AntiCap UK - Editorial: Tiscali: Are They Capping?

Tiscali: Are They Capping? (05 Mar 2004)

Management - There is no cap. Tech Support to customer: You're capped!

AntiCap has been contacted by a number of frustrated Tiscali broadband customers who claim that Tiscali's customer services have told them they are being capped. One customer, with a 512k connection states:

"On Friday, 13 February, out of the blue, Tiscali capped my connection. No warning that my usage was excessive and no email to tell me what they had done.

On the fourth phone call to their national rate helpline I finally got someone to admit the line had been capped, that it would stay capped for a further 6 days and that I would only be allowed to download 100-150MB per day thereafter."

On Tiscali's own forums, another customer states:

"Also I was told we're limited to 150Mb of data a day, otherwise we're transferred to a heavy users list which Tiscali have no control over as it is monitored and done by a computer program or something"

AntiCap has contacted Tiscali and received the following responses from their CEO, Mary Turner:

"There appears to be some confusion ...Tiscali do not have a policy of capping usage - we offer a contended service at different speeds - therefore you are always guaranteed the minimum throughout of speed/contention service that you purchase."

In response to the specific threads on the Tiscali Forums, Ms Turner went on to say:

"I have looked at these links and have advised my customer care team to ensure that all agents have the correct information and that the concerns within the forums are addressed. I can confirm to you that we do not cap customer usage.

The available bandwidth at peak times is shared amongst the customers according to the service speed/contention purchased, it is likely that if you are downloading large files during these times it will take longer to complete as there are more customers sharing the same bandwidth. Therefore we do advise customers that if they are conducting these types of activities to do so off peak time to ensure a more improved service than that purchased. We leave it to the customers to then decide if they choose to follow our advise.
We advise customers of likely 'traffic congestion' however if they choose to drive at peak time they may experience delays to their journey."

So according to management, Tiscali are not capping. However someone somewhere has worked out the 100-150MB of data figure, a ludicrously low amount.

AntiCap expects this will rumble on for a while and awaits further developments.