As I'm sure everyone did, I just received an e-mail about the change to the acceptable usage policy of Exetel. Outlined in it is the following.
My question is this, can you please be more specific or at least give a ballpark of what this figure will be? For instance let's say Exetel have a heap of heavy downloaders, they all chew through their plans and the average for the month is 60gb, anyone downloading 180gb or more will be disconnected - fine I can understand that massively excessive usage. A different month though they get an influx of light users because of their wonderful cheap plans, and the average is down to 20gb per user. Suddenly we're being disconnected for downloading 60gb a month, the same as what our quota was in the past?d) For all plans that have an 'uncharged' off peak period Exetel will deem any individual customer who downloads more than three times the average of all other customers on these types of plans in any period as 'unfair users' and will ask such customers to move to another Exetel plan or to move to another provider.
I must say I absolutely hate not having a limit, but being told in vague terms that if you download "too much" that you'll get disconnected. Exetel have always been a great company, pioneering the way in terms of value - and as I customer I appreciate that. But really, if you're going to start disconnecting people for downloading "too much" and you're still looking to have the bandwidth used up in those offpeak periods just increase the actual offpeak quota. That way everyone knows exactly where they stand. You guys are smart enough to calculate something such as "on average our users used 76% of the 60gb offpeak, using the same ratio we can have them download 140gb safely per user offpeak so we'll make their quota 140gb/0.76 = 185gb a month", and the same light users will balance out the heavy users, and everyone is happy.
Anyway, just my opinion. Thanks.
P.s. I should state that I understand that really excessive users should be disconnected, and I'm not really arguing with that - if you're downloading 170gb, 180gb, 200gb a month you're unprofitable to Exetel, and should be gone. All I'm saying is that I don't particularly want to stay at downloading 50gb, 60gb to avoid running the risk of automatically loosing my service one month - if I wanted that I'd just wish the old plans were restored. Not knowing where the line is, 60gb - 80gb - 110gb etc is the issue.
P.p.s Suggestion - Maybe if you still insist of doing it this way give the heavy down loader a month's warning about their usage. An email along the lines of "Your service has been recorded as downloading more than three times the average user in our non-metered offpeak period. According to our Acceptable Usage Policy this is unacceptable. If you continue to download more than three times the average customer in the following month, your service will be disconnected - Regards Exetel".