How is MultiplayDSL different?

[OSS]

The amount of truely unlimited ISPs is dropping. Zen used to offer unlimited 2mbit but with the launch of dslmax they have introduced a cap on the 8mbit product. If your service becomes popular will MultiplayDSL really be able to support thousands of heavy 8mbit users?

Might need to migrate :cool:

[uklad]

Originally posted by OSS
If your service becomes popular will MultiplayDSL really be able to support thousands of heavy 8mbit users?


No, not without increasing costs (substantially) or imposing caps and/or traffic shaping.

All IMHO, of course, based on the costs of providing such an "unlimited" service.

[Baz]

although unlimited, in the T&C's, you agree not to use it for the downloading of copyrighted or illegal material....

if you use stupid amounts of bandwidth LEGALLY, i doubt you have much to worry about :)

[Igloo]

Also, i remember reading something along these lines somewhere on this forum now i cant find it :(

here goes:

Multiplay DSL isnt aimed at the vast user group, like wanadoo, tiscali etc etc, meaning that with our current connections, we have more than enough bandwidth to take on lots of high usage customers, and still provide a high quality service to our users with no traffic shaping and download caps.


Im going to keep on looking, but i trust GeeDee and all who run it.

So i can say with honesty, that i trust that Multiplay will NEVER EVER IMPOSE DOWNLOAD CAPS AND TRAFFIC SHAPING.


Dont think of us as another wanadoo or AOL or whatever, we dont aim for that kind of market.

- Igloo

[uklad]

Originally posted by Igloo
i trust that Multiplay will NEVER EVER IMPOSE DOWNLOAD CAPS AND TRAFFIC SHAPING.


The only other option will be for them to put their prices up substantially then.

[Bonkers]

Originally posted by uklad
The only other option will be for them to put their prices up substantially then.

No your just not on the mark there at all.
They wont put there prices up - they wont impose caps.

Read:

MORE INFORMATION (http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=which_isp&Number=2428998)

I think thats what you were looking for Igloo.

As said - they dont want the casual users - the service isnt aimed for them - its aimed at gamers who want to get the most our of there connection. if it means downloading 100gb a month then so be it. BUt the bandwith issues are explained there

[uklad]

Its not sustainable to provide truly unlimited ADSL as those prices. No exceptions. Full stop. Thats why other ISPs are starting to traffic shape, and impose caps!

[Afty]

Originally posted by uklad
Its not sustainable to provide truly unlimited ADSL as those prices. No exceptions. Full stop. That very much depends on a number of things like:
1] Your overheads, like tech support etc. With lower overheads a higher proportion of your costs can be bandwidth.
2] The cost of your bandwidth - as most of MPUKs customers will subscribe because they use gaming services much of the regular bandwidth usage will remain within MPUKs network, so there is effectively NO bandwidth costs for such traffic.
3] Illegal Usage - as MPUK have stated, illegal P2P activity is not to be tolerated. Seeing as the ONLY consumers I know who have ever complained about bandwidth usage caps have ALL been downloading multimedia content illegally, this would seem to cover one of the bases quite nicely.
4] Desired profit margin

Now I don't doubt for a second that Multiplay will cut off someone who downloads American TV Torrents 24/7 - but then that's not an issue is it?

[uklad]

Originally posted by afty
That very much depends on a number of things like:
1] Your overheads, like tech support etc. With lower overheads a higher proportion of your costs can be bandwidth.
2] The cost of your bandwidth - as most of MPUKs customers will subscribe because they use gaming services much of the regular bandwidth usage will remain within MPUKs network, so there is effectively NO bandwidth costs for such traffic.


1) "Overheads" are a tiny tiny proportion of the prices quoted for consumer ADSL, maybe a few quid per month - cutting them will not result in being able to make great savings that can be put back into connectivity

2) Ignoring the internet bandwidth that you refer to (as this is also only a relatively small cost) the main "bandwidth" costs are those which connect the user to the multiplay network, and it is those which will force ISPs to limit their customers usage.

[Afty]

I don't dispute the validity of your last two points - but can you tell me a legitimate HOME CONSUMER usage which would (reasonably) exceed, say, 100GB per month on a regular basis?

