It seems through recent news that the UK broadband providers are starting to enforce their limits and fair use policies and in a recent The Register article it appears that BT are starting to get serious with their customers. With emails “asking” for compliance to already plain fair use polices (which obviously nobody but lawyers read) and when they receive no response (in the form of curbing their downloads) from users, BT are in some cases cutting their bandwidth or even disconnecting the users altogether.

Even companies like Tiscali that regularly flaunt limitless broadband on TV actually have limits. Until recently there was mention of a 30GB limit in their terms and conditions. This language has now been removed but the legal speak of overuse is still abundantly clear. This is the same for the vast majority of all British ISPs. The first time you had broadband installed, did you realise there would be a cap on it, when the package you ordered explicitly said there wasn’t? Of course not, you would have shopped around if you had realised that!

Of course, with companies like Bulldog offering pretty good options like this you start to wonder at what point these fairuse policies actually become useless. If the bandwidth available to the average user keeps increasing, then surely it will be utilised more for a more interactive experience. Why watch those videos in 320×240 when on the same page it says you could watch the same video in 640×480 and better quality? It’s why we prefer DAB to FM, and FM to AM when we turn on the radio - users just want to be able to do things the best way available. I just hope we don’t get into a situation like we are at the moment, where the next generation of ADSL bandwidth is being over sold.

So the resolution? Well I guess we need to find ISPs that allow us to use the service they provision. We should check the small print before we sign. And if you’re unhappy with the service make sure they know about it because we shouldn’t have to pay the price for their over selling of a product to the point where it’s unusable if everybody uses it to it’s fullest extent. Their systems should adapt to the user’s demands, not the other way around.