Updated1: Tuesday 7th, 8:44 PM
Update2: Wednesday 8th, 8:17 PM
ISPs in Kuwait have decided to gang up on residential consumers rather than step up to the Ministry of Communication's abuse. After all, it's easier (and cheaper) for multi-million companies to bully users rather than file a lawsuit against a ministry.
ISPs have setup what they call Fair Usage Policy, where they claim they have generously defined daily bandwidth cap/limits on users, to ensure that everyone has a pleasant experience. They have enforced this policy, WITHOUT NOTIFYING USERS!
Fair Usage Policies: QualityNet, KEMS, FastTelco and GulfNet. As you can see, some have blatantly put up the caps and others are doing it subtly without mentioning what the caps are.
According to them, "some" bandwidth abusers are the cause of this, as such, everyone must suffer!
It is not enough that they have increased their prices by at least 70% this year (February 2011), the increment was approved by the Ministry of Communications, and now the ministry is saying it'll fight the price increments!!! WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE FOOLING?
In addition to the high prices and bad service, consumers were never compensated during the days of degraded service when there were regional cable cuts, which lasted for about 3 weeks.
If ISPs are saying that a few abusers have caused this, then why provide them with bandwidth if the ISPs can't handle it? Don't provide 24Mbps if you don't expect users to download at 24Mbps!!!
The formula is: Daily maximum downloadable content = (Speed in Mbps/(8*1024))*3600*24
As you can see, we're getting barely 15% of what we paid for! And that's FAIR! Take a look at this nice table for more info.
Consumers are enraged and are forming an alliance to file lawsuits against the ISPs to fight for their rights. It doesn't matter if the contract mentioned Fair Usage or not, it doesn't matter if the contracts says it can be updated without prior notice or not, you cannot rip us off like that.
We have games to play online, buy & download games online (via Steam), rent movies online (iTunes, YouTube, NetFlix and Hulu) and watch many kitty-infused videos on youtube, in HIGH DEFINITION.
ISPs do NOT get the right to define what the Internet is.
Update1: We're using the hash tag #q8cap on Twitter to rant and disclose information about the topic.
Update2: @justjimmar provided a chat log with KEMS on Facebook. Ridiculous reasons for the cap! (original link to chat log)
Update2: Wednesday 8th, 8:17 PM
ISPs in Kuwait have decided to gang up on residential consumers rather than step up to the Ministry of Communication's abuse. After all, it's easier (and cheaper) for multi-million companies to bully users rather than file a lawsuit against a ministry.
ISPs have setup what they call Fair Usage Policy, where they claim they have generously defined daily bandwidth cap/limits on users, to ensure that everyone has a pleasant experience. They have enforced this policy, WITHOUT NOTIFYING USERS!
Fair Usage Policies: QualityNet, KEMS, FastTelco and GulfNet. As you can see, some have blatantly put up the caps and others are doing it subtly without mentioning what the caps are.
According to them, "some" bandwidth abusers are the cause of this, as such, everyone must suffer!
It is not enough that they have increased their prices by at least 70% this year (February 2011), the increment was approved by the Ministry of Communications, and now the ministry is saying it'll fight the price increments!!! WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE FOOLING?
In addition to the high prices and bad service, consumers were never compensated during the days of degraded service when there were regional cable cuts, which lasted for about 3 weeks.
If ISPs are saying that a few abusers have caused this, then why provide them with bandwidth if the ISPs can't handle it? Don't provide 24Mbps if you don't expect users to download at 24Mbps!!!
| Speed (Mbps) | Max Downloadable/Day (GigaBytes) | New Cap Limit/Day (GigaBytes) |
| 1 | 10.54 | 1.7 |
| 1.5 | 15.82 | 1.9 |
| 2 | 21.1 | 2.9 |
| 3 | 31.64 | 3.8 |
| 4 | 42 | 4.7 |
| 5 | 52.73 | 5.4 |
| 6 | 63.3 | 6 |
| 7 | 73.83 | 6.8 |
| 8 | 84.4 | 7.9 |
The formula is: Daily maximum downloadable content = (Speed in Mbps/(8*1024))*3600*24
As you can see, we're getting barely 15% of what we paid for! And that's FAIR! Take a look at this nice table for more info.
Consumers are enraged and are forming an alliance to file lawsuits against the ISPs to fight for their rights. It doesn't matter if the contract mentioned Fair Usage or not, it doesn't matter if the contracts says it can be updated without prior notice or not, you cannot rip us off like that.
We have games to play online, buy & download games online (via Steam), rent movies online (iTunes, YouTube, NetFlix and Hulu) and watch many kitty-infused videos on youtube, in HIGH DEFINITION.
ISPs do NOT get the right to define what the Internet is.
Update1: We're using the hash tag #q8cap on Twitter to rant and disclose information about the topic.
8 comments:
I so agree, something must be done about that. Higher rates and a cap, and yet still we get random disconnections and cable cuts? And still no improvements about the speeds and customer service?
Come on, I thought companies should compete against each others to win the consumer not unite and screw him up!
Indeed it is a total rip off and what really sucks is that they never had to mention it to users.
You mentioned the alliance but no details on that.. any particular lawyer taking charge?
Well said. I watch almost daily AppleTV movies. I have a lot of online technical material piled up to watch, I purchased online lectures that are about 20 GB, and just yesterday Apple announced OS X Lion is only available as download 4 GB, their xCode is of similar size.
This is normal use. I'm not opening up 30 continuous torrent streams, and I have to suffer because my ISP can't handle what they call abusers?
This is how things go in this country.
1- Local movies badly censored, and expensive
2- Customs makes it costly to order from outside
3- Now we can't even stream?
What age are we living in? Isn't MOE pushing for laptop per student and eLearning?
Vinnie,
Thanks for mentioning that ISPs did not bother notifying users. I added this to the post.
We're negotiating with some lawyers to see who's willing to take the case plus the costs. Once we have solid grounds on who will take charge, we'll notify people to join us.
This is better than heating up people and then sleep on it while we negotiate.
Bashar,
I think we should put banners saying: "Hello back 1990s!"
We're using the hash tag #q8cap on Twitter to rant. See Update1 in the post (bottom).
Posted Update2: A conversation with KEMS by justjimmar.
"Don't provide 24Mbps if you don't expect users to download at 24Mbps!!!"
well said indeed. it doesn't matter what the contract states, they're guilty of breach of contract.
this reminds me of sony which also thought that screwing customers is fun. look at it now.
PS: add my email (@gmail) to that list of frustrated internet users you're compiling. Those ISPs need to be taught a lesson.
sigtermer & quakebox,
Thank you for the support & I'm glad there are more people who are willing to stand up to this nonsense.
Please email me (my email is in my profile) a blank email with the subject q8cap so I can keep track of people.
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