err well they almost all thining capping us greedy users is a good idea. aol are surprisingly the only ones that done, not sure if theyre lying like bulldog seem to be (ok 500gb/month you gotta be l33ching teh warez at quite a rate but still...). personally, i guess caps for the average user dont really make a difference as they have no need - but as broadband services become more advanced (triple play etc) then i think that you will see more&more 'average' users getting pissed off with caps, not just the warez whores & the hardkor gaymers...
perhaps you could get a few more quotes, BT/Telewest/Zen etc?

The whole subject of "broadband" just serves to infuriate me.
We have the suppliers saying that we should sign up for "512M broadband", which is the same as selling a 3 year old Mondeo as a Ferrari,sometimes with a cap on usage and usually for a minimum of a year at around an average of £15 per month.
Who's kidding who?
I have colleagues in Japan who tell me the average connection is about 4GB, with no cap and costs around £10 per month.Even France and Germany have considerably better services than we have.
Are we that technically far behind other leading countries or are we, as usual, just getting screwed?

Just plain RIP OFF BRITAIN. For the price we pay capping can not be justified. If the ISP’s can’t provide the service they should quit and certainly a full government enquire is needed. If the government wants a fully interactive Britain its time for them to act.

I agree with Clive, we are severely ripped off in this country, I pay £35.00 per month for 2mb from Telewest.

I run a small business with about 15 staff at our main office and 3 sales people who work at home. The sales guys have ADSL routers with VPN to the office and upload/download files to synchronise. I am in the process of switching all ADSL services to PlusNet. We have used them for about 9 months at the main site, have been happy with their customer service and like their web site. Our usage averages 2GB at the office and less than 1GB at the remote sites.

As you would expect I don't have a problem with capping and in fact it is a good idea for business use as it keeps cost down. I was amazed to see that 6GB is an average usage. I am a keen reader of PCW and very interested in IT; I listen to some radio over broadband but struggle to get near 2GB a month on my home connection. I know this usage will go up over time especially with better speeds but as with everything else I will shop around for the best deal when I need to.

If your readers think they are being ripped off I suggest they set up their own ISP's. Plenty have tried and fallen by the wayside. I think PlusNet are right to give users a choice and for people to pay according to usage. Just because almost everyone has an electricity/gas/telephone supply doesn't mean that we should all pay the same flat monthly charge irrespective of consumption.

Phil, I'd be interested to hear some more about these "average" 4Gb connections for £10 in Tokyo, I think you may me confusing Gb with Mb, because the fastest available are about 26Mb, even very fast short run fibre optic connections are only about 2Gb.
As for caps, it's a thorny issue, I'm with the ISPs in that certain users take the piss, I know a few people who have dedicated servers downloading movies from torrent sites 24/7, they must be pulling about 5 or 600 Gb a month, this is just plain wrong, for normal use not downloading illegal movies I can't see anyone needing more than about 50Gb a month.
But on the other hand, to sell a 1Mb service with a 1Gb cap is mad, and shouldn't be allowed. 1Gb will be gone in 8000 seconds if you were downloading at full speed, that's less than 20 minutes spent at torrent.tv, or alternatively, less than 5 times the size of the SP2 download.

I'm not waiting for BT's comment, I have cancelled them and I'm off to Nildram where I think the approach to any sort of capping is fairer. The fact is I have no idea of my monthly usage and BT can't provide it. Never really been happy with BT in the years I have been with them so fingers crossed that Nildram will be better and if capping gets in the way I will leave any big loads until during the night.

Three phrases should be among the most common in our daily usage. They are: Thank you, I am grateful and I appreciate.

Crawl back in your hole spammers, your ISP has been recorded and reported

BT have been capping heavy broadband users for a while now and it's not fair that we are capped during peaktime to near dial up speeds when we are paying for fast broadband.

I've been capped for nearly a month now, between 6pm and midnight and evereytime I ring them up they deny it, only on two occasions have they admitted it.

I can time my watch by the cap, it's not fair, during 6 to midnite watching streaming videos becomes nearly impossible.

British Telecom have also been lying to customers not only about the caps on peaktime heavy users but also by their dishonest speedtest.

For more info see here http://quicksilverscreen.com/ipb/index.php?showtopic=21543&hl=uk+peeps