I ask because I'm a heavy user who runs his BUSINESS from home 24/7 on a consumer DSL line and I don't even approach my 30Gb daytime limit despite downloading music, movies etc. on my home line often during this period. I run development servers over the net, shell sessions, remote terminals etc. and a not inconsiderable level of online gaming too.

So, what legitimate uses of the internet will be stifled by a reasonable bandwidth limit?

[bvark]

Streaming TV or Movies over the internet legally, both of which have made massive advances in the last 6 months.

[Mastacheif]

also the joy of multiplaydsl 1month contract means they or you can choose not to continue the contract

[uklad]

Promoting an unlimited download service will attract users who will "make full use" of the service (as they typically will have been moved from other ISPs when they started limiting connections in some form). The reality is that ISPs will not want to get into policing and monitoring what people use their bandwidth for.

[Afty]

Originally posted by bvark
Streaming TV or Movies over the internet legally, both of which have made massive advances in the last 6 months.
Originally posted by bvark
reasonable bandwidth limit?
Keyword being reasonable. Streaming TV and movies etc. is becoming a regular mainstream consumer activity - and consequently reasonable limits will incorporate this.

The point is that the only people I have *EVER* known who have exceeded reasonable monthly download limits have either been:
1] Downloading huge amounts of copyrighted materials.
2] Been using a consumer line for business purposes.

I can't see watching a streaming movie every night bringing anyone close to a reasonable download limit.

[bvark]

Watching an MPEG2 streaming movie at 2Mbps for 2 hours a day would put your monthly usage at 54.5GB/month.
(2048kbps x 3600secs/hour x 2hours/day x 31days/month / 8bits/byte / 1048576 kilobytes/gigabyte).

Watching live MPEG2 streams (a decent fraction of IPTV service in most deployed networks) probably doubles that since near-real-time encoders are much less efficient. MPEG4 based streaming is considerably less mature in the consumer market, but halves these figures.

What part of the economics is going to change that IPStream resale ISPs can offer a 'reasonable limit' for this service?

You've moved away from your earlier assertion that a 'truly unlimited' service is possible, into the realms of restricting new services because they don't fit your business model.

[Matt]

I've had broadband for a few years now and my monthly download is around 2gig.

For all those high usage people their are plenty of low usage people as well.

[uklad]

Originally posted by Matt
For all those high usage people their are plenty of low usage people as well.

But not necessarily on the same ISP - more and more of the high users get discouraged away from most ISPs (the experienced ISPs that have introduced some limits), and are often attracted to the ever-decreasing number ISPs that are to claiming offer an unlimited service (such as Multiplay)

[Tsung]

Good I'm glad there are ISP with limits / download caps, two people sharing one broadband connect we only manage to download a maximum of 20gig a month. Our ISP didnt have a cap and the service was affected by the download monkey's raping the service. A lot of people complained when the 50gig monthly cap was put on, but we were a cheering. Our service changed, we now enjoy high speed stable downloads when we want. To be honest, I'm going to avoid using MPUK ISP whilst there are no limits / caps / etc. It's a magnet for the warzes / tv / film download monkey's who rape the service then bitch moan as soon as the ISP tries to control it.

[Wizzo]

Notice moved to a separate forum post so it's more visible:

http://forums.multiplay.co.uk/showthread.php?s=&threadid=41194

[Afty]

Originally posted by bvark
You've moved away from your earlier assertion that a 'truly unlimited' service is possible, into the realms of restricting new services because they don't fit your business model. Is this in reply to my post? I don't know because you didn't quote anything, but if it is, you need to re-read the thread, NOWHERE did I assert that a truly unlimited service was possible.

[bvark]

Originally posted by uklad
Its not sustainable to provide truly unlimited ADSL as those prices. No exceptions. Full stop.


Originally posted by afty
That very much depends on a number of things like:


Sorry, I must have misunderstood your position when you disagreed with someone who said it's impossible to provide a truly unlimited service.

[frag]

out of interest,will you be doing what some other isp`s do,i.e carry over users unused download quote into
the following months quota so say I use 25gb of my 50gb limit will it be added on to my next months download limit to make a 75gb total? Like Nildram do?

