Ntl Cap Ireland (14 Oct 2003)

ntl reckon you can't have too much of a bad thing

It appears that the Irish division of ntl, are now following the UK ntl lead of a capping policy. The current ntl Ireland broadband marketing page now states (13th October) in a comparative table of the Always on 150 and 600 services "Allowable Data Usage 1GB per day 1GB per day"

As yet the online Terms and Conditions and Acceptable Use Policy have not been amended to include any reference to a cap policy.

When the cap was launched in the UK there were some who were a little surprised that the Irish division did not follow suit. However ntl at that time said: NTL has over 700,000 Broadband customers in the UK with a little over 2,000 in the Republic of Ireland. In Ireland, the usage patterns show significantly lower bandwidth utilization than that of the UK and as a result, the usage guideline is not deemed necessary at this stage. However, NTL do reserve the right to introduce a guideline similar to that of the UK service at any time. One wonders what level of increased usage has brought about the need for a cap?

AntiCap also notes that it appears ntl have not learnt from the UK and the negative criticism/fiasco that surrounded the introduction of the cap clause in the UK. We are already hearing from Irish customers who have noted the website changes, but have not been directly informed by ntl of the policy change.

The Irish market may be less developed than the UK, but AntiCap doubt this policy is needed. We have yet to see any convincing argument that a capping policy addresses problems of a congested network.