from the sound-familiar? dept
While we've mostly been focused on the debates over traffic shaping and false advertising in the US with the likes of
Comcast and
Verizon in the US, there's an interesting parallel over in the UK. Just like Verizon, it appears that Virgin Media's broadband offering is
advertised as unlimited, even as the reality suggests quite differently. It's "unlimited within a fair-usage limit." That sounds like "limited" to me. In fact, the article notes, a Virgin Media user paying for unlimited service could find his bandwidth suddenly capped after just 20 minutes of straight downloading. That seems like quite a limit.
Much more interesting, however, is the story of Plusnet, an ISP that was recently bought by BT. It does traffic shaping, but unlike just about every other ISP, is
incredibly honest and upfront about what it's doing. This is exactly what many people have been telling Comcast it
should do. There are supporters of Comcast's efforts who insist that if Comcast did such a crazy thing as to actually tell its customers what it's doing, it would ruin the whole plan. However, the details from Plusnet show that's not the case at all. Plusnet makes it very clear what it's doing, explains to users what to expect, and even helps them understand when it makes more sense to use high bandwidth applications. According to the few supporters of Comcast out there, this would never work -- and yet, it clearly does work for Plusnet. Not only that, the article notes that Plusnet's customer satisfaction rating has been growing steadily. So, once again, we'll ask what could possibly be wrong with Comcast telling the truth about the fact that it's using traffic shaping to prevent certain actions?
Filed Under: false advertising, traffic shaping, uk
Companies: bt, plusnet, virgin media
