AntiCap UK - Fact of Fiction?

The Legitimate uses of Large Residential Download Bandwidth

There is an assumption that those who regularly exceed a 1GB data download per day threshold must be file sharing or downloading pirated music or software. Inevitably, in the case of some users, that will be true. It must however be stressed that there are many legitimate uses for exceeding the 1GB limit, within the constraints of a residential use service.

The following is not an exhaustive listing of all possible uses. It does however easily demonstrate a use for unlimited download ability.

Streaming Media

As the internet becomes more accessible, more and more users move to broadband connections, more broadband enabled content will come online. Even simple sites such as BBCi rely on broadband, both for speed but also data transfer capacity to facilitate transfer of the larger graphics, audio and video content. Specialist video streaming services already exist, these not only supply music videos such as available through Launch.com or RealOne Superpass. Subscription services are now available for films, both modern and classic. All not only utilise the connection speed as well as broadband's download capacity.

Many online radio services are often low quality, initially designed for modem type use. However many broadband reliant services are now available, such as that from virgin radio, and in time these are likely to increase in number.

Software

In these days of Windows XP, and new computers being sold with ever larger capacity hard disks, bloatware is increasingly common. With Shareware and trial software easily available, you may undertake many downloads before finding the program that suits your specific needs. How many programs are now sold on DVD, instead of a few CD ROMs? If a CD Rom is approximately 750MB of data, you don’t need to download much of a program to be hitting your limit. A Linux distribution is phenomenal size. And remember many manufacturers now supply updates on line rather than by disk.

Communications

What about video conferencing? It’s not just the domain of business. Why pay telephone charges when if you have Broadband you can call, speak and see online for "nothing extra". Many home users with relatives some distance away are taking advantage of web cam technology to have face to face conversations instead of the boring telephone. Great for Grandparents to see the little ones! Equally in the days of digital photography and home video, one wants to send the results quickly to your acquaintances just to make them jealous.

Gaming

On line gaming has been around for some time, but makes increasing use of the faster connections, just like it pushes the limits of the hardware technology. With the development of consoles, bandwidth will take another pounding. Maybe much of the need for broadband is for fast "pings" so that players can

React in real time. But some games will also transfer a lot of data, especially if functions such as voice are enabled. Of course you will always want to download the latest patches and drivers to get the most performance from your system.

Music purchases

Music downloads are available from legitimate sources, as well as the less orthodox. Why should you have to go to the local shop when you can buy on line the latest MP3 single of your favourite bands, and watch the promotional video while you’re at it? Even NTL promote the MP3 service "Whippit" through advertising on their site.

Home Networks

Given that there are many legitimate uses for exceeding the 1GB limit, the likelihood of this increases dramatically once you have a home network of PCs and consoles.

NTL's AUP says you can have up to 3 computers connected in a network sharing a single Broadband connection. Those who are so doing probably use the 600 Kbps and 1 Mbps connections, so if each computer is in use simultaneously, there should be enough bandwidth to go round; A sort of internal contention ratio.

Even if all computers are not used simultaneously, those who have a home network are inevitably expecting daily and probably heavy use of the Broadband connection: Kids come in from school, check email, do some downloading for homework, check up the latest hot music videos, later that evening play an on line game. Mum gets in checks the latest emails, "Cor! Aunt Flo's sending the latest video clip from Aussie, must call her on the web cam once we've seen it to see how bad that sunburn is now!" Dad gets in - works in a panic, must get a report out - loads of photos got to be attached for the secretary to print tomorrow, and then let’s watch that latest released film on our subscription service.

If each computer in a network is being used freely, as the users want to and expect, download restrictions are unacceptable.