Broadband providers advised to advertise transparent fair usage policies

A recent press release by the Internet Service Provider’s Association comments on the issues surround usage caps and fair usage policies.

The article explains the issues surrounding bandwidth usage. That is, the amount of data that is transferred (downloaded or uploaded) by consumers. Since the availability of Internet TV and file sharing online, bandwidth usage has continued to increase. This can often degrade the user experience by slowing down the connection speed for users if heavy users are sucking up the bandwidth to download large files such as movies.

The issue is really whether the ISPs can provide enough bandwidth capacity to cater for the increased bandwidth usage. The ISPA states that it is unfeasible for operators and incumbents to add additional capacity due to planning and cost implications at this stage.

Another issue is broadband providers selling a seemingly unlimited broadband service at a low cost. The user assumes that they may get 2 or 8 meg download speeds, but in reality this is not possible most of the time. These types of services are contended. Meaning that there are other users sharing a main pipe to the Internet.

The ISPA agrees that this combination is mutually incompatible. For example, to get a true up to 8 meg  broadband service, a consumer needs to have an uncontended connection. This costs a lot more than the average consumer broadband service.

To this end, the ISPA recommends that ISPs carefully match prices to costs and users to. They also call for greater transparency on fair usage policies and the implications of exceeding the bandwidth allowance. It is also recommended that consumers understand these implications and what policies are applied during registration of a service.