The Campaign for Unlimited Use Residential Broadband Services has been wound up.

Since AntiCap UK was founded in 2003 there have been many developments in the range of products offered by the UK ISPs both on ADSL, cable and some other technologies. In many respects the wide choice now available reduces the need for AntiCap.

The campaign originated in response to ntl’s imposition of a 30GB download cap clause in their Acceptable Use Policy. At the time a fast domestic broadband was only 512 or 600kpbs (dependent on whether you chose ADSL or cable), with 128 and 256 / 300kpbs offerings commonplace. The ntl cap applied to all services, regardless of it’s speed. As ntl were clearly a market leader, there was a real danger that the entire industry would follow suit. AntiCap considered there was a probability that the advantages of broadband, particularly the flat rate price always on always available concept would disappear before the revolution really started. The country would move backward towards expensive use metering rather than forwards.

During 2003 and 2004 thing looked bleak. Whilst ntl never implemented technology that would rigidly enforce a cap, a number of high users were kicked off. Meanwhile many other major ISPs, did look to follow ntl’s lead especially BT as they tied themselves to Yahoo, Wanadoo (Freeserve), Tiscali. Meantime some notable players, especially AOL who created major advertising campaigns based on unlimited use, and the other main cable operator Telewest Blueyonder, firmly placed themselves in the unlimited use camp.

As technology moved on broadband speeds increased. Today we see ADSL offerings of up to 8Mbps, with cable up to 10Mbps, with significantly faster speeds under trial. Some of the use caps did not increase to reflect these faster speeds, and reached the point of being discredited. However many introductory level services still have ludicrously low cap thresholds which even the casual emailer could find restrictive. Some ISPs have experimented with pay as you go and use metering (exceeding your allowance automatically incurs charges), traffic shaping or bandwidth throttling), or even moving users onto different platforms (broadband is a contended service so sharing with other heavy users slows all the users together, letting “normal” users have better apparent connectivity).

Broadband use demands have also changed. P2P file sharing, all the fashion a couple of years ago has reduced in popularity. Meantime we see improved paid for content with sites like I-Tunes, high quality video streaming, gaming, home networks, and even websites themselves becoming more sophisticated. Indeed new services and uses continue to evolve as connections get faster and more robust. Use limits are now only a part of the equation for the ISP and end user.

Today most households have a good choice of ISP, speeds and conditions. ISPs today compete not only on speeds, but price and terms of service. The market has finally matured so that ISPs act independently and either specialise or need to offer a range of products rather than a one size must fit all concept.

Ntl, the protaganist of AntiCap's existence, quietly dropped their capping policy earlier in 2006 for it’s 1 and 2meg services whilst retaining a restriction only for the 10meg service at 75GB a month. Unfortunately, at the beginning of April 2006, just as AntiCap was being wound up, ntl slipped a traffic shaping policy into their Acceptable Use Policy, although it was swiftly withdrawn being declared as a premature move. It is probably a foretaste of things to come.

AntiCap UK has played it’s part in raising awareness of the limitations of capping policies. We believe that the campaign has contributed and made a difference to the products available and the maturity of the UK broadband industry today.

We would like to thank all our supporters for their contributions.