BT Faster & More Caps (13 Feb 2005)

Upgraded or Downgraded? Sting in the tail of freebie.

BT are increasing the speeds of their broadband services, for free. On the face of it, this is great news, until we delve a little deeper. Some caps, which were only introduced last July, become even more restrictive

Broadband Basic £15.99:

was 512kpbs, 1GB monthly cap: becomes 1Mbps, 1GB cap

BT Broadband £24.99:

was 512kpbs, 15GB monthly cap: becomes 2Mbps, 15GB cap

BT Yahoo! Broadband £26.99:

was 512kpbs, 15GB monthy cap: becomes 2Mbps, 15GB cap

BT Yahoo! Broadband £29.99:

was 1Mbps, 30GB monthly cap: becomes 2Mbps, 30GB cap

The upgrades are dependent on the capabilities of the physical ADSL connection line. BT say all customers will be upgraded to the maximum speed possible.

As ever however, with the increase in caps, some users will not want the increased speed, preferring their existing service. It appears they will be forced onto the new service. That might be allowable under the terms and conditions of service, but morally, it is surely unfair. It takes us back to the bad days of NTL sneaking in their "fair usage, capping clauses in February 2003, without proper notice to customers. Will these ISPs ever learn from the bad behaviour of others?

We particularly like the quote from Ian Livingston, BT Retail's CEO in BT's Press Release.

BT believes that UK consumers and businesses deserve to get the full benefit today of tomorrow’s broadband applications and services. It’s time to get the most from the internet.

Q8. Why are you doing this now? The internet has developed considerably and people are now using it for more than just surfing the web and checking email - more and more content and applications which utilise broadband are becoming available.

Yes quite, Mr Livingston, there is more to do on the net, so that means we want to be free to use more bandwidth not less. It's great that that content might get to us quicker, but what is the point if you are going to encounter your limit quicker too?

Oh, and by the way, what was it that made BT's management see the need to change their capping policy, and become ever more restrictive? In March 2003 Duncan Ingram the then Manging Director for BT Openworld (predecessor to BT Yahoo! Broadband) said In terms of capping downloads we have no current plans to do that. We are managing our network very well.

That stance clearly changed in June 2004 when BT first applied caps across the board. AntiCap presumes BT can thus no longer manage their network very well and have failed to allow for the inevitable growth of the Broadband Network.

AntiCap is already receiving complaints from the disillusioned.