What does uncapped broadband really mean?

[LazyLion]

OK, here are my comments on this Discussion Document...

1) What kind of representation and input do consumers/customers have with the ISPA and this document? Do they have a say? Are they represented in this matter? Because I am concerned that any document produced by the ISPA will only serve the ISPs interests and profit motive.
2) Why do we need two different definitions for "Uncapped"? Where else in the world do they need two different definitions for Uncapped? What is the precedent for this?
3) Is this compromise on Uncapped Accounts simply to allow room for "fake uncapped accounts" such as M-webs? An account that is advertised using the terminology "use as much as you want", "you will never be cut off", "it's unlimited", "eat all you can", and "freeing the web" ... give the impression that there are no restrictions on such an account. But the reality paints a different picture. The moment you start adding other qualifying adjectives in front of the word "uncapped" then it ceases to be uncapped.
4) Are we not creating a future problem for the industry here, by allowing advertising words to be re-defined to mean something other than their normally accepted usage? Isn't this kind of the same problem that the cellular industry is facing in it's advertising where the terms and technologies are being used to create false/problematic advertising claims? If company A sells a product that is truly uncapped (not restricted in any way except illegal activity - according to your first definition), and then company B comes along and advertises their "uncapped" product for R500 less a month, but it has a very strict AUP that limits the user to a certain level of usage (as per your second definition), then what recourse does company A have against company B? They both want to sell uncapped products, but company B has an unfair advantage because it has re-defined the term.
5) How is 256 kbps any kind of broadband? I don't care what the local authorities have defined it as, the local authorities have proven consistently over the last 15 years that they do not have the consumer's interests at heart, so why should I trust their definitions? 256 kbps is more like "medium to lower end" band, not broadband. The term "broad" implies wide, spacious, greater than average width. But 256 kbps is below the national AND international average. So how is it "broad"?
6) What about that other thorny issue, the capping of local access? Local access was not capped prior to 2005. ICASA then subsequently released their ADSL regulations in which it is specified that "local bandwidth may not be capped". Why don't you also abide by that regulation? Why choose to abide by the definition of 256 kbps as broadband, but you choose to ignore this regulation from ICASA? Why should local access be capped? Why turn a local resource into a scarcity and thereby give the impression that it is a scarce resource? There is no valid reason for local capping.
7) Rather than re-defining the term uncapped (which is obviously controversial), why don't you as the ISPA urge your member ISPs to adopt product terminology such as "High Usage" Accounts or "High Cap" accounts or "Mega Cap" accounts or "Super Usage" accounts? There are a hundred other terms that could be adopted. Mweb's insistence on the usage of the term "uncapped" makes us assume that they want to have their cake and eat it. They want to advertise their product as having a certain benefit, but in reality they want to restrict the consumer from that benefit. That's a little bit unethical isn't it... and frankly I am surprised that you as the ISPA would allow such a situation to arise.

If I think of anything else I will add it later. Thanks for being willing to discuss these issues.

 

[dakhaas]

I agree with Garyvdh on a few points, especially nr7
we cant go redefining the term, we already have shaped and unshaped, because, mweb's restricted uncapped still allows for users to get more than 600gb a month. where afrihost allows less than 70gb. (just using these as an example)
I would by all means rather go for a "mega cap" account where they clearly state what you can expect from the account, rather than a vague description like "high usage/ abuse will not be tolerated" without telling us what is high usage

 

[Wolfy]

If this document had been written 10 years ago, perhaps we'd have used "uncapped" to describe what we've ended up calling "unrestricted, uncapped". But the reality is that the vast majority of services currently marketed as "uncapped" do have some AUP-based restrictions on what can be done using that service. It's just not practical for ISPA to expect every ISP currently marketing an "uncapped" service to change their terminology to something different.

But what we can do though -- and have tried to do in this discussion document -- is distinguish between an "unrestricted, uncapped" service and a vanilla "uncapped" service. We want it to be clear to consumers that if they are buying just an "uncapped" service, then they should read the AUP carefully and expect some limitations on peer-to-peer traffic and the like. But if they are buying an "unrestricted, uncapped" service, then they should expect no restrictions on what they do with that service (other than illegal or unlawful use, obviously). We hope that ISPs who are providing a truly unrestricted service, will use this terminology, so that it is clear to customers that what they are getting is unrestricted, and not just uncapped.

