ADSL bandwidth limits (24 October 2000) There has been a fuss over PlusNet imposing a 500MB limit per day on data transfers via its ADSL service for home users, and higher limits for business users. There has been no clear reason given for the imposition, and the principal arguments against it are: It was imposed after the service was launched but before many who signed up at the beginning had even had ADSL installed; Five hundred megabytes per day is not much nowadays; at 512Kb/sec downstream speeds it will be used up in two and a quarter hours, assuming a perfect connection and ignoring upstream bandwidth and, with a more plausible 128Kb/sec stream, it will be used up in nine hours. MP3s and streaming audio and video are, at least to begin with, the point of ADSL: surely people will play music while they work and unwittingly exceed the bandwidth limit? What would be the result of trying to download, for example, a 600MB plus Linux CD-ROM image? As it happened the Secretary of the Campaign had previously signed up to the PlusNet service, objected strongly when informed, by another mailing list member, of the limit and cancelled; PlusNet accepted his cancellation and he is awaiting a refund of the installation fee. He asked the questions above but was ignored; he would not have signed up if there had been a bandwidth limit stated at the time. We have noted many often-contradictory emails and newsgroup postings from PlusNet staff trying to defend their company; our most charitable interpretation of what has happened is that PlusNet always had bandwidth limits but, fatally, forgot to tell the outside world until it was too late. This sorry affair exposes many wider issues. The most pressing is that imposing bandwidth limits could be an easy way for a dishonest Internet Service Provider to milk its customers. Consider the following: The ISP brings in ADSL subscribers with promises of 'no limits, permanent connection, always on, do as you please'; A few weeks or months later it informs subscribers of real or imaginary problems and imposes charges or disconnections if bandwidth limits are exceeded; The subscribers, bound by the twelve-month service contract, are stuck. We have to say that that scenario is horribly plausible. We are taking the issue very seriously and will be pushing various organisations to do something; it is difficult to know where to start as - as noted before - there is currently no regulation of Internet Service Providers and they can more or less do as they please, but we will try. On reflection, Freeserve has much to answer for. By making the ISP part of the service literally worthless, with the consequence that there was no proper service contract and users got what they paid for, its actions, and those of others, resulted in loyalty towards individual ISPs being eroded and ISPs often adopting a cavalier attitude in return. This will not do when subscribers and ISPs are locked into long contracts with considerable sums of money changing hands. We thought narrowband ISPs would have gained a bad enough reputation following the events of the past few months without starting to play tricks with broadband.