[Wizzo]

Originally posted by frag
out of interest,will you be doing what some other isp`s do,i.e carry over users unused download quote into
the following months quota so say I use 25gb of my 50gb limit will it be added on to my next months download limit to make a 75gb total? Like Nildram do?

It's certainly something we will be considering. Unfortunately, we don't have the economy of scale like Nildram so it's going to be difficult to do.

[OSS]

Now I can see why Zen have set a cap :)

Guess I will be staying put then! :)

Thanks.

[Wizzo]

Yes with the introduction of MAX services the goalposts have somewhat moved. A group of big ISPs are already petitioning BT Wholesale to reduce the cost of BT Central bandwidth. I can't say I'll be holding my breath for that to happen though.

[Shazz]

Originally posted by Igloo

So i can say with honesty, that i trust that Multiplay will NEVER EVER IMPOSE DOWNLOAD CAPS


that lasted long didnt it ;)

[Igloo]

dented trust and what not.


nothing can be perfect forever.

[Wizzo]

Originally posted by Shazz
that lasted long didnt it ;)

Please direct all pisstaking at me not the volunteers who were only going on the information they had at the time. I am the one who ultimately made the statements and planned all this, so it's me who should take all the flak.

In reality we would never have guaranteed no caps in perpetuity and have never actually stated as such. Terms of service for anything are always subject to change as the markets move and people get screwed over by suppliers. We can only do our best to stick to our principles of why we started the ADSL service, that is to offer the best connection possible to gamers in the UK. With 20:20 hindsight, we should really have had bandwidth caps in from the start.

[Shazz]

it wasnt intended as a piss take.

Shame it came to that tbh, as i was going to happily migrate.

But my sister downloads well over 50gb a month (warezing *****)


although, nildram have finally got there act together, and cleared up my stability issues.

thank god i didnt try to migrate last week then

[Bonkers]

Originally posted by Wizzo
Please direct all pisstaking at me not the volunteers who were only going on the information they had at the time. I am the one who ultimately made the statements and planned all this, so it's me who should take all the flak.

In reality we would never have guaranteed no caps in perpetuity and have never actually stated as such. Terms of service for anything are always subject to change as the markets move and people get screwed over by suppliers. We can only do our best to stick to our principles of why we started the ADSL service, that is to offer the best connection possible to gamers in the UK. With 20:20 hindsight, we should really have had bandwidth caps in from the start.

Whilst yes you belive you should have put caps in.
With the information that was given from Enta - and your understanding there was no need to. it was another bonus to an excellent ADSL service. I belive if you could have continued to provide the orignal service - you would have got alot more custom than you oringally planned - but you can now focus on whats important - which is delivering a low latency high quality ADSL service for gamers!
I wouldnt be too down on yourself :) Obviously Enta has gone F**K and hiked up your pricing to cover there arses. Obviously not really arsed about where it leaves you

[LozB]

yeah but remember MPUKADSL as 1 months notice for cancellation, how many other ISP's lock u in for 12 months. im a happy customer and have been onboard since the beta testing on the 2mb Gamer tarrif, i cant go to MAX due to my exchange. I dont see why i should foot the cost of a price hike to support glutton usage and higher bandwidth for MAX users. if it doesnt look good its quite simple, T&C's change and customers then vote with their feet. :(

[Boffykins]

Where are you getting price hike from, Loz? Read the posts again.

[LozB]

from http://forums.multiplay.co.uk/showthread.php?s=&threadid=41194

quoted from above thread

"We'll be making an announcement tomorrow as to how we intend to proceed on a new set of packages that will have to include bandwidth caps (currently looking to be set at around 50GB). "


ok new packages implies change to pricing structure. or just keep same old packages and enforce caps?

[Afty]

Perhaps DSL providers should provide credit-card like migration plans... "Bring your bandwidth limits with you free for six months" or perhaps offer introductory "no cap in your first three months!!!111" offers?

[LozB]

it kinda has been unlimited band width since beta in theory for those of us been on since then.

[Boffykins]

Not necessarily. If you're a low usdage customer, then you're not costing Multiplay as much, so why would your price go up? Don't speculate about price hikes when it's clearly unfounded. That's just scaremongering.

