NTL Faster But More Caps? (14 Nov 2004)

2005 To Bring Market Leading Speeds: Will The Cap Change Too?

Ntl are striving to shake up the broadband market by upping their speeds, yet holding pricing levels, from sometime early 2005. At face level this is absolutely stunning and welcome news.

The rest of the UK based ISP industry will undoubtedly have to take a long hard look at their offerings. Pressure will be piled on BT wholesale to speed up LLU, reduce the line rental costs further, and to squeeze more out of their technology. It's good to see cable for a change showing it's potential as a technology for now and the future.

Ntl's broadband will look like this:

£17.99 a month = 1Mbps download (currently 300kbps, originally 150kbps)

£25.99 a month = 2Mbps download (currently 1Mbps originally 600kbps)

£37.99 a month = 3Mbps download (currently 1.5Mbps originally 1Mpbs)

It is unclear if there will be any changes to upload speeds. New customers would get the increased speed automatically. Existing customers will have to pay a £25.00 admin fee to get the updgrade. This is a niggle, yet probably insignificant at these market leading pricing and speeds. Many do query why companies always make offers to win new custom, whilst not recognising the existing subscribers.

The difficulty we have, yet again, is with capping. It does appear, based on "internal sources" being quoted on other forums that the caps will be revised.

The indicative new cap levels (which in line with the current ntl guidance may just be on downloads, rather than the ADSL caps which are for all data transfer), based on the new speeds could be:

1Mbps = 20GB or as little as 5GB a month (dependant on what you read)

2Mbps = 30GB a month 3Mbps = 40GB a month

We would stress there has been no formal announcement on these and this article's comments are based on the speculation elsewhere.

It's good to see that there is some reflection of differing levels of use potential, related to service speeds, in providing a tiered cap. This has long been a criticism of ntl's existing one size fits all use guidance.

For the top speed, an increase in the cap level is most welcome. It will inevitably only be the heaviest users who would make the most of such speeds. 40Gb is a lot of data, but as the internet continues to grow, even ignoring p2p use, we suspect the subscribers of these high speeds would find these levels restricting. Perhaps Ntl need to at least add in an unlimited or "power user" pricing tier?

The 2Mb speed retains the current cap guide levels. It would have been nice to see this moved upwards. Since the guides were introduced two years ago, the internet has moved on (as has the apparent market for faster speeds). Enhancements to web sites increase the data being moved, and with new legitimate providers of music and other multimedia, bandwidth consumption limits need to increase.

It is however the limits suggested for the new 1Mbps speed which is most dissapointing. 20GB is poor, 5GB is laughable. It suggests Ntl are either not quite with it, or perhaps they are in fact being very clever.

Users who mainly use their broadband for email, web browsing and similar occasional use, may notice the faster page updates, but won't really use it. For most such users the current 300kpbs speed is more than adequate. However, Ntl see the upgrade as being attractive. They must expect customers to have their eyes opened to being able to genuinely use streaming media and the like. The intention must be to make the online experience enjoyable. This means greater use, and more data moved. Customers will not want this new enjoyment to be inhibited by data restrictions. A 5GB limit could affect a significant number of users.

The clever bit though is that ntl are probably, by setting a low threshold, protecting their income. This time last year 1Mbps was a top level speed for cable. Many users will have though that was enough. There will be a good proportion considering downgrading to the new faster speed, saving themselves money, for little apparent change in their online experience. By limiting low level bandwidth to a very low amount, this could force customers to keep spending.

Of course Ntl, apart from the occasional letter to heavy users, do not appear to have been enforcing their current caps. At the new levels being suggesed, especially for the slowest speed, enforcement may become a higher priority.

Ntl must have been investing behind the scenes to promote this upgrade, and to have provided the extra capacity for these speeds. That is to be applauded. It is especialy true since the original speculation for the caps was that Ntl's network didn't have the capacity for the uptake of broadband.

We await a formal announcement. In the meantime, before a public decision is stated we hope that ntl will look closely at the caps to ensure these do not restrict users enjoyment of all levels of service. It would be a shame if this groundbreaking speed enhancement is crippled by poor usage conditions.