I understand where your coming from , and I know this subject has been discussed MILLIONS of times, but I just think they should lose the "uncapped" part and just rename it : High usage account 1 - 40Gb, High usage account 2 - 80GB... ect ect ect instead of rewording the phrase "UNCAPPED" FFS IF ITS NOT UNCAPPED, THEN ITS NOT UNCAPPED!!! I think we are like the only country in the world that says, "there is a difference between uncapped and TRUE uncapped" -face palm-

edit:
@dakhaas, plus you know just as well as I do that peoples opinions differ over uncapped for example....I might think 100GB might be abusing the account, where you'll think 300Gb is abusing it. Then the ISPs come say... "download as much as you like , its uncapped" Where they actually mean is "we'll let the AUP sort you out when WE feel you've abused our network. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!" cant help but see the irony in that.

 

[dakhaas]

I understand where your coming from , and I know this subject has been discussed MILLIONS of times, but I just think they should lose the "uncapped" part and just say High usage account 1 - 40Gb, High usage account 2 - 80GB... ect ect ect instead of rewording the word "UNCAPPED" FFS IF ITS NOT UNCAPPED ITS NOT UNCAPPED!!!

edit:
@dakhaas, plus you know just as well as I do that peoples opinions differ over uncapped for example....That I might think 100GB might be abusing the account, and you'll think 300Gb is abusing it. Where the ISP says... "download as much as you like , its uncapped" Where they actually mean is,we'll let the AUP sort you out when WE feel you've abused tour network. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!

Exactly Wolfy

We agree it is shaped, and they have to implement dynamic shaping etc to manage their total bandwidth and make crucial things work, but we as end users would still like to see some definite guidelines and clarity
Clear information from the ISP's, without any foggy AUP's etc, would certainly address 80% of the posts on mybroadband

 

[Wolfy]

Im going to buy myself a 1400 car and say, "ITS not a TRUE 1400 seeing that it doesn't have a fuel injector!" then of course people are gonna think a total idiot by saying nonsense like that, but I guess its fine and acceptable to refer broadband in that sense. "ITS BEEN DECIDED UNCAPPED INTERNET IS JUST A FANCY PHRASE THAT MEANS CAPPED INTERNET, court is adjourned "

 

[Prof.Merlin]

Looking at the pic of the article, what ever happened to allyoucaneat.co.za?

 

[Ant_Brooks]

OK, here are my comments on this Discussion Document…

Thanks for taking the time to post this -- all comments and constructive criticisms are sincerely appreciated.

1) What kind of representation and input do consumers/customers have with the ISPA and this document? Do they have a say? Are they represented in this matter? Because I am concerned that any document produced by the ISPA will only serve the ISPs interests and profit motive.

Frankly, the document must serve the interests of ISPs. If ISPA's members aren't going to support the document, then publishing it really doesn't help anyone. But I don't think that the interests of ISPs and the interests of consumers have to be mutually exclusive. Having a clear understanding of what broadband terms mean is just as useful to ISPs as it is to their customers. The process for developing this version of the document was roughly as follows: An internal ISPA team came up with a first draft. We circulated it to all ISPA members. Several of them commented. We revised the document to take some (but not all) of their suggestions into account. Now we're making the document available for anyone to comment on, and we'll follow a similar process -- we'll listen carefully to the public comments, and to comments from organizations like the ASA, and if necessary, we'll revise the document to take those comments into account. I'm not sure we can reasonably define a more specific way of representing consumer interests than that.

2) Why do we need two different definitions for "Uncapped"? Where else in the world do they need two different definitions for Uncapped? What is the precedent for this?

