Stop UK ISPs falsely advertising unlimited broadband!

[Harrison]

A lot of people in the UK (including myself) have been getting annoyed with the move by most ISPs to introduce Fair Use Policies that contradict their packages they advertise as "unlimited" broadband.

Therefore a petition has been launched on E-Partitions to stop Broadband Providers from advertising "unlimited" services that are in fact limited in the small print or by un-defined fair use policies.

If you wish to sign this petition and try to stop this then please do by going to:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Unlimited-ADSL/

[Stephen Coates]

I'll sign it.

I think it is a good idea to offer limited connections, but there should be unlimited ones avalaible as well and it definately isn't good to advertise a limited connection as unlimited.

[AlexJ]

Signed the petition - it's one of my personal hates as well. How can it be both unlimited usage but usage restrictions apply?

If a car hire company offered unlimited mileage when you hired a car for a week but then in the small print said if you do an (in their opinion) unreasonable amount of mileage, which for most people won't be a problem but is possible to achieve in the period you've rented the car for, then you'll have to pay extra they'd surely be done for false advertising. What exactly is the difference with ISP's?

If the ISP's can't handle the traffic - don't take on more customers! Or upgrade the network so it can handle the traffic.

[rayzorblue]

I myself have an "unlimited" broadband package which throttles p2p d/loads and has a fair usage policy so it is pretty f*ckin far from unlimited in my eyes.
Signed, sealed, delivered.

[AlexJ]

The PM has responsed and sided with the BB companies.

"Qualifying an 'unlimited' claim with a fair usage policy in the small print of an ad is allowed as long as it really is fair and not misleading. For example, if 80% of domestic customers fall well within the limit specified by a broadband provider and the remaining 20% fall outside of it, then it may be considered a reasonable claim."

WTF? 1 in 5 people can find it unreasonable yet it's still fair!

[Harrison]

I didn't trust him when he was in charge of our budget and I trust him even less as PM! This just enforces why.

And this quote from ISPreview UK sums up the current UK ISP issues quite well:

"It may be worth noting that most ISP’s now advertise “unlimited” in terms of access as opposed to service quality, with the advent of traffic shaping meaning that heavy users are now more likely to be slowed than they are to be kicked. Meanwhile the remaining issue over vague and often misleading fair usage policies looks set to continue."

So unlimited now seems to mean that you can use the service at all times? So all the packages that don't claim they are unlimited cannot be used all day then?

My ISP has said in the past that they don't perform any kind of traffic shaping, but I've noticed that my download connection speed definitely seems to drop during the daytime which is very odd if they are not!

I'm still looking for a real unlimited bandwidth ISP in the UK and have yet to find one unless I choose to pay a lot more for a business grade connection.