Wednesday, November 03, 2010

PS3 Still downloading

Nine items to go mostly Dragon Age Origins and Fallout 3, but I've turned it off for the time being after yesterday. Speed had reduced to pitiful amounts I'm talking about getting bored watching Kbs tick over. As this is happening with all the downloads I don't know if it's the Sony Store side or if Orange have got annoyed over this trickle and throttled my connection.

Even though I've an Unlimited plan I'm still bound by Orange's Fair Usage document, however it states that they should inform me if they think I'm abusing the system.

As I've had no contact from them and I'm abiding by their terms to restrict usage outside the peak hours I have to conclude that either they're breaking their own terms or it's Sony's side. Either way I'm going to give it a rest for a bit and see what happens in a day or so.

3 comments:

Steve Severn said...

Urrrm, Orange "Unlimited" Broadband. Let me tell u a story. We first had Freeserve when we got our first computer about 6 years ago. They turned into Wannadoo, still no probs. Then Orange took over. No probs to start with, then out of the blue about two years ago, an email. "Your average usage for June and July was 57gb. This is too high and we have throttled you speed to 1mbs" or something along those lines. What? Where did this come from? Anyway, just thought it was a blip, then got a similar email two months later saying we had not reduced our usage, so they are reducing our speed forever! Yes, forever! Thats when I started making phone calls. Whats this FUP? etc, etc. Got nowhere. Anyway, starting looking for info on web and found FUP problems everywhere with most providers. Most along the line of "When is unlimited, not unlimited!" The whole problem is, hd movies 4gb, normal movies, you tube, gaming etc, eats alot into your unlimited allowance. Suddenly realised my children had turned into teens who like WOW, youtube, online gaming etc. Rang Orange and argued again about how 50-60gb was fair for a family of five. Got nowhere, so asked for my mac code. Started looking at other suppliers and found only Sky have trully unlimited, but at that time they were not active at the Stourport exchange, although they are now. All the rest had some sort of FUP. Ended up going with BT, because unofficially their limit was 100gb a month and we were hitting 70-80. As soon as I was connected, I started going on the BT Forums and found many like minded people who couldn't understand how unlimited could be sold when it wasn't unlimited. Alot of talk about legal disputes and people trying to get out of their contracts, but also the argument was, "How can we keep an eye on our usage?" Well after many angry threads, BT listened and upped its monthly allowance to 300GB and also provided an online usage meter. Apart from Skys trully unlimited, BT are the best option for high users. At the time of the swap, o2 were offering 60GB a month, but I am not sure who has changed their FUP since I joined BT, some of them are trully living in the dark ages regarding FUP's. Internet tv, streaming movies, gaming, xbox live etc and they expect an average family to survive on 60gb a month! Orange were well out of touch. Useless. You should have had an email though, if they are annoyed with you. Good luck. I am happy with BT and i'm old fashioned and like to have same broadband supplier as landline, then if I have problems you haven't got one company blaming the other. The horror stories I have heard about TALK TALK, AOL and other such companies so called customer services. Let BT run everything is my motto, a bit more expensive maybe, but when something is wrong, they do fix it quick and as I said, they can't blame anybody else.

FlipC said...

Of course if we still had a monopoly would we be looking at the spread of fibre-optic cabling? Swings and roundabouts.

As for Orange no contact from them, and using the internet for other things seems my speed is intact so I'll point the finger at Sony or where ever these downloads are coming from.

In terms of Fair usage I agree that many are still 10 years behind the times and if you haven't spotted it do enjoy the ISPs blaming BBC iPlayer etc for the surge in usage with thoughts that they should pay them for using up so much of 'their' bandwidth.

It is annoying (add your own choice of stronger word there) that the FUP for Orange neglects to inform you of what the limit is or even allow you to monitor your usage. It should be a requirement that if a limit exists there should be some method to monitor it.

Steve Severn said...

Yes, that was the problem at bt. They had an unofficial limit of 100gb, thats upload and download at any time, but wasn't in the fup. Even now it is 300gb, it is not written anywhere that anybody can find. Its moving goalposts with most isp's. They don't want to tie themselves down to anything, then they can make up there own rules. Of course their argument is that they haven't charged you any more or stopped your broadband when you go over the limit, they have just capped your speed, so its legal. It was great fun every day looking at the posts about this with a different argument against the legality of this coming up. Hats off to bt for sorting it though or maybe they just gave up! At the same time they did change rules on their lower user packages though. The 10 gb max package people now have to pay a fiver for every gig over that they use, instead of a quid!