Hong Kong mobile operators reacted to the introduction of new regulations on data tariffs on Monday by introducing a 5GB cap on fair usage and threatening to de-prioritise users who go over that limit. CSL, 3 Hong Kong and SmarTone all put out statements claiming they would continue to offer “unlimited” tariffs with the caveat …

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Tuesday 14th February 2012 14:22 GMT James Cooke

Ofcom please take note

“Service providers offering unlimited plans without qualifications must ensure that their networks are equipped with sufficient capacity so that they are truly capable of providing unlimited services to the relevant customers,” said an OFTA spokesperson at the time.

Please make mobile and fixed BB providers say unlimited up to XGB and we will throttle you to hell.

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Tuesday 14th February 2012 14:30 GMT OrientalHero

Heh, to put things in perspective, most HK ppl are on the free 10MB broadband package. All my friends there pay for 100MB broadband connections and that was about 4 years ago.

So a 5GB cap would be quite detrimental given their upload/download speeds.

And the logo because HK is Pirate Central!

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1. Tuesday 14th February 2012 15:09 GMT Paul Shirley
  
  ...did you miss the *mobile* in the post? Nothing to do with your broadband.
  
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Tuesday 14th February 2012 15:32 GMT Anonymous Coward

explanation

Due to the excessive use of the network by people who ignorantly expect unlimited to mean a service without limits, the ISP wasn't able to access dictionary.com to check on the meaning of unlimited.

The fair usage line is BS aswell since as a consumer who is sold an 'up to' 10 meg line, my view of fair usage would be somewhat more than streaming data at a fraction of that speed.

If they sold us a true product in the first place they would not have to back pedal into fair usage.

Pirate tag cos they're the real pirates.

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Tuesday 14th February 2012 15:32 GMT Just Thinking

"Fairness" argument

I just love that. Sell unlimited data on infrastructure which can't hope to provide it. When people use the service to download large amounts of data, throttle them.

But its ok, they are doing t to be fair to everyone else.

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Tuesday 14th February 2012 15:33 GMT Paul Shirley

compare to the UK

Pretty tame compared to the UK.

5Gb is a lot better than T-Mobiles 0.5Gb streaming allowance before switching down to browsing only - but neither cut you off completely. But at least both tell you what the limits are and T-Mobile are marginally honest when saying 'unlimited browsing'.

giffgaffs 'unlimited' may allow much more data use before cutting you off but they've recently confirmed there are conditions/limits, they're secret, extremely variable (as little as 2Gb has triggered it) and the normal uses are quietly being relabeled as abuse in the small print in the T&Cs. Can be a little difficult contacting an Internet only company to challenge disconnection after they cut the Internet as well...

Right now only 3 seem to still be really doing unlimited internet on phones. Good thing they don't have enough customers to saturate the network ;)

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Tuesday 14th February 2012 23:21 GMT Neoc

Weird.

My ISP here in Oz had removed their "unlimited" plans early in 2011. Sometime around November, they re-introduced at least one (ADSL2+ unlimited), which I am now on. So far, they haven't "shaped" or "fair-used" me, even though I am catching up on one heck of a backlog of old Anime. ^_^

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1. Tuesday 14th February 2012 23:22 GMT Neoc
  
  Clarification...
  
  Just wanting to point out the weirdness of an Australian ISP (and let's face it, Oz isn't known for its extensive download plans) offering a new Unlimited plan when everyone else is getting rid of them.
  
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Tuesday 14th February 2012 23:53 GMT Anonymous Coward

But it's still no "unlimited"

I thought the whole point of the OFTA guideline was that if you offer "unlimited" it had better actually be "unlimited". So they got rid of their Fair Use Throttling, and introducted Fair Use Prioritisation. How has anything changed?

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Wednesday 15th February 2012 12:02 GMT Syx

Unlimited data amount, but not data speed?

I guess the telcos argument will be that your data usage is still unlimited in terms of how much you download - they're just throttling the speed. Different ways of interpreting "unlimited" I suppose.

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