[Wizzo]

Originally posted by afty
Perhaps DSL providers should provide credit-card like migration plans... "Bring your bandwidth limits with you free for six months" or perhaps offer introductory "no cap in your first three months!!!111" offers?

If we had the scale to do that then yes afty, but as it is this has all come way too early in our ADSL development to give us much scope.

Whilst we'll be revising pricing and packages, do not expect things to be dramatically different to how they are now. The main change we're going for here is usage caps. Currently 23% of our users are using >50GB a month, accounting for 66% of our total downloads. That clearly cannot continue with the price hike from our supplier. We need to redress the balance and ensure the people whom our service was originally intended for are the ones who reap the benefits of it.

[frag]

Wizzo,having placed an order with you guys,for adsl max premium which is just under £40 a month,will
I get a 50gb download limit? or will max premium users be slapped with something pretty low like 30gb
as I know I may be jumping ahead of the game here,but if it was 30gb,I`d be pretty gutted.
Looking forward to your reply

[andyf]

Not hugely bothered about the introduction of download caps. After all, the prime user of my IPMAX is going to be my mum checking hotmail twice a day.

I'll only be bothered if the price has to go up along with a cap.

[Wizzo]

Please try not to jump to conclusions until we can release our plans. We're trying our best to keep prices the same and make the only change be the introductin of a cap, which will be ideally 50 GB.

[OSS]

I doubt the prices will go up. To remain competitive they must be kept as they are now.

[BinarySlave]

Trying not to jump the gun, but reading between the lines, if prices do not change then £38.99 for a service with a 50gb cap is not even competitive. You can get the same elsewhere for about £15 cheaper! (cue ppl telling me to move elsewhere, please dont tho ..am just raising a valid point)

What's amusing/depressing is that in the last 2 months - I left f2s as it put a 100gb cap on MAX products (£29.99 per month) ...I moved to EvolutionDSL as it was advertising an unlimited/unrestricted MAX product (£35.24 per month) - only to find out that they clearly DO restrict your connection hugely! .... now i am about to migrate here for the unlimited/no traffic shaping 'promise' and days before my connection date the promise changes .....

Whilst I don't usually top 50gb ... I have once or twice hit 100gb in a month, and with the advent of MAX I was just trying to counteract the possibility of potentially maxxing out my bandwidth allowance in just a few days! I know that would be greedy, and the possibility of finding that many things to download would be impossible ....but still, I wanted the option there if the need arose.

I have come to the conclusion that chasing the ideal of no limits/no restrictions is like flogging a dead horse. No ISP is going to be able to sustain the 'unlimited' tag due to the sheer costs involved ...only made worse by the rise in speeds that MAX brings. I don't like living with limits ....but am going to have to give it a go and am prepared to stick it out here for a few months if it at least enables me to play WOW/HL2/TOCA3 without a stupidly high amount of latency (something my previous 2 ISPS seemed to be incapable of doing!)..

My only concern would be the price ............. will just watch this space for the announcement tomorrow I guess!

What I would like to say though is that the communication from the MultiPlay guys is great, and I really appreciate the honesty in advance. Coming from my current ISP that has consistently lied about their packages and its features, I am very impressed .... This is one of the main reasons that makes me want to stay here :)

[ljr2004]

Originally posted by BinarySlave
Trying not to jump the gun, but reading between the lines, if prices do not change then £38.99 for a service with a 50gb cap is not even competitive. You can get the same elsewhere for about £15 cheaper! (cue ppl telling me to move elsewhere, please dont tho ..am just raising a valid point)

What's amusing/depressing is that in the last 2 months - I left f2s as it put a 100gb cap on MAX products (£29.99 per month) ...I moved to EvolutionDSL as it was advertising an unlimited/unrestricted MAX product (£35.24 per month) - only to find out that they clearly DO restrict your connection hugely! .... now i am about to migrate here for the unlimited/no traffic shaping 'promise' and days before my connection date the promise changes .....

Whilst I don't usually top 50gb ... I have once or twice hit 100gb in a month, and with the advent of MAX I was just trying to counteract the possibility of potentially maxxing out my bandwidth allowance in just a few days! I know that would be greedy, and the possibility of finding that many things to download would be impossible ....but still, I wanted the option there if the need arose.

