Unlimited should mean just that
How many times have you heard the term ‘unlimited broadband’ used by Internet service providers?
The use of the word unlimited can be very misleading. More often than not they are not unlimited at all. Use of the service is often subject to a ‘Fair use policy’ that imposes a data transfer limit of some sort.
For example, Tiscali offer an ‘Unlimited Broadband‘ package:
As you can see, it clearly states unlimited monthly usage. But if you check their fair use policy:
A very small number of customers use Peer to Peer or file sharing software, which constantly sends and receives video and other very large files, throughout the day. This type of activity uses a lot of bandwidth and can significantly reduce the speed at which other customers can access the internet during peak hours. Approximately 1% of customers use more than 30% of the available bandwidth during peak hours. We don’t believe this is fair to the vast majority of our customers. This fair usage policy automatically identifies the very small number of extremely heavy users and manages their bandwidth only during peak hours (6pm to 11pm Monday to Sunday), to protect the service for all our other customers. Outside peak hours, the use of the internet by these heavy users is unaffected.
Now what they are saying does seem fair enough, but why should they be able to sell it as an unlimited service whilst imposing these restrictions? This argument has been going on for a long time, and there is something you can do about it - sign this on-line petition:
Great!
