As you will know from my previous posts here, my opinion of Tiscali is pretty low. Having worked for ISPs in the past, and specifically for Tiscali’s technical support department at one point, I feel I have a little insight into their business methods. For your average, light-traffic user, they perhaps are slightly higher up than AOL, but not by a great deal.
Anyway, Tiscali has warned UK customers that they had better not start using video on demand (VoD) services a lot, or else the ISP will have to shape their traffic. Check the BBC article for a bit of background info. Well? I’m waiting…. have you read it yet? Right, I will assume you at least skimmed it… I loved the section where Tiscali refers to their current traffic shaping of other Peer To Peer based applications. Whilst they make it sound like no harm is done, many of their customers have reported dial-up like speeds. Combine that with Tiscali’s fair use policies, and you begin to see just how restrictive they are becoming.
You can of course see where the company is coming from – if everyone is using connection at 100% of its capacity 24/7, the whole network will suffer. However, as technologies and applications improve, the usage patterns on the internet will also follow suit. You can not realistically expect customers to not use VoD because their ISP has not got the infrastructure in place to cope with the demand. It simply reeks of Canute ordering the tide to turn back. (Though that is not the best analogy, as the King was merely proving one of his excessively complimenting courtiers that he was not all powerful).
Anyway, enough of my preaching on top of a soap box, I understand Tiscali is a business with a need to profit, they just always seem to rub me up the wrong way…
Aug 14 2007