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General Discussion & Feedback => Just Chat! => Topic started by: paul.fr on 06/08/2007 19:05:53

Title: Where do ISP's make their money?
Post by: paul.fr on 06/08/2007 19:05:53
I presently pay £25 per month for my broadband, now my ISP has a new deal on. I can now get the same service, plus a wireless router and a free lap top, a dell valued on the dell website for £500 for £5 less per month.

So where are they making their money? I have been with the same ISP for 5 years, so they already have my money and i know the new offer is designed to intice new customers, but how can they afford this offer, pay their own staff and still make a profit?

The two drewbacks are:

1. i sign a new contract, where i have the ISP for 24 months. no big deal, i would be with them anyway.

2. I am limited to 40 gig of downloads per month, this will hurt me, but i can cope.

So, as far as i see it. I just can't loose. But where are they making their money?
Title: Where do ISP's make their money?
Post by: Simulated on 06/08/2007 19:26:04
My families ISP has stuff like that too where you can get Cable, Internet, and Phone for like $100. What do you mean only 40 Gig of downloads a month? How? They can't limit you on that. They can limit you on the downloading and uploading speeds of your internet, but not how much you can download. Huh? Oh well.

And to answer you question about where do they get the money. Not sure, but its probably like sales at the story. Once in awhile after they have taken all your money they can afford to sell stuff at buy on get 3 free.

I'm not sure if I have helped, but I tried!
Title: Where do ISP's make their money?
Post by: Karen W. on 07/08/2007 00:08:53
That is cheap I am paying 120.00 a month as I ordered cable also.. just a week or two ago. it was seventy -nine for just the high speed internet. They dropped my net to 69.00 and added the cable TV for 49.00 for tons of channels most all of them..around a thousand channels.. YAYYYYYYY!

Congratulations Paul! That will be cool..
Title: Where do ISP's make their money?
Post by: DoctorBeaver on 07/08/2007 01:01:48
What do you mean only 40 Gig of downloads a month? How? They can't limit you on that. They can limit you on the downloading and uploading speeds of your internet, but not how much you can download. Huh? Oh well.


They most certainly can limit the amount you download and many of them do. That's the only thing I like about AOL - no limits. Mind you, I may well be changing to Orange broadband coz AOL doesn't work with Vista so we've got a brand new super-whizzo Compaq sitting upstairs with nothing to do.

The idea was that Sandra would use that 1 upstairs & I'd use my Sony Vaio (which is 3 years old but still quicker than most PCs on the market today) downstairs.
Title: Where do ISP's make their money?
Post by: another_someone on 07/08/2007 04:40:51
Paul, you seem to be coming in from AOL, but I don't know if that is the ISP you are referring to.

My own ISP charges £25 p.m., but without the sweeteners, but is generally considered on the expensive end of the market in the UK.

With the sweeteners you are being offered, I suspect they are selling below cost, and so are clearly interested in simply increasing their market penetration at the expense of losing some profit.  If it is AOL we are talking about, they should still have substantial cash reserves to play with, even though they have been losing market share in the UK in recent years, so they should be able to afford to buy back market share by offering such sweeteners (and if they bankrupt some of the smaller players in the market, so much the better, as it gives them less competition to fear, and they can later then up their prices to recoup their losses).

As Eth has said, the certainly can limit your download capacity.  In theory, they could simply cut your connection when you have exceeded your limits, but more often they will send you a note saying you either have to restrict your download, or you have to buy a more expensive package that has more download capacity.

What is more devious is that many ISP's that claim to give you unlimited download capacity will traffic shape your line, so if you are making heavy use of the line, they will simply reduce your download speed during peek hours (since almost all domestic high speed broadband is rate adaptive, so they cannot commit themselves to a particular speed since so much depends on line quality, so in theory if they want to downgrade your speeds because they feel you are overusing the line, there will be nothing in the contract to prevent them from doing so).
Title: Where do ISP's make their money?
Post by: DoctorBeaver on 07/08/2007 05:06:13
Paul, you seem to be coming in from AOL, but I don't know if that is the ISP you are referring to.


I think he's on BT. They have a 40Gb monthly package for £25.
Title: Where do ISP's make their money?
Post by: dentstudent on 07/08/2007 08:16:52
around a thousand channels

1000!!!!! What can you possibly do with 1000 channels? I expect 993 are shopping channels, 1 weather, 1 CNN, 1 CNBC, FOX, and the rest showing repeats of Miss Marple......

 
As Eth has said, the certainly can limit your download capacity.  In theory, they could simply cut your connection when you have exceeded your limits, but more often they will send you a note saying you either have to restrict your download, or you have to buy a more expensive package that has more download capacity.

I have 1&1 here, and if I go over my download limit, I pay the difference between my agreement and the next one up for that month.
Title: Where do ISP's make their money?
Post by: DoctorBeaver on 07/08/2007 09:50:40
40Gb per month would be no use to me whatsoever. 1 of my sidelines is adding soundtracks to people's movies so I have to download & upload loads each month.
Title: Where do ISP's make their money?
Post by: paul.fr on 07/08/2007 09:57:55
You are correct, George. I'm on AOL, i did not want to mention it as it could have been seen as an advertisement.

