother tracking it :o). I also wouldn't call it a 'nefarious management system', theres certainly no DPI in use; its almost a neutral net.

The reason the FUP is there is to allow them to terminate your contract if you truly start taking the mickey. I'm not even sure that they would be able to use 40GB as a limit. As a limit, you could hit that with 6 hours* of solid downloading, which is 0.82% of the total time period of a month..

* assume 2100 KB/s, ignore network/protocol overheads, (1024*1024*40)/(2100*60*60) = 5.5 hrs

I'm with a small ISP on the west of Scotland previously called WightCable and now SmallWorld. They offer cable net access and there's no throttling or FUP. They've been that way since I joined and they understand that customers don't want those things. It's made them popular and they've been the best ISP I've ever been with up to now. What we need is small regional ISPs that can manage a smaller network and better serve the customer.

""As a BE customer, I will be livid if they apply this stupid fair use policy to BE customers."

BE has a FUP just like everyone else ......"

According to the Be FUP (https://www.bethere.co.uk/fairusage.do) there isn't an actual download limit, unlike the O2 40Gb cap.

I think that describing anything as unlimited when it isn't should be an office under the Trade Descriptions Act.

...and I'd probably recommend them if you're in London. If you are "out in the sticks" like me then I'd be a bit wary.

The reason is that your backhaul (from BT) gets dumped directly into Level3's network and the wonders of packetexchange ;-P Seriously I regularly get routed across the Atlantic to get to Europe which is entirely due to Level3's "least-cost" routing which is....ermmm yeah you guessed, it's their own network ;-)

I hear routing in London does use more "useful" peering than packetexchange, but I can't confirm that as more than 95% of routes I've tested just stay on Level3 (I'm in the Midlands).

I wouldn't touch Be/O2 with a bargepole if you are a gamer. Really.

I'd think twice about it if transatlantic routes are important too - today's tracert to www.dilbert.com set a new record of 37 hops (29 inside Level3, from London to NY to SF, back to Atlanta and then to Dallas). The L3 routes are frequently congested too - I can prove that by forcing routing from a US server via another teleco. Be/O2 do appear to "upgrade" the links but not as rapidly as they could.

I'm probably preaching to the converted here but Level3 aren't good news to the end user. They certainly haven't been in my experience with Be and AAISP (I'm sure they used L3 years ago).

Oh and anyone who seriously believes that a cap is not coming (at those prices!) is deluded. Game over for Be "Unlimited" too I reckon - give it 3 months and we'll all get moved to an O2 price plan (January is my bet).

Caveat emptor as always.

Anonymous Vulture - i'm not sure where you've got that 40GB figure from but i work for O2 and can tell you that there is no limit on the fair use policy. Fair use on O2 Broadband is designed to stop people downloading to such an extent that it negatively impacts other customers. Where this happens, O2 will contact the customer and ask them to moderate their usage but we will not terminate their account.

Unlike Virgin 'Premium Rate' Media.

Premium rape more like.

The answer is to downgrade to a 1mbps or 2mbps IPstream connection, Entanet resellers will do you one for ~£35 a month, no FUP just all you can eat, 1mbps/month=300GB or 2mbps/month=600GB which is plenty even downloading ISOs etc if you really need an 8mbps unlimited connection they set you back about £65/month again from Entanet resellers, not cheap, but no bull either.

Why are these ISP allowed to use the word Unlimited when they do in fact limit in one way or another.

To the best of my knowledge Bulldog is the only ISP in UK that has a no strings unlimited downloads.

"To the best of my knowledge Bulldog is the only ISP in UK that has a no strings unlimited downloads."

That's only because they're too incompetent to actually administer such a thing, and/or never attracted anywhere near enough customers for it to be a problem. Ironically, their network is still excellent because it's essentially C&W, who have oodles of bandwidth.

BeThere essentially have no usage cap either (something like 500GB a month), although you wonder if that'll be affected by congestion caused by all the new O2 customers.

alow me to fill my boots with my 20mb conection - if I get greedy and run my connection flat out through peak times - after 6pm till ~00.00 then they limit me to 4 meg ish untill after midnight - I can still grab films - I mean *nix iso's or anything that attracts my fancy (TV epps I cant see as I have no SKY 1) on the newsgroups flat out outside peak times - I accept I am a "power" user and take the pi$$ - throteling me when the kids are doing the facebebomyspacebook thing or grany is catching up on her hotmale is fine by me - I know how to queue my stuff to run outside of peak hours - that is fair use as far as Im concerned

Just to add to the cacophony .... Sky Max is also unlimited in the true sense. Their Mid and Base packs have up-front advised caps and are not described using he "U" word.

I got a phone call the other day.....

Bank Manager: Your account has gone overdrawn

Me: No it hasn't, there are plenty of funds in there, it is Unlimited. The problem is that you have just gone over my FUP for it.

Bank Manager: Oh, sorry sir, I do apologise

Yea, right.

As I can't post a link I'll copy a post from the Be forum on www.thinkbroadband.com :

"There's a thread over at the official forum (members only) about it, but to summarise here:

Be are blocking certain IP addresses. An example is 212.78.204.20 which is used by members.lycos.co.uk, members.lycos.nl etc. This means you can't access any websites on those domains.

The reason they have given to various people is they are legally required to do so by the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation). It has been determined the IWF in fact give a list of specific URLs to block - Be however block the websites' IP addresses instead meaning mostly innocent websites are blocked. As in the above example - you can't access any website hosted on members.lycos.co.uk which is pretty ridiculous!

Right now the block is still in place on members.lycos.co.uk and Be have gone quiet so it seemed a good idea to post here."

tracert to relevant IP address :

1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms server-a.homelan.local [192.168.0.1]

2 91 ms 99 ms 99 ms 192.168.10.2

3 15 ms 15 ms 15 ms 87-194-212-1.bethere.co.uk [87.194.212.1]

4 19 ms 18 ms 21 ms 10.1.2.5

5 22 ms 22 ms 21 ms 10.1.0.1

6 21 ms 21 ms 22 ms 10.1.1.94

7 21 ms 20 ms 20 ms 10.1.1.141

8 * * * Request timed out.

As can be seen the tracert just bounces around Be's (and O2's) network so the poster on thinkbroadband is quite correct.

Avoid like the plague as they ARE clueless muppets!

>"It'll be the first major player to make a commercial offering of ADSL2+, so only time can tell."

No it won't.

Sky BB is all ADSL2+, Easynet's entire LLU platform has been 2+ since 2005.

Just surfing about and noticed that o2 BB is live and looked for whether it is unlimited and seems to be so.

http://www.o2.co.uk/termsconditions/broadband

See below....

What about excessive network usage?

There is no limit on the monthly network usage. However if we feel that your activities are so excessive that other customers are detrimentally affected, we may give you a written warning (by email or otherwise). In extreme circumstances, if the levels of activity do not immediately decrease after the warning, we may terminate or suspend your Services

Though I think you'd have to be streaming movies 24/7 and leeching the net to get told off! I LOVE BE! :)