Reasons for O2 cap limit

Hi all, I work for O2, sorry to all of you for the data cap but frankly this has been coming for months, metaphorically speaking the big operators in the UK have been sat staring at each other and waiting for the other ones to blink, O2 have blinked first mainly due to being the biggest provider of the iPhone and it high data usage profile on the network.

Any of you planning to move networks to get around the cap bear a few things in mind:-

1. Most networks do have a "fair usage cap" which they don't tell you about, check this out before you go elsewhere

2. O2 have blinked first, highly likely that the other networks are going to follow in a couple of months time (they will hold off long enough to let disgruntled O2 customers move across to them first of course)

3. Make sure that the network your thinking of moving to can provide an equiverlant service, its ok moving to a tariff on "H3G" but all the unlimited data in the world won't help when you spend most of your time on Oranges GPRS network due to the lack of coverage that "3" have (for the unaffilliated, H3G have an national roaming agreement with Orange that provide coverage when you run out of signal on H3G's network).

The truth is that the average data usage per subscriber increases each month with the take up of more and more smart phones (iPhone being the main culprit however new additions like the Sony Ericsson X10 and the HTC range of handsets contribute heavily as well), we are increasing the network capacity at a riddiculous rate but with data throughput doubling in size around every 100 days or so we seem to be endlessless firefighting to stay ahead of the game.

With 36% of our network data throughput being used up by the top 3% of the high usage customers the truth is that the majority of you are suffering service issues / slow download and network access speeds / inconsistant coverage on 3G and a range of other service quality affecting issue for these few people who are caining the network mercilessly

By introducing a charge (not a huge one, £1-00 per 100MB over the usage limit) this will hopefully deter these high usage customers and free up more resource on the network for the rest of you and with that improve your customer experience.

I can assure you that O2's network expansion plans are very ambitious and you will see improved network performance and speed over the next 12 months however these things take time to do them right, quality over quantity is the motto we have.

By the way i'm not some O2 PR bod looking to put a positive spin on things, I work in a technical area of O2 (I won't say which one as don't want to give my identity away), just telling you guys the way it is and why we have done what we've done.

Might even keep me with O2, you never know

Having seen O2's data service quality drop through the floor at the same rate as the rise of the iPhone, putting a cap on the latter's usage would be no bad thing.