Don't you just hate how it's being run? Like... the ISP provides 1MBPS connection (effective 100kb/s max download rate) but expects you to use only 10kb/s per day.
86.4GB per day download is what you'd get if you download at a constant 100kb/s
8.64GB is what you'd get if you use 10kb/s per day
Now in addition to this expectation of 10kb/s per day they also expect you to not exceed 25gb of downloads per month. Meaning that with 8.64 gb a day, you will exceed 25gb in less than 3 days.
At anytime you exceed the 10kb/s per day and 25GB monthly you are labelled as a heavy user.
Look at websites now. Most websites are graphic heavy and most people use the internet to stream stuff. Gone are the days of text only webpages of the 56k modem era. People opt to use broadband for a reason. It's to adapt to changing times and the infrastructure of the internet.
Unfortunately, TM doesn't change their infrastructure. They expect you to change and thus implement these "rules" (fair usage policy) so that they can keep their current infrastructure as long as possible.
Yes, there are people who hog the bandwidth by downloading stuff. But even if a typical user doesn't download anything, they'd still exceed the 'quota'. Shame on you TM.
TM is committed to ensuring our customers receive the best broadband service at the most competitive price. To achieve this goal, we provide a contended broadband service. This means our Internet bandwidth (capacity) is catered to be shared by all our customers at any one point in time, to ensure we provide a satisfactory and acceptable performance on an equal basis to all our customers.
However, a small number of customers use more than their "fair share" of the Internet bandwidth provided by us. On average, about 10% of our customers are using a disproportionate amount of Internet bandwidth. These customers degrade the performance of our broadband service by taking bandwidth away from other customers, who use the service fairly.
For example, some customers use P2P or file sharing software, which constantly sends and receives videos and other types of very large files, throughout the day. These activities (download and upload continuously) use a lot of bandwidth and can significantly reduce the connection speed, which other customers are getting to access the Internet during peak hours. We don’t believe this is fair to the vast majority of our customers.
We wish to bring to your attention our traffic prioritization policy with regards to P2P and Fair Usage Policy. We would like to reiterate that the P2P throughput is subject to peers (seed) availability and their throughput as well. Kindly note that TM does not have any control over peers’ availability or throughput.
The Fair Usage Policy automatically identifies the extremely heavy users and manages their bandwidth in order to protect the service of all our other customers. This traffic prioritization policy will protect the quality of service for the majority of our customers when they use the service, while at the same time, still allowing the extremely heavy users to continue to send and receive files with certain restrictions. With this policy in place, we will prioritize Internet activities like web browsing, live streaming, messaging applications and VOIP access while traffic to P2P sites will be given lower priority, due to the high bandwidth consumption of such services.
We wish to also highlight that as an Internet Service Provider (ISP), TM only provides access to the Internet and does not guarantee content delivery and performance where it is not within the domain of TM as an ISP. In fact, our international traffic management policy is designed to cater for all our customers so they have an optimal surfing experience within the normal limits of Internet usage.
As our priority is for all our customers to have a positive Internet experience, we wish to emphasize that it is important for all our customers to practice responsible usage of the allocated bandwidth based on normal usage.
We would like to reiterate that we are not against the use of P2P but we would like to educate our customers that the usage of excessive P2P does impact the overall service availability to our other customers.
TM does provide every customer with an allocated bandwidth, where other customers may use when not used by the others. Unfortunately, the nature of P2P more often than not, takes more than their allocated bandwidth, thus causing undue setbacks for other users when they want to use the service.
As a responsible service provider, we believe it is our responsibility and commitment to educate and encourage responsible usage of the infrastructure we provide.
However, a small number of customers use more than their "fair share" of the Internet bandwidth provided by us. On average, about 10% of our customers are using a disproportionate amount of Internet bandwidth. These customers degrade the performance of our broadband service by taking bandwidth away from other customers, who use the service fairly.
For example, some customers use P2P or file sharing software, which constantly sends and receives videos and other types of very large files, throughout the day. These activities (download and upload continuously) use a lot of bandwidth and can significantly reduce the connection speed, which other customers are getting to access the Internet during peak hours. We don’t believe this is fair to the vast majority of our customers.
We wish to bring to your attention our traffic prioritization policy with regards to P2P and Fair Usage Policy. We would like to reiterate that the P2P throughput is subject to peers (seed) availability and their throughput as well. Kindly note that TM does not have any control over peers’ availability or throughput.
The Fair Usage Policy automatically identifies the extremely heavy users and manages their bandwidth in order to protect the service of all our other customers. This traffic prioritization policy will protect the quality of service for the majority of our customers when they use the service, while at the same time, still allowing the extremely heavy users to continue to send and receive files with certain restrictions. With this policy in place, we will prioritize Internet activities like web browsing, live streaming, messaging applications and VOIP access while traffic to P2P sites will be given lower priority, due to the high bandwidth consumption of such services.
We wish to also highlight that as an Internet Service Provider (ISP), TM only provides access to the Internet and does not guarantee content delivery and performance where it is not within the domain of TM as an ISP. In fact, our international traffic management policy is designed to cater for all our customers so they have an optimal surfing experience within the normal limits of Internet usage.
As our priority is for all our customers to have a positive Internet experience, we wish to emphasize that it is important for all our customers to practice responsible usage of the allocated bandwidth based on normal usage.
We would like to reiterate that we are not against the use of P2P but we would like to educate our customers that the usage of excessive P2P does impact the overall service availability to our other customers.
TM does provide every customer with an allocated bandwidth, where other customers may use when not used by the others. Unfortunately, the nature of P2P more often than not, takes more than their allocated bandwidth, thus causing undue setbacks for other users when they want to use the service.