AOL UK, have been bought by carphone warehouse, and i suspect this offer is part of their drive to go it alone from AOL themselves. I presently have unlimited downloads, and think this is also to cut those of us with this service.

Doc, you need to download AOL vista from here http://beta.aol.co.uk/. This will work on your new machine.
Title: Where do ISP's make their money?
Post by: paul.fr on 07/08/2007 10:00:20
AOL 9.0 VR refresh beta, is designed to allow you to run AOL o vista os.
Title: Where do ISP's make their money?
Post by: another_someone on 07/08/2007 10:53:35
40Gb per month would be no use to me whatsoever. 1 of my sidelines is adding soundtracks to people's movies so I have to download & upload loads each month.

If you have massive uploads as well, then I would ask if ADSL is at all appropriate, or whether you should be looking for something like SDSL?
Title: Where do ISP's make their money?
Post by: Simulated on 07/08/2007 14:22:38
What do you mean only 40 Gig of downloads a month? How? They can't limit you on that. They can limit you on the downloading and uploading speeds of your internet, but not how much you can download. Huh? Oh well.


They most certainly can limit the amount you download and many of them do. That's the only thing I like about AOL - no limits. Mind you, I may well be changing to Orange broadband coz AOL doesn't work with Vista so we've got a brand new super-whizzo Compaq sitting upstairs with nothing to do.

The idea was that Sandra would use that 1 upstairs & I'd use my Sony Vaio (which is 3 years old but still quicker than most PCs on the market today) downstairs.

Oh well heck I've downloaded Gigs and Gigs of stuff for the Sims and yeah I'm still not sure how the do it, but oh well. LoL.

My computer (desktop not laptop) is faster then fast and I got it like 7 years ago! LoL. We got the best computer you could in the olden days.
Title: Where do ISP's make their money?
Post by: another_someone on 07/08/2007 14:57:51
That is cheap I am paying 120.00 a month as I ordered cable also.. just a week or two ago. it was seventy -nine for just the high speed internet. They dropped my net to 69.00 and added the cable TV for 49.00 for tons of channels most all of them..around a thousand channels.. YAYYYYYYY!

Congratulations Paul! That will be cool..

While not cheap, do not forget to convert between USD and UKP (but, yes, even in UKP, it is more expensive than anything over here - but then, over here, if you have a TV of any sort, you also have additional tax (a.k.a. licence fee) you have to pay.
Title: Where do ISP's make their money?
Post by: kdlynn on 07/08/2007 17:27:38
i've never heard of a download limit... unless it was something that cost money and you didn't have any...
Title: Where do ISP's make their money?
Post by: another_someone on 07/08/2007 18:08:29
i've never heard of a download limit... unless it was something that cost money and you didn't have any...

Totally arbitrarily, here is one ISP with usage limits of between 1GB and 40GB per month, depending on how much you pay: http://www.plus.net/residential/broadband/?WT.mc_id=sem_002__b

The following has low usage packages that limit to 1GB per month, or unlimited usage packages:

http://www.bulldogbroadband.com/residential/products/broadband/index.asp

or the following has both 4GB and unlimited packages:

https://www.bethere.co.uk/broadband.do;jsessionid=N4O8$4Jd987Epuj9CTnzgv$Y0MN6Yn$v (https://www.bethere.co.uk/broadband.do;jsessionid=N4O8$4Jd987Epuj9CTnzgv$Y0MN6Yn$v)


These are just a sample of providers that have download limited packages in the UK.  At present, I think there are probably more with download limits than without, and a good few of those that are without formal download limits do traffic shaping.
Title: Where do ISP's make their money?
Post by: DoctorBeaver on 07/08/2007 18:30:29
You are correct, George. I'm on AOL, i did not want to mention it as it could have been seen as an advertisement.


Since when have AOL had a download limit? I've certainly not been informed of it.
Title: Where do ISP's make their money?
Post by: paul.fr on 07/08/2007 19:31:22
Pre carphone warehouse, there was no download limit, in fact there still is no limit. This will come in to effect for those going for the new contract, when they will impose a limit but only for those on the new deal.

you will not be effected, Doc. 40gig per month will just mean i have to cut back some and get a usage counter.
Title: Where do ISP's make their money?
Post by: DoctorBeaver on 07/08/2007 19:40:55
That's OK then. You had me worried for a minute there (https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fbestsmileys.com%2Fanxious%2F2.gif&hash=1ed59877cccda206c2ef302797047fa2)
Title: Where do ISP's make their money?
Post by: Simulated on 07/08/2007 20:27:16
i've never heard of a download limit... unless it was something that cost money and you didn't have any...

Maybe its just something in UK because as I mentioned earlier that just don't seem right. They can limit your upload rates and download speeds, but other then that no. LoL.