NEWS BT has announced that it is slashing its retail broadband prices by as much as £10 per month, but setting tighter limits on how much data its users will be able to download.
From July, a monthly subscription to the no-frills 512Kbps BT Broadband package will now cost £24.99 per month, down from £27 per month. A BT Yahoo Broadband (which includes various features including email and security products) 512Kbps connection will now cost £26.99 per month (from £29.99) while the BT Yahoo Broadband 1Mbps service will drop from £40 to £29.99.
BT is also bringing in new limits on how much its customers can use their broadband connections for. Customers using a 512Kbps connection will now only be permitted to download 15 GB of data a month. Those using the 1Mbps service will be limited to 30GB per month.
Previously, BT operated 'advisory limits' of one gigabyte of data per day, so the announcement effectively halves how much data its 512Kbps users are allowed to download each month.
The telco says that bringing in these restrictions gives it the chance to cut prices. It insists that most users will be unaffected, saying that the 15GB allowance will let users surf for 15 hours per day, send and receive 3,000 emails per week and still be able to access digital material like video clips and radio stations.
"There's only a very small number of very heavy users it will affect. If these guys don't want to use our service, that's their option," said a BT spokesperson.
Although these bandwidth caps are being added to BT's terms and conditions and will come into force 28 days later, they won't actually be enforced until next year. By that stage, BT hopes to have brought in its flexible bandwidth service which will give it the ability to sell additional bandwidth to users with heavy requirements.
Graeme Wearden writes for ZDNet UK
Comments
There are 24 comments. Join the discussion
1. Darrall
Once again BT show us how not to court customer loyalty! So if I have a 1Mb link and have 30Gb/month if that agregated per day or per month? If I don't use my allocation one month does it carry forward? I hold my money in my hand to anyone who says it will! No takers......just BT taking my money for less and less of a service. I wish I could move ISP but I have no other option! BOOOOO BT BOOOOOOOO!!!!!
2. Carl
I pay £24.99 for uncapped access with a fixed IP address from a provider that very rarely has network problems.
Explain to me again how the BT offerings are competitive ?
3. Willem Stolz
If BT broadband subscribers think they have it bad, in South Africa, TELKOM, the MONOPOLY (also the only) national telecomms company is "financially raping" it's ADSL subscribers! For the equivalent of about £55.00/month (which is the cheapest option) all we get is "no-guarantees" (up to) 512kbit/sec download and (up to) 256 Kbits/sec upload speeds with a 3GB per month combined upload/download protocol shaped cap. How's that for a bad deal!!!
4. Adrian McLeod
Does anyone actually care? To be honest anyone who's anyone doesn't use BT ADSL services anyway, there are many other service providers with cheaper options available. Hell even AOL have reduced their prices and removed any trace of bandwith limits! I guess BT only want a certain level of Internet subscriber, those either too lazy or too stupid to look anywhere else! In that case I say good luck to them! ;)
5. Neil Postlethwaite
A little more expensive, but pay £29.99 for BT Business Broadband, uncapped and you get a 20:1 contention ratio instead of 50:1 all consumer broadband is on. Even better, it flies in the evening when most businesses are closed :-)
6. Max Rutherford
I've had HomeChoice, then went with BT. Once the Yahoo tie up started the service deteriorated. Their charges are way of kilter evn with these so called discounts.
I tried ClaraNet last night that was much faster than BT for the same alleged bandwidth. BT just cannot used joined up thinking to keep its customers. How stupid do you have to be to work in BT's Marketing Department?
7. Ian Savell
These comments show utter ignorance of the realities of ADSL provision.
No provider can honestly offer an uncapped service - their own bandwidth is not infinite, they impose an arbitrary cap by letting the service grind down to dial-up levels whenever it gets congested.
Very few users can even approach these cap levels. One group who do are illegal file sharers, spammers and other scum who clog up the internet for the rest of us. I would feel happier with BT if I knew the other people sharing my contention group were not trying to shift 30Gb of data down my line.
Well done BT for being honest and supporting the vast majority of their users against the misusers.
8. Laurence Cook
We pay £35.00 per month for a 512Mb link to a small ISP. We stay with them since I know their technical support, the contention rate is a quarter that of BT and they rarely have problems. You get what you pay for.
9. simon e
competitive my R's, NTL have offered 512Kb (and last year upgraded that for free to 600Kb) for the last few years for £25. Its a good stable network and they introduced a 1Gb a day data limit last year, which i dont think is enforced. In the 3 years i've used it, its been down about 2 days in total.
BT need to look around and see what other companies are doing before they declare themselves as competitive.
10. Tim Ellis
My BT Yahoo initial 12 month term comes to an end before the enforcement of the limit. BT advised me today that I am close to the new data limit. Why would I stay with BT?
11. Peter Stanley
It makes me glad i left the UK....
