[The News Bot]

A survey finds one million customers are close to or have overstepped their monthly bandwidth quota
More...

[VesNL]

What do you expect really, more and more stuff is being offered online. Legal or 'illegal'. Consoles also play a part in it. Demo downloading, game add-ons.

[jegan111]

yes, this one has had me thinking for a while now. Its all very well companies like M$ or whoever saying movies and games will be mostly download only in the future but has no one thought to consider the generally poor state of our infastructure in relation to places like Japan, Korea or even France, meaning our download speeds and usage allowances are noweher near as high as they need to be before it is a viable alternative to pre-packed media? And that's before you even start to think about these download caps and fair usage policies!

[Jonny1973]

Problem is ISPs advertise their products as Unlimited*

* Monthly 3GB fair usage cap applies.

How on earth this is legal is beyond me.

[Jonstone]

Originally Posted by jegan111

yes, this one has had me thinking for a while now. Its all very well companies like M$ or whoever saying movies and games will be mostly download only in the future but has no one thought to consider the generally poor state of our infastructure in relation to places like Japan, Korea or even France, meaning our download speeds and usage allowances are noweher near as high as they need to be before it is a viable alternative to pre-packed media? And that's before you even start to think about these download caps and fair usage policies!

Another aspect that seems to be overlooked is cost.

At the moment digital distribution is extremely cheap, but if vod etc are to replace hard media then the amount the average user downloads will increase considerably which would have to translate into higher charges from the isp's

[lloydsmart]

Originally Posted by jegan111

yes, this one has had me thinking for a while now. Its all very well companies like M$ or whoever saying movies and games will be mostly download only in the future but has no one thought to consider the generally poor state of our infastructure in relation to places like Japan, Korea or even France, meaning our download speeds and usage allowances are noweher near as high as they need to be before it is a viable alternative to pre-packed media? And that's before you even start to think about these download caps and fair usage policies!

True, but there are signs of progress.

[AgentCool]

Mine used to be unlimited but an upgrade to ADSL2+ also resulted in a 75GB monthly cap. I can't complain though, the most I've ever used in a month is around 25GB.