Acceptable User Policy - IS

[aka.Goliath]

I want to know why we are being done in by ISP's. It appears for the last year or so Internet Solutions (IS) have had an Acceptable User Policy which is passed down to the consumer through almost all companies that supply DSL.

I got this off the axxess website when you view the accounts they offer (at least they tell you about this, mweb and the like hide behind the 'fine print' of their 'terms and conditions')

◦10 day Rolling Window - If you're in Top 20% of IS users for the 384kbs, 512kbs and 1024kbs connection speeds, your traffic will be prioritized according to a star rating *
◦User Policy applies 24/7, Weekends & Public Holidays
◦For the 4096kbps Accounts, if you're in Top 50% of IS users for this connection speed, you will be shaped

In short if you have an uncapped line what they do is reduce your entire line speed to as far down as 200kbps from 4 or 10mbps when you do any sort of downloading. I got to this speed after downloading 32gigs in the 10 day period.

Whatever happened to the long awaited faster and cheaper internet in South Africa? Is there no organization out there that protects the consumer from this sort of thing? What about the new consumers rights act, does that not have any bearing on what companies can do, surely when you offer a service you can’t just say 'sorry, but we can’t give you what you paid for so we'll just give you 1/10 of it.'
In my opinion this is IS's solution way with dealing with the fact that they have far to mean consumers and can't cope with the demand.

Its time South Africans a like must stand up and demand the service promised.

 

[bullzeye.za]

The solution to all of that is MWEB - I hear Openweb is good as well ( though I can't personally say )

I pulled 250GB last month without doing anything to bypass the shaping that they put on the line, and I am treated no differently to any other network user.

 

[Pada]

This is one of the reasons why you use non-IS uncapped accounts for when you want to download more than 30GB per 10 day period.
Like Mweb doesn't have a shaping policy like IS - so you can download 30GB in less than 10 days and your speed should remain the same.

 

[rellik]

Just as an extra heads up regarding that 10 day rolling period. It doesn't get reset at the end of the month. So if you are downloading heavily at the end of the month, expect a real slow start to the next month... I contacted Axxess regarding this and this was the reply:

The account does not renew at the beginning of each month, it runs on a 10 day rolling threshold. The last 10 days usage on your account amounts to 40gb of data. When that amount is taken b the server and compared to the rest of the accounts in your bandwidth pool, your account is placed accordingly and as a result of the high usage the account has been placed within the top 50% of users.

I always thought I understood the 10 day rolling period, but always asumed it was reset at the end of each month. Getting punished for having high usage from the previous month is just crazy.

 

[Adoxographist]

Huh? this is old news.

 

[mika1000]

+1 mweb

 

[AceK94]

Ye it is extreamly sad that we can't handle the traffic of current users. I downloaded 8 GB and couldn't understand why I was moved to the 2 star rating at the begging of the month. Thanks rellik for clearing this up. Do you know maybe when the 10 day rolling restarts are active? Is from the day that you subscribe to them or what?

 

[AceK94]

Well yes, this I think only applies to the 4mb/10mb accounts. Because if I am on a 1 star rating , my daytime speeds = 60kbps. Where as in the night it equals about 140kbps at the most, which really sucks. But last time I was on a 1 star rating was a month ago, can't say much for resent events, especially after the 512kbps line upgrade.