Freeola stop unlimited broadband!

[Harrison]

I received a letter at the weekend from Freeola. It stated the following:


Freeola has removed all uncapped broadband tariffs from the current range of services on offer. We are writing to let you know that we will be moving you over from your current Uncapped product onto our new 8Mb MAX 30/300 product, which will provide you with a higher speed service.

Your new package offers you the fastest connection speed available on your line up to 8Mb, a large data usage allowance of 30GB at peak times, and a huge 300GB at all other times. There will be no change to your monthly payment. 8Mb MAX tariffs have generous data usage allowances, but if you reach the monthly allowance any additional usage will be charged at a rate of 80p pence per Gigabyte.

Also, according to the letter Peak times are between 8AM and 10PM!

This is really crap! 30GB per month is nothing! Granted 300GB is quite a lot and would probably be enough per month (Last month I used about 250GB of bandwidth according to the logs), but not when it is only off peak times between 10PM and 8AM it is not. I would use the 30GB Peak time allowance in probably 3 or 4 days at most.

And I bet they know this. By reducing the Peak time bandwidth to 30GB they are basically trying to cut the amount of traffic on their network as most will not leave their computers on over night using the bandwidth (they hope).

And at the moment I was on a maximum of a 2Mb connection, but the new service is finally upgrading this to up to 8Mb, but then reducing the bandwidth allowance. Madness! And no good for me!

So it seems I may need to find a new ISP, and one that can do a seemless transfer from Freeola without me losing my connection for days, or weeks. Any UK Uncapped Broadband services anyone here can recommend I look at?

[Demon Cleaner]

That is a mess. Unfortunately I cannot recommend an ISP.

[Harrison]

I just checked my usage for this month so far, and already I have downloaded nearly 40GB over 4 days, so if I were already on this new tariff I would now be 10GB in debt and already owe them an additional £8.

Over a month, if I kept that bandwidth usage up I would end up using around 300GB of bandwidth this month and be charged about £50 for bandwidth usage. No way am I sticking with Freeola!

[Stephen Coates]

I just checked my usage for this month so far, and already I have downloaded nearly 40GB over 4 days, so if I were already on this new tariff I would now be 10GB in debt and already owe them an additional £8.

Over a month, if I kept that bandwidth usage up I would end up using around 300GB of bandwidth this month and be charged about £50 for bandwidth usage. No way am I sticking with Freeola!


Thats bad.

I am yet to see another ISP which is completely unlimited, but I havn't been looking so can't be sure whether there is one or not.

Why is it that most ISPs are having these limitations?

Hope you find a suitable ISP soon. Unfortunately there arn't any I can recomend. Is demon unlimited?

[AlexJ]

Sadly my ISP also discontinued their free unlimited service, and I couldn't find an alternative that was totally uncapped. I went to Eclipse in the end, it's got 20GB during peak hours and unlimited outside those hours - it's not great but uTorrent allows me to slow the transfer down during the peak hours.

[J T]

My telewest is unlimited, 4 meg. It's pretty good, but all done through a cable connection. This may be changing though as NTL/Telewest is changing to Virgin Media.

AOL used to be unlimited - don't know about now, but they were fairly rubbish, expensive too. and had to have their crappy software installed.

[Harrison]

I've been looking around and Pipex offer an 8Mb unlimited broadband package for £24.99, and this also includes a static IP address and faster 448Kb upload rate.

I've never been too sure about Pipex though. Anyone else know much about them, other than the Hasselhoff adverts of course! (Something that is definitely persuading me so far :lol:)

[J T]

Uh, they also sponsor Fulham FC :whistle:

[Harrison]

I've now also dicovered BT and Demon are still offering unlimited bandwidth broadband. I probably wouldn't touch BT after hearing lots of stories from people with problems, but as I did used to be a Demon customer and never had a problem with them I will look into that more.

As with all of them it depends on their fair use policy. Some just restrict heavy users during evening peak times if they feel they are using too much bandwidth, whereas others restrict and then ban.

[Puni/Void]

It is really sad, and also a bit strange, that companies are still using download caps in 2007. After all, that should be a thing of the past. I'm sorry to hear that you might have to switch ISP, Harrison. Hope you will find an ISP that doesn't put any limits on downloads. If you had been in Norway, you would have found that almost no ISP's has any limits on downloads or uploads whatsoever. Teho can probably back me on this one. The only company that had caps on downloads, was Telenor. Think they abolished this in 2001 or something.

[Submeg]

That is pretty frustrating, but I'm pretty sure most ISPs are like that down here...we are so backwards in Aus when it comes to the net

[Stephen Coates]

It is really sad, and also a bit strange, that companies are still using download caps in 2007. After all, that should be a thing of the past. I'm sorry to hear that you might have to switch ISP, Harrison. Hope you will find an ISP that doesn't put any limits on downloads. If you had been in Norway, you would have found that almost no ISP's has any limits on downloads or uploads whatsoever. Teho can probably back me on this one. The only company that had caps on downloads, was Telenor. Think they abolished this in 2001 or something.


Thing of the past?!

