Xtra canning unlimited traffic

[Ira]

Annoying... No more fast, cheap unlimited internet...Again.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/3716861/Vampires-thwart-Telecom-all-you-can-eat-plan

[phoenix44]

Slingshot.

25gb per month. $60

FS/FS

Free data - unlimited - between 2am and 8am.

I just got cabnitised and my line rate is 19mbps or so.

[Zev]

I like this bit...

"If you are the only restaurant in town with an `all you can eat' menu, you are going to attract the big eaters."

[Ktttk]

I'm a bit disappointed by this too. I have 6 internet users in my house (ages 18-26) and our average monthly usage is ~150 GB so the big time plan was perfect. Guess it's time to shop around again.

It seems to me that broadband speeds are very good at the moment (ADSL 2) but what is lacking is capacity.

[smidey]

I'm a bit disappointed by this too. I have 6 internet users in my house (ages 18-26) and our average monthly usage is ~150 GB so the big time plan was perfect. Guess it's time to shop around again.

so it's your fault they are canning it

[Ktttk]

so it's your fault they are canning it

haha, well it averages out to be about 20 GB per person per month which is reasonable but on a single account I guess you could regard it as heavy. The plan was apparently designed for households like mine who have a high number of users. Anyway, the problem lies with the small group of people who go through TBs of data each month (by circumventing Telecom's filtering rules), some of whom do it just so they can boast about it in certain forums.

[Ira]

haha, well it averages out to be about 20 GB per person per month which is reasonable but on a single account I guess you could regard it as heavy. The plan was apparently designed for households like mine who have a high number of users. Anyway, the problem lies with the small group of people who go through TBs of data each month (by circumventing Telecom's filtering rules), some of whom do it just so they can boast about it in certain forums.

I doubt there's more than a couple people going through even 1 tb/month. Let alone multiple TBs. Trying as hard as I can I've barely even gotten up to around 150gb.

[David R]

I'm with Xnet, ~$30 a month then $1 per gig regardless of if I use 1 gig or 100, no complaints really.

[Caryl]

My daughter uses Xnet I think and has no complaints either.

[Morcs]

Its ridiculous. 5 years ago in the UK i had a connection fast enough that its comparible to NZ connections nowadays, and there was no such thing as limits - my PC was on 24/7 downloading movies, games, music etc..

[phoenix44]

60 million people in the UK

[elusive_fish]

OK, I know I'm taking a slightly different view on things, but can anyone tell me what legal/legitimate reasons you would need unlimited home internet for?

I mean, isn't it really just the illegal movie pillagers that will miss out by the bandwidth cap change?

[Ira]

OK, I know I'm taking a slightly different view on things, but can anyone tell me what legal/legitimate reasons you would need unlimited home internet for?

I mean, isn't it really just the illegal movie pillagers that will miss out by the bandwidth cap change?

Steam for one.

[supasi]

Im lucky to use more than a couple of gig a month.

I struggle to see how people can use multiple TB per month.

[Ira]

Actually, if you have to ask the question you probably don't have a clue what Steam is. It's a program/site to buy and download games. For example I bought and downloaded Half Life Orange box a couple days ago, cost $30 or something. On Xtra's pro plan if I'd already hit my data limit that download would have cost me $320 in excess data charges.

[phoenix44]

steam, youtube, tvnzondemand.

4 people in the house and our usage is 25-35GB per month.

bring in the free data between 2am and 8am and that increases to 150GB per month. that includes all data - up and down.

[Caryl]

Grant says the major reason for caps in this country is lack of capacity between NZ and the rest of the world. If you are in the rest of the world, especially in countries like the USA or UK, a large amount of their data is transferred from within that counrtry, keeping speeds up and costs down so they don't need to put data caps on.

Almost all of our data has to come in through our connections to other countries, which causes congestion and makes costs high. Data caps are a way of limiting data downloaded by large users which keeps the price down for lower users.

Once we get more fibre connections to the rest of the world, a very expensive thing to do, data caps will eventually disappear because of the increase in capacity.

We are a small country with few people to pay for the infrastructure, hence the high costs. We also have very difficult terrain to get the data through.