I have come to the conclusion that chasing the ideal of no limits/no restrictions is like flogging a dead horse. No ISP is going to be able to sustain the 'unlimited' tag due to the sheer costs involved ...only made worse by the rise in speeds that MAX brings. I don't like living with limits ....but am going to have to give it a go and am prepared to stick it out here for a few months if it at least enables me to play WOW/HL2/TOCA3 without a stupidly high amount of latency (something my previous 2 ISPS seemed to be incapable of doing!)..

My only concern would be the price ............. will just watch this space for the announcement tomorrow I guess!

What I would like to say though is that the communication from the MultiPlay guys is great, and I really appreciate the honesty in advance. Coming from my current ISP that has consistently lied about their packages and its features, I am very impressed .... This is one of the main reasons that makes me want to stay here :)

I completely agree with every word of that. I too migrated form Freedom2Surf to EvoluitonDSL and have had the same problems with latency although f2s wasn't too bad. Makes me wish i hadn't moved from f2s as they have a 100gb cap. I wanted unlimited at the time (its more of a protest against being restricted) so i opted to move but as i have learnt more about ADSL and the costs to ISP's i understand that caps are needed. I think 50gb is a bit low and i would pay the current £38.99 for 100gb. I don't know if thats possible and i will see what the new packages are.

I am migrating here on the 18th May so i will be happy to try the service for a few months. All i really want is to download something at a decent speed, for example a 500mb game demo, get it done and play it asap. if the speeds and latecy are good i will stay (have heard they are so i see no reason to leave in the forseable future) . I know the customer service is here is great and i think your honesty in this matter is breath of fresh air, well done MP :D

[Nes]

Personally i think its a real shame that ISPs and customers have to lose out because of BT's greed, especially when quite frankly BT's service in general is horrendous (IMO).

I'm looking forward to seeing what the new price packages will be though, i hope a 100gig cap is possible for the 38.99 a month price, but i guess we'll just have to wait and see :)

[frag]

Originally posted by Nes
I'm looking forward to seeing what the new price packages will be though, i hope a 100gig cap is possible for the 38.99 a month price, but i guess we'll just have to wait and see :)


The feeling is mutual

[andyf]

38.99 gets you the 800k upload. Last time I checked Nildram, they only offer up to 400.

[Wizzo]

To give you an idea of costings, a 622 Mbps central pipe from BT works out at £200 / Mbps / month, which is 63p per GB (ex vat) if "averaged out" across the whole month (best case scenario) (200*(1024*8)/(3600*24*30)). Our cost is actually a bit higher than this as we're going through an L2TP reseller, although in the long term once we got a reasonable size userbase we always intended to move to our own BT Central pipe. You can see from there that an ISP has to have a nice number of "low usage" customers subsidising the high usage ones in order to be able to offer a 100 GB cap for less than the tail price + £63.

Until BT does something about the central costs we're just not going to see much change. High-usage users are continually going to jump from provider to provider as they all are forced to introduce caps and eventualy there will be nowhere left (except the LLU providers - but that probably won't last forever either).

Our cap also won't be a hard cut off, but rather those who exceed it in a month will get throttled back to a 128k service (which is still perfectly fine for gaming) until the end of that month. We are also hoping to be able to have the concept of peak hours, where usage in a certain window won't go against your cap for the month. This is not going to make it for todays announcement though as we're still in discussions with our L2TP provider.

[frag]

Off peak usage not going against your cap for the month would be great Wizzo,that would be similar to what
my old isp does and would be great if you did similar,another thing if it`s possible,will multiplay in the near future have a featutre on the accounts side of the website where users can check how much of their download limit they have currently consumed?

[Wizzo]

Originally posted by frag
Off peak usage not going against your cap for the month would be great Wizzo,that would be similar to what
my old isp does and would be great if you did similar,another thing if it`s possible,will multiplay in the near future have a featutre on the accounts side of the website where users can check how much of their download limit they have currently consumed?

Having bandwidth consumption stats available to end users has become an urgent feature. It's not going to be possible to have this immediately, as this was not something we developed for launch. Development takes time and we hope to have this ready for customers mid-June at the latest.

[gabes]

Sorry I Didn't read above, ignore my post.