As a responsible service provider, we believe it is our responsibility and commitment to educate and encourage responsible usage of the infrastructure we provide.
A user's response
So, according to those slides TM Net produced during its recent PR exercise, the company's definition of a heavy user is someone who downloads 25GB a month. This is laughable for all sorts of reasons.
If you were to use a 1Mbps Streamyx connection at full speed (let's say 100KB per second) for 24 hours a day for 30 days a month, you'd be able to download 247GB a month. TM Net doesn't want you to do this. TM Net expects you to use your 1Mbps broadband connection at 10KB/s on average every month. In other words, if you use more than 10% of your 1Mbps connection's total capacity a month, TM has now decided you're a heavy user.
(For 4Mbps Streamyx users, 25GB per month translates to 2.5% of total bandwidth capacity.)
To make this all the more insulting, TM Net's official page for its Streamyx site boasts "unlimited usage for a fixed rate". This is false advertising, of course, and it's by a communications company which is absolutely terrible at communications. There's no English dictionary in the world that defines "unlimited" as "having undisclosed limits." Prospective Streamyx subscribers would be less than impressed by the ugly truth: "Restricted to 25GB per month with an average speed of 10KB/s".
The second reason why TM Net's definition of heavy user is laughably absurd is the company has another broadband service, UniFi, and TM Net is allowing those users download 120GB per month (and as the UniFi official site notes there is no cap for the time being). Keep in mind that both UniFi and Streamyx users are using the same international bandwidth.
Don't be misled by TM Net's clumsy and transparent attempts to shift the blame from itself. Heavy users of Streamyx are not stealing bandwidth from other Streamyx users; the heavy users are simply making full use of their connections they paid for.
What's actually happening is TM Net is severely restricting Streamyx heavy users in order to maximise international bandwidth for UniFi users. In other words, TM Net is taking away international bandwidth from Streamyx users to cater to UniFi users. TM Net is doing this very quietly so the only ones who are noticing it now are the Streamyx heavy users.
Some of you may not consider TM Net's policies troubling because it doesn't currently affect you. Consider this: TM Net gets to decide who is a heavy downloader and under what circumstances. Download 120GB with a UniFi connection? TM Net says, "No problem." Download 25GB on a Streamyx connection and TM Net says you're a heavy user whose connection must be throttled so severely you won't be able to download critical data including OS service packs, security patches, application upgrades or anti-virus definition updates.
More to the point, TM Net also gets to decide what amount constitutes an excessively high download amount. Today, it's 25GB a month. In a year, TM Net could decide it's 20GB or perhaps 15GB. This is called moving the goalposts and to mix sporting metaphors, this is not cricket. TM Net, having gone from "unlimited" to 25GB, will most assuredly change this amount once again.
The real problem here is TM Net is set on maximising profits and as such is eager to increase its broadband subscription base without making the necessary infrastructure investments to maintain a high quality of service. Increasing the number of subscribers means increasing revenue but increasing international bandwidth capacity to maintain quality of service means increasing expenditure which eats up profits.
If you were to use a 1Mbps Streamyx connection at full speed (let's say 100KB per second) for 24 hours a day for 30 days a month, you'd be able to download 247GB a month. TM Net doesn't want you to do this. TM Net expects you to use your 1Mbps broadband connection at 10KB/s on average every month. In other words, if you use more than 10% of your 1Mbps connection's total capacity a month, TM has now decided you're a heavy user.
(For 4Mbps Streamyx users, 25GB per month translates to 2.5% of total bandwidth capacity.)
To make this all the more insulting, TM Net's official page for its Streamyx site boasts "unlimited usage for a fixed rate". This is false advertising, of course, and it's by a communications company which is absolutely terrible at communications. There's no English dictionary in the world that defines "unlimited" as "having undisclosed limits." Prospective Streamyx subscribers would be less than impressed by the ugly truth: "Restricted to 25GB per month with an average speed of 10KB/s".
The second reason why TM Net's definition of heavy user is laughably absurd is the company has another broadband service, UniFi, and TM Net is allowing those users download 120GB per month (and as the UniFi official site notes there is no cap for the time being). Keep in mind that both UniFi and Streamyx users are using the same international bandwidth.
Don't be misled by TM Net's clumsy and transparent attempts to shift the blame from itself. Heavy users of Streamyx are not stealing bandwidth from other Streamyx users; the heavy users are simply making full use of their connections they paid for.
What's actually happening is TM Net is severely restricting Streamyx heavy users in order to maximise international bandwidth for UniFi users. In other words, TM Net is taking away international bandwidth from Streamyx users to cater to UniFi users. TM Net is doing this very quietly so the only ones who are noticing it now are the Streamyx heavy users.
Some of you may not consider TM Net's policies troubling because it doesn't currently affect you. Consider this: TM Net gets to decide who is a heavy downloader and under what circumstances. Download 120GB with a UniFi connection? TM Net says, "No problem." Download 25GB on a Streamyx connection and TM Net says you're a heavy user whose connection must be throttled so severely you won't be able to download critical data including OS service packs, security patches, application upgrades or anti-virus definition updates.
More to the point, TM Net also gets to decide what amount constitutes an excessively high download amount. Today, it's 25GB a month. In a year, TM Net could decide it's 20GB or perhaps 15GB. This is called moving the goalposts and to mix sporting metaphors, this is not cricket. TM Net, having gone from "unlimited" to 25GB, will most assuredly change this amount once again.
The real problem here is TM Net is set on maximising profits and as such is eager to increase its broadband subscription base without making the necessary infrastructure investments to maintain a high quality of service. Increasing the number of subscribers means increasing revenue but increasing international bandwidth capacity to maintain quality of service means increasing expenditure which eats up profits.
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