Hi
Wanted to get the thoughts of the people on this forum on an annoying consumer issue involving an internet provider:

I recently moved to a new canton, which required me to switch my Internet provider. I registered for a super fast Fiber internet package offering 100000/5000kb connectivity. To my surprise, I was contacted less than a month after registering, and was told that I have breached the "fair usage" quota, which is 120GB.

Let's have a look what this "fair usage" number actually means:
120GB is 1006632960kbit. Assuming the company is actually delivering the promised 100000kbit/s downstream and 5000 upstream, this amounts to a total of 9586 seconds (1006632960/105000), or 2.66 hours.
So to summarize it: the company is advertising a 100K kbit/s package, for which they charge a monthly fee of 89CHF (29% more expensive than the next 50K kbit/s). However, they limit the consumption of the full offering to less than 3 hours a month???!!!!!

This DOES NOT sound fair to me. Definitely not fair for the loyal paying customers. I understand that the network should not be trolled by a few "power" users, but a quota that sums up to 3 hours a month of the advertised value is totally unacceptable.

As far as I see it, if their infrastructure does not allow them to properly deliver these fiber speed plans to their customers, then they shouldn't advertise and charge for them! For example, I have been a customer of Cablecom for over 4 years, and never encountered anything like that.

Would appreciate to hear people's thoughts about this, and whether they encountered similar issues.

Thanks

Man, that bytes!

I use 1 Gb per month. So 120 times that is a lot. I guess they should be clear on limits, but internet here is outrageously expensive.

Every internet provider needs a Fair Usage policy to stop 1% of the users hogging 90% of the network resources

How the company implements the Fair Usage is of course up to them - there are many ways to do this. Every power user who hits the Fair Usage limits is always upset, so there is no way to pacify the power users who want to user everything and pay nothing.

But of course, hardly anyone uses 100% of their bandwidth 100% of the time. Even the 2.6hrs would be 100% of bandwidth for just on 3hrs - probably nigh on impossible to achieve. What internet sites can deliver you content at 100 Mbps?

But it is exactly this bandwidth hog that the ISPs have to avoid.

You are using a shared medium, with shared bandwidth. Shared means the bandwidth is not yours 100% of the time.

Yes, you can peak to 100 Mbps, but it is expected that you will not use the Internet 100% of the time, and when you use it, it is not expected that your demand will require 100% of the bandwidth.

ISPs use something like a 20x to 50x overselling rate to make the Internet affordable.
If you wanted 100% of the bandwidth 100% of the time, then you'd have to pay 20x to 50x the price to get those resources.

So if you are happy to pay CHF 1,800 to CHF 4,500 a month, I can hook you up with a guarranteed 100Mbps connection - upload and download - with no usage limits.

Otherwise, you get what you pay for.... which you must accept.
If you don't like it, it's a free market, you are welcome to change your provider...

It's hugely cheaper than other countries I have lived in

And much cheaper than some cable networks in the USA....

the US is another expensive country - i think largely because there is no pricing regulation AND also no regulation to provide network access to competitors at wholesale prices (unbundling).

don't forget also the cable connection cost of 25CHF per month which is required before you get cable internet here.