Another example of Rip-off Britain. IN
Hong Kong i pay around £15 a month for Unlimited 10MB (actually only about 6Mb .. but i'm not complaining)
512k isn't what i'd call Broadband !..
Once again the UK population is being fleeced.
12. Steve
If it will only affect a "small number of very heavy users" why are BT bothered ?
13. Gary.
I got my BT adsl in november and im extremely upset about this, i didn't sign up for download rates, yet im getting them anyway, now i have to stay with BT until the conracts over, well i will be doing some in-depth provider searching in the mean time.
14. Sally Bratton
So, which is the best value broadband option at the moment? I work from home and have been using BlueYonder for the past three years, but recently there have been numerous email problems and I'm getting a bit fed up as business continuity is essential. Is Tiscali any good for example?
15. Gary.
As people have been asking about which Broadband service would be best to go with i have been hearing good things about plus.net
I already sent BT a nasty email, they haven't replied yet...
16. anonymous
Yes you can move. I just have. Get your ADSL UK number from BT and Fasthosts can provide you with just the line for £19.99 per month... with NO LIMITS !! Free domain name, 100Mb of web space plus tons more. They do all the moving for you and you only lose service for about 2-3 hours!
Lines from 512 - 2Mb!!
http://www.fasthosts.com/Broadband/
And I don't work for them !! It's just nice to get an easy option to move and stick it to BT.
17. Colin
Oh Great... just started to listen to radiocelt.com This is better than usual Internet radio but I will have to restrict myself to 2 hrs a day now this stupid limit has been introduced. If I had known I would have used a different ISP.
Bad,Bad, News BT Broadband...after the year is up I shall leave. I probably dont use the 15 GB a month but no way am I going to keep disconnecting the thing...just like the bad old days of dialup
18. colin
But can you upgrade from BT Broadband domestic (I am a business and have that package at work)?
19. Jamie
It's a damn good job my contract is up with BT prior to their 'enforcement'!
It took me long enough for them to get their fingers out and actually admit that my line was capable and within their KM limit to enable activation in the first place (even though my neighbour had it installed 18 months prior to that on the same spur)!
Overall ... BT are not making any friends, but all the money it seems
20. ukdigisam
BT Customers should use seti at home to take full advantage of bandwidth until the limits are imposed. I Have Been with Btopenworld(Now btyahoo)since it was available in our area I find it offensive that bt are now imposing a bandwidth limit to retail customers while people who get broadband from other companies who use btignite as a wholesaler get no limits.This clearly shows what bt think of loyal customers & so i will be looking for a new service provider with no limit.
21. john leathley
worth looking round at other providers try http://metronet.co.uk/adsl/ they've been going ages are seem very competative on prices
22. David Hallett
I object to people suggesting that the only "heavy" users of broad band are scum carrying out illegal activities.
My own BT broadband connection gets very heavily used, for purposes such as staying in contact with home, Yahoo launch music videos, legal uploads, online gaming, transferring data between work and home etc etc.
I entered into a contract for unmetered service, I would never have chosen a metered service. I do not believe that it is impossible to keep up with the demand placed on the system, even with a fair profit margin.
However what BT have been doing is luring customers with the promise of "unmetered" and are now trying to ditch those that actually use it "unmetered". I am not "clogging up the internet" for other I am making fair use of a service I have purchased.
I note that BT will not be introducing the new capping until after my 12 month contract has expired at which point I will be moving up to a higher speed connection, with a lower contention ratio and no limits.
Its not as if BT are pushing the envelope of the available bandwidth, other countries are able to offer huge bandwidth unmetered services at comparable prices. I see little value in a metered broadband connection, what the point in having a fast connection if you can only use it for a limited time.
How would you feel if you brought a shiny new BMW (please note - im not a BMW driver - just a typical expensive car that is used for high mileage) and then you were told a few months down the line that they were introducing mileage limits and from now on you were not allowed to travel more than 100 miles a week. Sure its good that you will be causing less congestion for everyone else on the roads, but thats not what you purchased the product for.
23. Chris
Go to a real supplier - the BT octopus has no commitment to its large and mostly uninformed customer base; there are many good, longstanding ISPs out there that owe no allegiance to BT and provide the service you pay for. If you have entered into a contract with BT and they change the rules - its a breach of contract! - cancel and go elsewhere. BTs "nips and tucks" dont impress me at all - like most plastic surgery, its all superficial; the body is still crumbling away.
24. anonymous
I used to work for bt. Its like the NHS, too many chiefs , not enough indians.And no ethics. They will get away with whatever they can. There is a village near hear (Bridge in Kent) that didnt have any broadband access. Bt manipulated the local school kids into selling their rip-off package for free , by telling them if they managed to get enough subcribers they would give them the option to buy there shitty service.I wonder if OFFTEL knows about this.