more realistic usage limits?

[#1]

The trouble is, usage costs us around 70p per gigabyte and when we specced the BBYW products we knew that usage was going to go up for the average user. We can't realistically make it any cheaper than it already is unless either wholesale costs drop or the content providers (ie BBC, C4 etc) offer to pay for you to watch their programs and at present unfortunately neither seems likely.
I'm not saying it's a blanket 'no' and also this is just my take on the issue, but hopefully it'll add something to the debate.

[#2]

Quote from: orbrey

The trouble is, usage costs us around 70p per gigabyte

I'd call that a fact of life, not a "trouble". It certainly puts the pricing in perspective.
Is that pretty much irrespective of IPStream, DataStream, LLU etc. or is that commercially sensitive stuff?
One reason I left Tiscali is that in "upgrading" from 2Mb to 8Mb (and paying more for the "privelege" ) I was unknowingly switched from IPStream to DataStream and I'm convinced the capacity there was woefully inadequate (to save money presumably) compounded by what appeared to be an ineffective/inefficient/bug-ridden "bandwidth management" platform. 

[#3]

Quote from: orbrey

The trouble is, usage costs us around 70p per gigabyte ...

so, at £21.99 a month I'm paying enough to cover 31+Gb a month and getting a warning if I slip a little over 11GB?
I know you have other overheads, but I'd like to suggest that 1/3 for my useage and 2/3 for your overheads is a bit unbalanced

[#4]

There is a fixed cost to provide the service in the first place, which I vaguely recall is around the £7-8 mark, with no data transfer at all
B.

[#5]

And £21.99 isn't a current Broadband package tariff either.......
Does that include phone line rental perhaps?
And on current contracts there's recovering the costs of a "free" router over 12 months etc.

[#6]

It's the legacy premier option 1 product.
Before you start doing any calculations you have to deduct £8.40 (Ex VAT) which is the ADSL port cost that BT charge the ISP for a broadband connection - there are deductions to this which the ISP can claim but ita in pence rather than pounds.
You also have to deduct VAT so you are actually left with £10.31. From this PN have to pay salaries, equipment, building costs as well as bandwidth. Even if it was all used for bandwidth, you are actually only paying for ~ 15GB IN TOTAL. Then you have the off-peak period which is not counted but still costs PN.
PN in effect rely on people not using up their full allowance and thus subsidise those that do to balance the books and make a profit.

[#7]

Quote

And £21.99 isn't a current Broadband package tariff either.......

nah, it's a legacy price from when plus.net used to sell 'unlimited access'
and peter, thanks for explaining better, it seems we (as a family) are getting a reasonable deal from plus.net
which is nice to know, since I've been loyal for quite some time now, through some very rough times
but, I was hoping plus.net might have a product that suits me - I don't want a flexible arrangement, I want the same bill every month
when I joined plus.net there were 2 levels, I chose the dearer one since I knew we'd need the extra
I know 'unlimited' is no longer sustainable, never was really,  I might change to BBYW(pro?) if I could keep my current 'off peak' hours

[#8]

Just to be clear... Premier (and PAYG and BB Pro for that metter) have never been sold or described as unlimited products. That was the packages prior to those and even then only for a few months in 2004.

[#9]

Just to be clear, the product I bought, back in 2002, was definatly sold as 'unlimited' - and I had to pay £58.75 to 'activate' it. (no phone, modem, etc deals then, fully paid, up-front, in full, before 1byte of access)
as I already said, I do understand the economics, and why they can't do that any more, and that they (probably) regret ever saying that, but they did.

[#10]

Sorry Peter, but when I bought my BB+ in Oct 2005 there was most certainly something that inferred that the product was unlimited.
It may not have used the word "unlimited" directly but it definitely said something along the lines of "No need to worry about how much you download" which to me pretty much suggested that the downloads were unlimited - after all, what else can this mean? Other users have also mentioned this in the past in the older forums when PN started to change the product specification of the account and folks started to grumble.

[#11]

This page explains, in some detail, how the pricing for BBYW was arrived at.

[#12]

Quote from: Mand

6GB of browsing is an awful lot, in my household we use youtube, myspace, and a fair few other bandwidth intensive websites and never hit 6GB of web usage in a month. Are you using a wireless network? If so is it secured?

Mand I am wondering how you stay under 6 GB.
We are 8 days into the billing period and are at almost 9 GB (Peak & Offpeak combined).
P2P is limited to off peak scheduling on one machine and the wireless is secure.  I have 2 teenagers using You Tube and My Space (and one is only at home at the weekend) but apart from that it is typical family use, browsing, email and voip etc.
Having read this thread I don't understand why our usage is so high and am not sure how to manage this in a way that will allow what I think should be fairly normal use.

[#13]

YouTube and MySpace - enough said!

[#14]

Quote from: notheruser

YouTube and MySpace - enough said!

yeah, fancy actually wanting to USE the internet
we've done another 2Gb in 2 days, so now I'm up to 13Gb and have just been informed that "Light restrictions will now apply to your connection speeds" 
again, this isn't P2P, this is (apparantly*) 7.95Gb web, 3.05Gb streaming and some other bits
kids have just finished half-term, I can but hope this is a blip caused by too much free time

*I say 'apparantly', as I have no way of checking these figures

[#15]

Quote from: Santiago

Quote from: Mand 6GB of browsing is an awful lot, in my household we use youtube, myspace, and a fair few other bandwidth intensive websites and never hit 6GB of web usage in a month. Are you using a wireless network? If so is it secured? Mand I am wondering how you stay under 6 GB. We are 8 days into the billing period and are at almost 9 GB (Peak & Offpeak combined). ....

Currently I am also 8 days into the billing period and so far used 1.1Gb. That it with 2 computers browsing the net, etc (inc some streaming video, but not MySpace) and a third computer running as a games server (currently low number of players). In the last 3 months the highest usage is just over 6Gb. Mosts of our online activity is in the evening at weekends. Any downloads we do as we need them.
As stated by others I too have noticed the increase of websites that using high graphic / flash content which all adds to bandwidth usage (as well as slower load speeds). The other thing to look for is rogue programs that are connecting to net as both upstream and downstream count towards your usage.