I've covered this to some extent in earlier posts, but to recap:

• Like it or not, right now, the use of "uncapped" in the South African market is generally associated with services that do have some sort of AUP attached which places some restrictions on how the service can be used.
• In an ideal world, perhaps everyone would agree to stop using "uncapped" to mean that, and use it to mean strictly "uncapped with no AUP baggage".
• We don't live in an ideal world. It's simply not practical for ISPA to expect all ISPs to suddenly change their marketing in this way, even though some consumers would love us to do so. Frankly, there's a limit to ISPA's ability to force change on the ISP-sector.
• Rather than try to force an unworkable new definition of "uncapped" on anyone, what we can do, is encourage ISPs to differentiate their marketing of uncapped services between "unrestricted, uncapped" and vanilla "uncapped". At least that approach will provide some much needed clarity to consumers. If something is marketed as "unrestricted, uncapped" you should not expect a prohibitive AUP. If something is marketed as just "uncapped" and you are planning on torrenting stuff 24/7, then you should probably take a close look at the AUP before signing.

3) Is this compromise on Uncapped Accounts simply to allow room for "fake uncapped accounts" such as M-webs? An account that is advertised using the terminology "use as much as you want", "you will never be cut off", "it's unlimited", "eat all you can", and "freeing the web" ... give the impression that there are no restrictions on such an account. But the reality paints a different picture. The moment you start adding other qualifying adjectives in front of the word "uncapped" then it ceases to be uncapped.

This is really the same point as 2. Sure, it might be nice if nobody used "uncapped" except when they meant "there is no restriction of any sort on this service," but trying to force that definition on the market just isn't practical. By differentiating "unrestricted, uncapped" from just "uncapped," we want to provide a way for ISPs that really are offering an unrestricted service a clear way of differentiating that service from an uncapped service that still has some usage restrictions.

Those other terms ("use as much as you want", etc.) aren't defined in ISPA's document. For those sorts of descriptive terms, I'd have to point to the basic principles in the discussion document: "The most important principles for the provision and marketing of broadband services should be transparency and clear communication with current and potential customers."

In short, ISPA wants ISPs to communicate clearly and honestly with their customers.

4) Are we not creating a future problem for the industry here, by allowing advertising words to be re-defined to mean something other than their normally accepted usage? Isn't this kind of the same problem that the cellular industry is facing in it's advertising where the terms and technologies are being used to create false/problematic advertising claims? If company A sells a product that is truly uncapped (not restricted in any way except illegal activity - according to your first definition), and then company B comes along and advertises their "uncapped" product for R500 less a month, but it has a very strict AUP that limits the user to a certain level of usage (as per your second definition), then what recourse does company A have against company B? They both want to sell uncapped products, but company B has an unfair advantage because it has re-defined the term.

I understand your point, and we did debate this at some length while developing the document. However, we had to ultimately conclude that there just isn't a "normally accepted usage" for -- in particular -- "uncapped". Even in countries where "broadband" means 10 Gb/s (instead of 256 kbps) "uncapped" services still sometimes have restrictions on things like peer-to-peer traffic. There are probably forums in say, Sweden, where the forumites complain about being rate-limited after hitting their first terabyte of traffic for the month, and suggest that those services shouldn't be advertised as "uncapped"

5) How is 256 kbps any kind of broadband? I don't care what the local authorities have defined it as, the local authorities have proven consistently over the last 15 years that they do not have the consumer's interests at heart, so why should I trust their definitions? 256 kbps is more like "medium to lower end" band, not broadband. The term "broad" implies wide, spacious, greater than average width. But 256 kbps is below the national AND international average. So how is it "broad"?

That's something you'll have to take up with the ITU and the Department of Communications. Although ISPA agrees that 256 kbps is hardly broadband, we felt that it would be problematic to use a definition that wasn't the same as that in South Africa's National Broadband Policy. As I noted earlier, we did at least point out that we think this is a very low number, and that we are looking forward to increasing it in future versions of the document.

6) What about that other thorny issue, the capping of local access? Local access was not capped prior to 2005. ICASA then subsequently released their ADSL regulations in which it is specified that "local bandwidth may not be capped". Why don't you also abide by that regulation? Why choose to abide by the definition of 256 kbps as broadband, but you choose to ignore this regulation from ICASA? Why should local access be capped? Why turn a local resource into a scarcity and thereby give the impression that it is a scarce resource? There is no valid reason for local capping.

Do you see anything in the discussion document which creates a conflict with those ADSL regulations? (I don't think there is anything.) In fact, we specifically included section 3.2 to try to give a bit more definition to "local traffic". I'm not convinced that we came up with anything terribly helpful there, but at least we're acknowledging the fact that "local traffic" really isn't a very clear term.