Thing of the future more like. A few years ago most services that I found didn;t have limits, or the limits that they did have were quite large. Almost all the providers that I know of at the moment have some sort of download limit. Mine is about 4GB I think which is fine for people like me who don;t need to have a pirate copy of every game or software ever released. Obviously though that would be bad for most people here. It is quite reliable though now. The only problem that I tend to have is that my router randomly resets itself.

If I was to choose another ISP I would probably choose Demon as they look quite nice. I wouldn;t go with BT as they seem to be quite AOL/Freeserve like when it comes to internet. I would only use BT for a phone line.

[Harrison]

In the UK most ISPs definitely seem to be tightening the reigns on bandwidth limits. A couple of years ago you didn't see many monthly bandwidth limitations on broadband connections. Now it is hard to find one that doesn't have this.

I think the problem is that a lot of ISPs are over stretching the resources they have, and at peak times of the day they are struggling to supply the quality of service their customers needs. Personally I view this as their problem, not mine. Why should we, the customer, suffer for the ISPs lack of resources. We pay enough each month as it is and should get the service we deserve.

I've now been looking more at the packages available and being an ex-demon user from when I was on dial-up I know the company well and never had any connection or downtime when I used to be with them. This has made it tempting to move to them, but I do still need to read through their fair use policies in detail to see what they state. They also do some home business brandband packages that remove most of the restrictions imposed on home users, so these might be the perfect package for what I need. I will still need to double check everything.

Has anyone else switched ISP lately? I know the process is to get a MAC number from the existing ISP, and then give this to the new one so that they can then take over the connection. But is this seemless? Will I have any downtime switching between ISPs? Or will to just require me to change the login settings on the router on the day of switch over from the old to new ISP and then I can just be connected again? I hope this is how it now works as I remember a friend a couple of years ago moved ISP and was without broadband for over a week.

[AlexJ]

I moved ISP about five months ago - it went smoothly for me. The MAC code came from the old provider (after firstly refusing to give it by email and asking me to ring, only for them on the phone to say they couldn't give it out straight away and they'd email it to me within a few hours) and then I signed up with the new one. On the day it changed over the router disconnected and then reconnected showing the new faster speed. It worked fine (even with my old details in for some reason). Then all I did was update the settings to have my new u/n and p/w and provider and cancel the direct debit for the old provider. A total of about 20 seconds downtime in my case. A mate of mine however has about 2 weeks downtime (but he was originally with Tiscali who apparently use a different system to everyone else).

[Harrison]

I'm still looking for the best Broadband ISP to switch to. Today is the first day of the new capped Freeola switch-over, but it seems they are going to be taking until the middle of March to actually upgrade their systems, so I am safe using whatever bandwidth I like until that time. ;) So at least I have a couple more weeks to look into which is the best to switch to.

I'm still leaning towards the Demon Business Broadband as it offers unmetered traffic, with no fair use limits they impose on their home packages, so no bandwidth restrictions between 9am-10pm. The contention is also lower than the consumer broadband and the traffic on the business packages takes priority over the home packages which is really good. I don't mind paying slightly more for these features.

But I still want to double check no other ISP has a similar package at a cheaper price. Pipex's uncapped broadband still also looks quite good but I need to investigate their fair use policies a bit more.

One thing that is annoying is that I seem to still be on one of the few exchanges that have yet to be fully upgraded. Yes, I can benefit from slightly faster broadband via MAX, but I have no ability to use any of the dedicated faster ADSL2 services such as Bulldog or Be* which go up to 24Mbit via their own connection to your phoneline at the local exchange. I would love to get that ability, but it would involve moving to an area with an enabled exchange.

So anyone else got any ISP suggestions I can look at this week?

[Harrison]

There is some good news regarding my Freeola connection. When they switched me from the uncapped service to the capped service they switched it from the older fixed speed service to the newer Broadband Max service. As I am so far from the exchange it has only increased the download speed from about 1.5Mbit when it was running on the older 2Mbit maximum speed broadband, to just under 3Mbit/s, but at least the upload speed has gone up from the old 256Kbit/s to 448Kbit/s which is about 56KB/s, which will definitely help out with my ratios when seeding torrents on private trackers :)

I've decided now that I am going to wait until the 10 day period when the final line speed of the MAX connection has settled down and then I will know what the actual line speed can handle so can get a package from a different ISP for only what the line can handle and hopefully can save some money that way. After all, there is no point paying for an 8Mbit Broadband MAX package when my line might only manage a maximum of 3Mbit.

[Harrison]

I've now read on a few different websites that to get the fastest speed allocated to a Broadband MAX line during the first 10 day period where the exchange adjusts the line speed to get the best results you need to try and maintain a maximum download speed for as much of those 10 days as you can. This is going to be such a hardship needing to max out my downloads. ;) :lol:

[Submeg]

Lol, thats pretty funny. Hmm...so you want me to download? Ok..

[Harrison]

Well I'm going quite well so far. Have downloaded 30GB since the 1st March. ;)

I've not yet seen much adjustment in the download rate though as it is still around 3Mbit. Not that great considering the fastest possible speed is 8Mbit, but it's not bad considering how far I live from my exchange and it is still roughly double the speed I was getting before.

[Submeg]

Thats alright, I wish when Im at my gf is was constantly high...