Here we go again. Virgin Media have called BS on bitter rivals BSkyB over their recent claims with regard to being the first UK ISP to offer punters truly unlimited broadband.
Sky recently removed their fair usage policy from their premier up to 16Mbps Broadband Max service, which means that punters can actually download however much they want, without fear of running into some sort of phantom usage limit and being forced to pay infinity billion pounds in charges; “We believe that we are now the only major broadband provider to offer truly ‘unlimited’ broadband,” crowed the Sky spokesperson at the time.
It was presumably this statement that got Virgin Media’s hackles up. “Virgin Media has always believed that customers should be able to enjoy their broadband as much as they want,” sulked the Virgin official.
“We were the first ISP to provide unlimited broadband packages to our entire customer base, including both cable and ADSL, and have never imposed any form of ‘fair use’ policy.”
Virgin Media have come under considerable fire for their fudging of the word ‘unlimited’. Whilst technically you can download whatever and however much you want, you can only do so at certain times. The following is taken directly from the Need to Know section of the Virgin Media website:
“To make sure all customers get the most from their connection, we automatically reduce the speed of the heaviest users at peak evening times – between 4pm and 9pm. In extreme cases, we’ll now also reduce the speed between 10am and 3pm – something that’ll have an impact on just 1% of our customers.”
Whilst Virgin insist this isn’t an FUP, it looks and smells like an FUP to everybody else. That said, a closer inspection of Sky’s recent announcement to scrap hidden limits for their Max product isn’t all that it seems either. Sky will apparently be imposing limits on certain types of traffic; fiver says this includes anyone using P2P networks, legal or not.
We’re not sure why UK ISPs have taken it upon themselves to wage war on English semantics, and as far as we are able to tell, neither Sky or Virgin Media are part of the Dadaist International movement.
This year, the Advertising Standards Agency have been handing out the smackdown to a number of service providers including the Carphone Warehouse for their TalkTalk “free broadband” boo boo, Virgin for their print ad campaign which listed download times, and Orange for claiming to offer unlimited downloads; Vodafone narrowly missed a telling off over their offer on ‘Unlimited Facebook’ on their mobile broadband platform.
Posted by Tom on September 29th 2008 in Carphone Warehouse, Free Broadband, Mobile Broadband, Orange Broadband, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Virgin Media, Vodafone
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