I'm now digressing a bit, but I do take issue with the idea that local traffic has zero associated cost. That just isn't true. It can cost ISPs more to carry a packet from JHB to CT than it costs them to carry a packet from JHB to London -- that's a legacy of Telkom long monopoly that will still take a year or two to shake off, coupled with a sharp drop in international bandwidth costs. Given that, I think the distinction between local and international traffic in ICASA's ADSL regulations is an anachronism. In general, I have a very low opinion of those ADSL regulations, but that's a debate for a different thread!

7) Rather than re-defining the term uncapped (which is obviously controversial), why don't you as the ISPA urge your member ISPs to adopt product terminology such as "High Usage" Accounts or "High Cap" accounts or "Mega Cap" accounts or "Super Usage" accounts? There are a hundred other terms that could be adopted. Mweb's insistence on the usage of the term "uncapped" makes us assume that they want to have their cake and eat it. They want to advertise their product as having a certain benefit, but in reality they want to restrict the consumer from that benefit. That's a little bit unethical isn't it... and frankly I am surprised that you as the ISPA would allow such a situation to arise.

What you are proposing here is exactly what we're aiming for by distinguishing "unrestricted, uncapped" services from just "uncapped" services. And I think "unrestricted" is actually a lot clearer than "High Usage", "High Cap", "Mega Cap" or "Super Usage". If an ISP advertises a service as "unrestricted, uncapped", we want that to mean that there are no restrictions on that service (other than the necessary illegal/unlawful exceptions, of course).

If I think of anything else I will add it later. Thanks for being willing to discuss these issues.

Thanks to you for taking the time to post your comments. They are appreciated.

 

[Bona Botse]

"so which uncapped service do you have?"
"the, err, capped one."
":wtf:"

 

[Sodan]

This is way too broad and vague and can cover a vast multitude of sins. Uncapped until you reach the 5gb AUP and then you get a 64kbps trickle until the following month. Something like that can be advertised as uncapped?
snip

Yes, it can. However, it should be advertised as 5GB <full speed> + 64kbps uncapped, whatever "full speed" happens to be for that package.

Assuming the "full speed" is 1Mbps:
to then advertise this package as "1Mbps uncapped" is just plain deceitful. The fact that so many ISPs do it just means that so many ISPs are deceitful.

 

[jannievanzyl]

Ant/Dom, as per usual what we're seeing here are a bunch of people who read till they think they understand and then offer their 'informed' opinions without trying to understand all the factors involved.

While you guys spent many, many hours mulling all the angles, these guys can shoot holes in it in seconds, so they believe in any case, until they actually start thinking about it. Which does not happen that much, to be honest....

What most people seem to miss is the definitions proposed are not necessarily what's in use today. So to try and apply current marketing to the proposed definitions and then claiming the definitions are wrong is a bit arse-about-face.

The 4 proposed definitions works well though a fair amount of education seems to be in order to differentiate between 'uncapped' and 'unrestricted'.

Some points to consider:

1. Stating a specific speed as 'broadband' is not good enough. We need a definition on how this is measured. Networks tend to quote line speed, but consumers use a service. Some guidelines are needed. You can refer to all the recent activities at the ASA where link speed and service speed are often confused.

2. It is logical that not every consumer will receive the advertised speed all the time. We thus need a definition to state what is an acceptable service level. In my dealings with the ASA, it's become apparent they are comfortable with a number of at least 80%, i.e. You must receive the speed at least 80% of the time.

3. We need to consider different speed access networks. A logical example would be EDGE which most likely fall outside the broadband definition. However, EDGE is provided as a fallback from 3G. Thus a consumer could have bought a 'broadband' service but find himself on a non-broadband service. How do we handle that? As a network, we could stop automatic fallback but most consumers would not want that.

All in all, the framework you guys have put in place looks solid. A logical next step would be to throw real-world examples and use cases at it and see what needs to be tweaked.

As a separate, but related, topic there are a number of other parameters that should be standardized and I believe ISPA could, and should, play a role there as well.

 

[LazyLion]

Truth in Advertising...

 

[Grep]

Right let me try and understand this. If certain "recommendations" seem to be unattainable by some of the ISPA members, it is easier to lower the bar just so that every member of the ISPA agrees with the draft and that it becomes binding? So kind of like what they are doing in schools now days to pass kids, they would rather make the coursework easier to rather have all the kids pass.

