Increase In Off Peak Times For Some Plans

[ForumAdmin]

As you may have seen in the Exetel February 2011 Customer News Letter the all current plans that have either 2 am or 4 am starting times will now be extended to 12 hours from March 1st 2011

Edit this means that all Exetel ADSL plans now have 12 hours of off peak time:

12 midnight to 12 noon
2am to 2 pm
or
4 am to 4 pm

[Tazz]

As you may have seen in the Exetel February 2011 Customer News Letter the all current plans that have either 2 am or 4 am starting times will now be extended to 12 hours from March 1st 2011

Edit this means that all Exetel ADSL plans now have 12 hours of off peak time:

12 midnight to 12 noon
2am to 2 pm
or
4 am to 4 pm

I would prefer 12am-12pm, any chance it will it be possible to choose?

[CoreyPlover]

One of the reasons they are staggered is to avoid the surge in traffic at the stroke of midnight. By having (and forcing) a certain number of plans onto each of the staggered times, congestion is alleviated. If there was the option to choose, then everyone would choose the midnight option as it is by far the most popular. Conversely, if there was a ballot, or first-in system, it could be regarded as unfair.

[Tazz]

One of the reasons they are staggered is to avoid the surge in traffic at the stroke of midnight. By having (and forcing) a certain number of plans onto each of the staggered times, congestion is alleviated. If there was the option to choose, then everyone would choose the midnight option as it is by far the most popular. Conversely, if there was a ballot, or first-in system, it could be regarded as unfair.

My ideal would actually be 2am-2pm, but I do get what your saying, most people would probably choose 12-12, but 4-4 is inconvenient with my daily schedule of sleep/waking hours etc

[kiwigene]

Maybe there could be a pool. For arguments sake lets say 30,000 people are allowed in the "popular"
timeslot of 12-12. People can elect to go into that pool, but must wait for a current occupant to
leave, either by them selecting another timeslot or, heaven forbid, they leave Exetel...

For what it's worth, I'm on 4-4 and that suits me fine - you might be surprised at those who
are now happy not to have the 12-12 offpeak slot.

[CoreyPlover]

Maybe there could be a pool. For arguments sake lets say 30,000 people are allowed in the "popular" timeslot of 12-12. People can elect to go into that pool, but must wait for a current occupant to leave, either by them selecting another timeslot or, heaven forbid, they leave Exetel...

Again, essentially a "first-in" or "luck of the draw" system, which isn't ideal.

This topic of off-peak offerings comes up fairly regularly (last thread can be found at viewtopic.php?f=4&t=37190). Some of the better sounding suggestions from last time were:

• a choice of off-peak times, but with incentives to equalise the disparity between the start times (these included more downloads for people with later starting and/or shorter off-peak intervals)
• Move back to a 12-12 arrangement, but phase the off-peak in and out (for instance, during midnight to 2 am and 10am-midday, downloads are metered as half peak and half off-peak)
• Not lengthening to a full 12 hours, but instead adding a 2 hours daytime / afternoon off-peak where there is another dip in the aggregate usage charts
• Having off-peak that lengthens with duration of your service in order to reward loyalty. This also removes adverse selection effects as the customers on long and early starting off-peak have a track record and downloading behaviour that Exetel already know about from past history

However, I'm personally a fan of keeping things simple. The current 3 staggered, 12 hours off-peak periods seem to work very well.

[brent0r]

Maybe there could be a pool. For arguments sake lets say 30,000 people are allowed in the "popular" timeslot of 12-12. People can elect to go into that pool, but must wait for a current occupant to leave, either by them selecting another timeslot or, heaven forbid, they leave Exetel...

Again, essentially a "first-in" or "luck of the draw" system, which isn't ideal.

However, I'm personally a fan of keeping things simple. The current 3 staggered, 12 hours off-peak periods seem to work very well.

Well the majority of the current exetel customers would be on the old unlimited offpeak which is the 12am/2am?-12, am I right there? Which would burn a fair ammount of bandwidth during the time most net users are sleeping or at work. Anyone else with limited offpeak is on the later 4am to 4pm but don't get as much to download. Dunno why I just wrote that :/ Im going to bed

[Tazz]

One thing puzzles me about all the off peak changes!
With all the changes made, why does the MRTG graph between midnight and 6am remain pretty much the same?
http://public.mrtg.exetel.com.au/bwsumm ... width.html
Is it because no matter what is changed, a lot of people stick their same routine?

[Franpa]

One thing puzzles me about all the off peak changes!
With all the changes made, why does the MRTG graph between midnight and 6am remain pretty much the same?
http://public.mrtg.exetel.com.au/bwsumm ... width.html
Is it because no matter what is changed, a lot of people stick their same routine?

Yeah probably, lots of thick (unwilling to change) people out there in the world.

[Tazz]

I just noticed this, in my members area it says 4am-4pm for Off Peak, but when I click 'view detailed' it says 2am-12noon
I assume this is an error?

4d6e34ef.gif (12.16 KiB) Viewed 9124 times

[LarryK]

Thank you for letting us know. I've informed the developers to make the necessary changes to the Secure Users facility etc.

[raymond]

The time colomn title has been corrected.

[Tazz]

The time colomn title has been corrected.

Thank you, now fixed...