Alfreido's Blog

Let’s try out a hypothetical scenario for a second. You are part of the management staff for a very popular and well-respected Internet Service Provider (you can guess which one by looking at the title of this post :P), but a problem has arisen in the last few months. You see, there is a system in place called shaping which, when you go over your download limit, is activated and limits your speed to 64k for the remainder of the billing month. That’s all good. But then there is currently no limit to how much you can download AFTER you have been shaped. So a couple of nerds in front of their computer unable to remove themselves from the computer chair without using a blowtorch to separate the chair from their ass decided that they would download as much as they want after being shaped by setting up their torrents programs to just leech the crap out of everything they can get their hands on, 24/7. Suddenly, the ISP starts realising that they are absorbing the costs of way too much bandwidth and could potentially start losing money. So they need to fix this problem. Now let me ask you a question, you have 3 choices of fixes. What would you do?

1. Raise prices by up to $40 on some plans, to recuperate costs.

2. Invest in some P2P shaping software, to limit download speeds on torrent applications.

3. Fix up the broken implementation of ’shaping’ and have additional punishments for heavy over-users.

Most companies would only implement one of these fixes, preferably one of the bottom 2. Unfortunately, the customers with Internode have been stung by 2, possibly all, of those fixes. They raised prices, added additional punishments for heavy-users and, with the luck us Internode customers are having, will probably invest in P2P shaping.

I tell you what, it’s a real kick in the teeth for most people with Internode, especially me. Whilst I will admit that I download stuff from P2P all the time, I rarely ever go over my limit. In fact out of the 24 months I’ve been with Internode, I’m pretty sure I was shaped twice. But unfortunately, my plan went up $20, from $79.95 a month (affordable) to $99.95 a month (dream on). Because of some shit-head kids who wanted to download, say, 100 gigs of pr0n every night, everyone connected to Internode has to suffer.

I would say it’s a bit of a disaster for Internode, as Whirlpool has housed a lot of angry customers who are saying Internode have lost the plot. Now I am not going to leave Internode because their service is one of the best. But I’m seriously pissed that I have to drop back to a lower plan, and STILL pay the same bloody price I was paying before.

Damn leechers.