Why not be stringent and have all the bigger players to accept the new regulations, if the smaller boys refuse, then either ship up or shift off. For years and years we consumers just accept below average. Its time for a massive shakeup and I am sure you guys can do it!

 

[fritzm]

I think this is an excellent initiative; laying down terms and defining them carefully is the only way to get control of what is happening. On the issue of using an existing term like unthrottled, or defining a new one (unrestricted), I think that making a new term is the right way to go because throttling is only one of many ways of restricting a service - rather use unrestricted so that any existing or still to be thought of sneaky way of restricting users is covered.

I have a problem with the phrase "which have a minimum download speed of 256 kbps", because what you are actually referring to is the line speed, which is the maximum download speed, not the minimum. It would be clearer to rephrase this as "which have a maximum download speed of at least 256 kbps"; it would be even better to define it by a speed which should be actually achieved most (80%) of the time, as someone has already suggested.

Congratulations on requiring that contention ratio be advertised - this is the dark secret that ISP's hide most deeply and the reason why seemingly bargain rate services are really rubbish. I'm sure that all ISP's who offer a quality service will be glad to publish this, provided the fly-by-nights who use much higher contention ratios are also force to publish theirs so that we can make informed choices. This is the most important step to sorting out the quality from the rubbish at last.

Fritz

 

[Mouse]

If an ISP advertises a service as "unrestricted, uncapped", we want that to mean that there are no restrictions on that service (other than the necessary illegal/unlawful exceptions, of course)

I'm expecting a lot of ISP's in the future will become overzealous in their policing of unlawful use, to find excuses to throttle people.
For example: "you're using torrents, you get banned for the rest of the month" regardless of whether those torrents are for linux iso's, world of warcraft updates, or the latest pirated episode of <insert favourite series here>

 

[Gatecrasher]

Do you see anything in the discussion document which creates a conflict with those ADSL regulations? (I don't think there is anything.) In fact, we specifically included section 3.2 to try to give a bit more definition to "local traffic". I'm not convinced that we came up with anything terribly helpful there, but at least we're acknowledging the fact that "local traffic" really isn't a very clear term.

ADSL regulations:

Section 5: port prioritization
Telkom, SNO and ISPs shall not be allowed to impose port prioritization on their subscribers.

Shaping is illegal, so I don't think we should pretend that these or any regulations mean too much to our ISPs.

This debate is a very good thing and ISPA should be congratulated for tackling it. What they have come up with, though, doesn't adequately address the real problems consumers are faced with when deciding on their bandwidth requirements. The fact remains that in most cases "uncapped" is a misrepresentation of the services on offer. And it is no defense to argue that tackling the status quo is too big a hurdle to climb. The status quo is the problem.

"Uncapped Broadband" should be your category one with unrestricted access up to a specified line speed.

"Capped Broadband" should be category two with unrestricted access at user's line speed subjected to a hard cap.

And everything in between these two should be vanilla "Broadband Access" with the account restrictions and limitations clearly stated so that customers can make sensible decisions. At the moment choosing your ISP bandwidth portion is like a trial-and-error crap shoot.

Uncapped Internet access: No cap. Acceptable use policy can place limitations on user behaviour and define “abuse” criteria which can result in service restrictions. May be linked to a specific access speed.
Soft capped Internet access: Service is provided on a metered basis. After the customer exceeds a “soft cap”, they still have Internet access, but significant restrictions are applied, such as limited international access or vastly reduced access speeds

I fail to see any practical difference between the above two categories. Both represent restricted or limited access which are neither capped nor uncapped. These can cover a huge range of restrictions that vary from the very relaxed to the totally stifling. It is essential that "uncapped" not be used to describe products like these. They should be described accurately by the access restrictions that are applied.

 

[MickeyD]

<snip>
"Uncapped Broadband" should be your category one with unrestricted access up to a specified line speed.

"Capped Broadband" should be category two with unrestricted access at user's line speed subjected to a hard cap.

And everything in between these two should be vanilla "Broadband Access" with the account restrictions and limitations clearly stated so that customers can make sensible decisions. At the moment choosing your ISP bandwidth portion is like a trial-and-error crap shoot. <snip>

I agree with you.