[Xilly]

I'm slightly disappointed with this, I don't think I go anywhere near the cap each month, but occasionally, perhaps one in 6 months I will actually hit it. Wouldn't want to be restricted to 128k for one months worse of over cap usage. I think the restrictions should be aimed at people who constantly go over the limit rather than just anyone.

I also don't think its acceptable to impose a cap before the function to monitor your usage is in place.

As always though MPUK, well done for the honesty about everything, you're right in thinking that it makes the multiplay "promise" look very silly, but again, your honest and upfront..ness will keep me your customer so long as my gaming pings are fine.

[LozB]

i agree, if im going to be charged at a set rate per gb over cap i would want to know when im going to hit the cap in advance, not later in a bill for exceeding it. providing these stats on a reatime basis have gotta be essential, before enforcing the cap limitation.

[Wizzo]

Obviously we won't introduct caps before you are able to monitor your usage. There will also be a mechanism by which you are informed in advance that your usage is heading near to the cap (e.g. at 40 GB you are warned). We plan to allow you then to "top up" your bandwidth online and hopefully also carry over "unused GB" from one month to the next (much like mobile phone networks do with free minutes).

Our own billing with the supplier doesn't take effect until 6th June, so capping won't be starting until then at the earliest.

[gabes]

Thank you for being so open with the process Wizzo.

[dirtyginge]

After being a loyal F2s customer for 3 years, i have recently initiated the move. Beginning of april there was a massive hike in line noise in the area, and 8 streets went without broadband ( hmm coincidence launch of max ?).4 weeks later we manage to get service back after continuous shouting , but with real connection issues. This week alone i spent 5 1/2 hours on hold while waiting for customer services, to be told people would ring back and didnt.

Having found multiplayDSL i can tell you that what you have here is gold dust. Honestly, up front. Technical support in minutes and not days. I got caught in the crossfire of all the high bandwidth users and the pipex takeovers, and in the end went back to dial up :(

You got my vote, just reading through the pages here.......for me its the thought behind it all, that the customer is to serve, not to fleece.. and that is a rare thing.....keep up the good work

[Joey]

I should make explicitly clear that I am not an employee of Multiplay or a spokesperson - despite holding a senior position at the i-series events I view myself as a customer in this situation

As a gamer I'd rather have a high-quality, uncongested broadband service with no traffic management than a pipex type service where I can download as much as I like but I get serious lag problems when playing games (much more noticeable with WoW and WC3 which are TCP based rather than UDP based). The very reason that I left pipex and went to MPDSL was because the traffic management on the network made gaming impossible. I'm glad that Wizzo has been so open about what has happened here, and as long as the support and reliability of the service stays good and the network stays blindingly fast and the bandwidth caps stay reasonable I'll stay put.

[tbl]

I'm sort of a halfway house, I have to admit.

I game almost every night (mainly on Xbox).

I also download a few files when I'm not using my home network (mainly when I'm at work, or overnight, never at peak times)

I probably don't download more than 50GB a month.

I'm in two minds about what to do after this announcement.

I have to admit, I haven't been blown away by the performance of my line since I switched to MPDSL.
I asked if interleaving was turned off when I moved here, was assured it was - but interleaving WAS actually active. (Cheers Whizzo for sorting that).
I'm not getting the speedy browsing/download speeds I expected from my line speeds, but this is a generic issue affecting most people on MAX.

I really can't be bothered moving again to another ISP, but need reassurances that my net usage isn't going to be adversely affected.
Being throttled down to 128Kbps if I happen to go above 50GB seems rather drastic.

[JohnDory]

Hi,
going by this post Entanet shaping / management / QoS (http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=entanet&Number=2450708) you may not have to worry about download speeds. It would seem that they are doing it to all their customers who are having no say in the matter, including Multiplay

[bvark]

There aren't any router platforms I can think of that do deep packet inspection on PPPoL2TP feeds as they are LTS switched off to a third-party wholesale provider - the poster on ADSLGuide clearly doesn't understand this.

[Although having read the rest of the thread, maybe I'm wrong and they're doing it for partners as well - the way they've implemented it is seriously unprofessional, though - 'we plugged the box in the other day and had a play', and 'we don't know that much about the capabilities of the box']