I didn't know any of the wired broadband providers even had quotas.
UK big five carriers bin wired broadband download quotas for as long as we're all stuck indoors
The UK's big five telecoms companies have lifted data caps on all current fixed broadband services to ensure residents get the internet they need while locked down to prevent the spread of coronavirus. BT, Virgin Media, Sky, TalkTalk and O2 agreed to remove all data allowances on current landline broadband after talks with the …
COMMENTS
-
-
-
Monday 30th March 2020 17:06 GMT Boris the Cockroach
As I remember
Labour were offering free broadband as an essential service (especially since so much government/welfare/medical stuff is shoved onto the internet) but their definition of broadband was 2mb down/100 k up
You wanted faster/better you paid for it..
But hey... lets just mindlessly repeat the daily (m)wail labour bad , tories good , labour bad, tories good
-
-
Tuesday 31st March 2020 00:05 GMT Boris the Cockroach
My actual opinion during the last election was Labour bad, tories worse
Both parties(actually all of the parties) have lousey people in charge, so we end up with bozo the clown, and old man corbyn...
Maybe kicking the lawyers* out of parliment and having a wide cross section of society stand for government would give us better leaders.... but then maybe not
*75% of MPs are/were lawyers.... which means they should be able to come up with better laws that cant be challenged in court... but strangely dont
-
-
-
-
Monday 30th March 2020 10:12 GMT John Doe 12
Stupidest Idea EVER!!
So now all the selfish heavy downloaders will have nothing to stop them from swamping the networks. Anyone who agrees with this policy must also agree that the supermarkets remove the limit on bulk buying I guess?
I have personally known the hoarding downloader type who grab anything and everything "because it's there". I remember when one particular colleague ran out of disk space so just deleted gigabytes of zipfiles which he never even bothered to unpack or do anything with.
Already I have seen people moaning that they are struggling to work from home while at the same time all their kids are watching different things on Netflix at full HD quality. Not everyone lives in the city centre with gigabit fibre connections yet they all assume they can do what they want and some kind of black magic makes it ok :-D
-
Monday 30th March 2020 10:37 GMT Steve 53
Re: Stupidest Idea EVER!!
Few packages are actually have download limits, and it's unlikely the tiny fraction of users who have these packages (We're talking tight budgets here) are the sort of users who will suddenly download tonnes. Hell, we're probably talking about people with just a bit of DAS.
Probably not a problem...
-
Monday 30th March 2020 12:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Stupidest Idea EVER!!
"So now all the selfish heavy downloaders will have nothing to stop them from swamping the networks. Anyone who agrees with this policy must also agree that the supermarkets remove the limit on bulk buying I guess?"
Why? Food is a physical product which must be manufactured, packaged and stored. Network bandwidth is instantaneous and cannot be stored. Swamping the networks would require deliberate co-ordinated effort by lots of people to even make a dent in availability.
-
Monday 30th March 2020 16:11 GMT Jimmy2Cows
Re: Stupidest Idea EVER!!
The selfish heavy downloaders are already on unlimited plans. Not that there's anywhere near enough of them to create the problem you imagine will exist.
People unable to work from home effectively because their kids are all watching different HD/UHD streams isn't a network issue. It's mainly a parenting problem (yes I know WIFI interference and local contention), but still mainly a parenting issue). Tell the kids work is more important and they need to lower their quality settings. Remind them they won't be able to watch Netflix if there's nothing to pay the bills with. If they still won't drop the quality, do it for them. If they turn it back up again, remove their devices for a while. It ain't rocket science.
-
-
Monday 30th March 2020 10:41 GMT Steve 53
Interestingly, A&A (one of the few premium ISPs who have download quotas) beat ofcom to the punch by about 3 weeks. They're keeping quotas, but topping people up as needed. Seems to strike a decent balance between helping people with unusual traffic patterns due to Covid and keeping people accountable for their usage.
One of the few providers who beat themselves up if they have any packet loss due to congestion... But of course it needs subscribers who are invested in that idea as well.
-