1. Uncapped - exactly what it says, unrestricted access based purely on the subscriber's line speed.
2. Restricted - the pot-pourri of "uncapped with FUP", "shaped", "throttled", etc. that passes for uncapped today.
3. Capped - unshaped, fixed data allocation.

 

[Stevie G]

FFS people. why the fak are we even use the the word uncapped if its not really uncapped. uncapped means you can download as much as you want and then charge you what you can get maximum out of the line for the month. just use different cap options and bill you accordingly. we should report these fakin people to CPA for using the word uncapped. they basically selling us a product which is clearly not. the cellular isp's get burned over the knuckles for using terms as 4G or 21mbps. so how the fak can these people get away with murder. cut all the bulls@#$ of throttling, shaped, soft capped, etc. i want to pay for a certain amount of cap i want to use it without blocking me illegally with your shaping policies. i want to pay for how much bandwith i want and when i want to use it.

if i go to the shop and buy bread. pick and pay cannot tell me i can eat it only certain times of the day. if i buy it, its mine and i can make and do as i please. these people need to bloody wake up and smell the coffee. stop raping the customer with your fancy words and then taking there money. can we get not get the CPA involved with these issues that we have with these people. if you cannot provide an uncapped service then go fak off and close business.

Can the mods not create a survey on the amount cap people use on the net. with the results we will be able to see what % certain people use and then create different packages accordingly. for example 50% of people use between 5GB-20GB, 30% uses 50GB-150GB and then 20% uses 200GB-500GB and then charge people according their usage. this way we don't need to worry when mweb is going to cancel your service for using your services legally.

Please get rid of the word uncapped as it will cause too much confusion, especially for the newbies, grandma and grandpas.

just my 2c

sigh...............

 

[PsyWulf]

FFS people. why the fak are we even use the the word uncapped if its not really uncapped. uncapped means you can download as much as you want and then charge you what you can get maximum out of the line for the month. .

Dear ranting user,what you describe is not ADSL but a leased line,go head and get one

 

[PsyWulf]

I find it more and more disturbing that users assume that the ADSL line they are renting is dedicated capacity for only themselves. Dear friends you are paying for a time share and then complaining when you can't stay all year round

 

[Ant_Brooks]

I understand that many people would like it if ISPs stopped using "uncapped" to describe anything other than completely unrestricted Internet access. Really, I do get that point.

However, it is the case that right now, "uncapped" is not being used like that in the market. It is used to describe services that have no cap on some parts of the service (e.g. mail downloads), but which do have restrictions -- probably some sort of capping -- on other parts of the service (e.g. peer-to-peer traffic) as well as to describe services that have no cap at all. Plenty of ISPs have existing marketing material and product names that use "uncapped" to refer to services that still have some sort of AUP restrictions. Like it or not, that's the current situation.

For argument's sake, let's assume that ISPA could force all of its members to stop using "uncapped" to mean anything other than completely unrestricted Internet access. This probably would not be very useful to consumers. Any ISPs not ISPA members could merrily continue using "uncapped" as they do now. The ASA will continue to make rulings based on their understanding of how "uncapped" has historically been used in the market. And some ISPA members would be annoyed that they'd changed all of their marketing material without things ending up any clearer for consumers.

So, working from the assumption that it just isn't practical, or necessarily even helpful, to force ISPs to use the word "uncapped" in the way that MyBroadband users might like them to, what else can be done to try to make everything a bit clearer for confused consumers?

ISPA is suggesting that a helpful approach is to distinguish "unrestricted, uncapped" services from general "uncapped" services. We hope that this is an approach that isn't horribly inconvenient for ISPs with existing marketing material and product names. We hope that making this distinction will be helpful to consumers, since they'll be able to spot a truly unrestricted service when they see it. We hope that ISPs who are ISPA members and ISPs who aren't ISPA members will all think that this is a sensible approach and start using the term "unrestricted, uncapped" to differentiate truly unrestricted services from everything that gets labelled "uncapped" right now.

Wouldn't it be helpful to know that when you see something called "unrestricted, uncapped Internet access", you know exactly what that means? Wouldn't that at least be an improvement on the current situation?