From: Andrew Gabb (agabb@tpgi.com.au)
Date: Thu Dec 18 2003 - 21:12:01 EST
Bhavani Palyagar-MU wrote: [with snips]
> I availed an Internet plan (100 free calls + unlimited time restricted 400
> MB download for $59 a month) from a reputed service provider.
This is very expensive, Bhavani. For $50 a month I have ADSL, 1GB download full speed (then unlimited quarter speed). So no dialups either. It also has a free junk mail filter (which works) and a free dialup account (for roaming). TPG is a relatively large national ISP, and I've connected in Cairns, Darwin, Nowra and Rockingham, for example.
No, this isn't a commercial for TPG. While I've found their technical performance, particularly availability, generally above average, I've always found their customer relations woeful. In fact, most ISPs are poor in this regard. So your story should is not at all unusual.
> When asked, the call centre staff told me that I have used 460 MB download
> as against 400 MB allowed. I did not remember downloading anything at all.
> So, I asked them the definition of "download". The answer I got was "any
> exchange of data between our server and your PC is a download".
This is normal. But also note that 400MB is *lot* of download. You wouldn't normally expect to reach this with emails and web surfing (unless your emails are very large). I've estimated my peak monthly use (pre-ADSL) to be about 300MB. TPG provides a monitor for this as well, which an ISP should.
> By this definition, I realized that my daughter had taken
> a few online knowledge tests from various websites, and, every image, every
> GUI element, every character, period, comma, space, any other silly stuff is
> considered as download.
Right, in fact every byte transferred to your computer. Much of that silly stuff you don't need, but you'd probably complain if all commas were blocked, for example. Now, as I said 400MB is a lot, and you said you didn't 'download' anything at all. Are you sure no-one else did? Some really good ways to increase your download are (eg) streaming audio/video, looking at many high definition photos, downloading audio (eg MP3) and video (MPEG).
Of course, if you haven't secured your computer, it could also become a 'zombie' in the hands of the hackers. That will increase your traffic a lot too.
> Now I am in a situation where in I have to know how
> to optimize "downloads" so that I don't end up paying $300 next month or a
> $1000 a month after. So, I asked the service provider to send me:
I think that's why TPG have package like mine. No arguments on this issue.
> Bhavani: May I also know the websites I accessed, so that next time I will
> take care that I will not go there and burn my money
> Service Provider (SP): We don't keep that data
Probably correct. Note that you can get hold of meters - some free - which measure connection times, downloads and sites visited. All browsers keep some record of this - maybe you can extend the log.
> Bhavani: Why not, since I am paying for the extra download, hence I should
> know where I downloaded from
> SP: We don't keep that data, since you must understand that you are not the
> only customer we have, we have millions of them, hence it is hard for us to
> keep that data
Probably correct too. Most folks don't argue, so there is no cost effectiveness at this stage in keeping copious logs.
> Bhavani: Having millions of customers is a business advantage rather than a
> constraint to you. You must realize that you have all the more reasons to
> give us the data on which the downloads is calculated
> SP: Well, that's how it is, we don't keep the data on which your bill is
> computed
I don't believe this. I think it's highly likely that they keep session info, such as connect, disconnect, downloads in period. I know TPG do for at least some accounts, because I used to view it online.
The person involved may have been told to say this, or just thinks it's true. Remember that their requirements are different from yours. They'd like to make you happy, but they have limited scope or information for doing this. What they really want to do is to get through as many calls as possible without any serious complaints (about them).
[snips]
> Anyway, after this long conversation on the SP's metered number, I decided
> to cancel the connection. Coming to the relevance of this to RE. I have
> the following questions:
See my next post.
Andrew
-- Andrew Gabb email: agabb@tpgi.com.au Adelaide, South Australia phone: +61 8 8342-1021, fax: +61 8 8269-3280 ----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To send a message to this mailing list send it to re-online@it.uts.edu.au. To unsubscribe from this mailing list, email majordomo@it.uts.edu.au with the message `unsubscribe re-online' in the BODY of the mail.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.6 : Mon Dec 22 2003 - 09:00:14 EST