'Throttling' Broadband Provider Sued In Australia 130
destinyland writes "Optus has been severely throttling users who exceed a download quota, according to ZDNet — down from 100Mbps to 64Kbps — and it's drawn attention from federal regulators. Optus's ad campaign promises 'supersonic' speeds, and one technology blog notes that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission 'isn't happy about Optus' sensationalist claims, which it's sure breaches the Trade Practices Act.' Australia's trade commission called the practice 'misleading or deceptive,' and the broadband provider now has a date in court next month, the second one since a June hearing over 'unlimited' voice and data plans that actually had usage caps."
Re:They have 100Mbps broadband here? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh right, I see, any city that's not Perth. Got it!
Re:Throttling to 28.8 Kb/s. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, they really call it "unlimited", in the same table with the limits.
I'm always amazed by people whose frontal lobes are capable of generating and publishing such non-sequiturs without exploding.
Re:I see no problem with this (Score:5, Insightful)
If the customers desires more than 250 GB, then let him buy more from his Aussie provider.
If that Aussie provider doesn't want to end up in court, let him advertise what he's actually offering. This isn't about the quality of service, it's about their quality of ethics.
I live in the U.S., and it's stories like this that make me feel better when I read other stories about countries where you can buy gigabit services for thirty bucks a month. Of course, one has to wonder whether those services are sold under similar misleading terms. I wouldn't know.
Re:Big deal (Score:4, Insightful)
Then the FCC should revoke Comcast's license, plain and simple.
Re:I see no problem with this (Score:3, Insightful)
So their other plans not called unlimited are limited time, are they?
Re:Throttling to 28.8 Kb/s. (Score:3, Insightful)
My impression is that salesman, marketing people, politicians, and lawyers are often more interested in the effects their words have on others, than the actual soundness of the logic contained therein.
If one can claim that their broadband service is "unlimited" to get increased sales, without being overly sued, I think that's all some of these people care about.
It's evil: they're willing to deceive others for their own benefit.
Re:Big deal (Score:3, Insightful)
It's called "government regulation". It actually works outside the United States of corporAtions. FCC can not stop Comcast, because Comcast paid lobbyists who paid congressmen to remove any punishing powers from FCC before it even got them. In any normal country, if the cable operators would be doing to Internet what they are doing now in the US the government would step in and either fine them obsene amounts of money (not a million, but something like 10% of their income until they fix the problem) or just take them over and split up the monopolistic companies. So that the ISPs would not be allowed to do any other business but to only be dumb pipes selling guaranteed-minimum bandwidth slices to all willing customers (no bandwith, only speeds). And force all companies that put wires into peoples homes (telefone, cable, electrical, ...) to give access to such wires to any other company that the customer wants, so that you control the last mile and not the company that brings you a service over it.
It has been done all over the world and it works pretty well.
Re:They have 100Mbps broadband here? (Score:1, Insightful)
As for throttling once you've used a set amount of data, that's pretty much standard practice... it's not like they hide it.
That doesn't make it any less illegal, though.
If I were to post an ad that said "I'm selling chocolate for 1 dollar per kilogram!", people would come and then I would only sell first 100g per customer for that price and ramp the prices up for amount exceeding that... Yeah, it would become obvious to people who showed up and wanted to buy more than 100g but it would still have been false advertising in the first place.
Re:I see no problem with this (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, because the experience of the internet is so amazingly different if you're at 8Mb/s or at 11Mb/s.