Telenet (Belgium): Unlimited, but Fair Use, Means 2.7TB per Month!

 

When I covered FTS, a vendor of policy management products (here), I mentioned one of their flagship projects - Telenet "Telemeter", implementing a quota based policy for the Belgium Cable operator.

On July Telenet added unlimited service plans (here). Its "TurboNet" plan, which similar to the "ExpressNet" plan offers unlimited volume for extra €18/month (see all plans below).

Nevertheless, the new plans are subject for "fair-use", which is defined by Telenet as follows:

"The term "Fair use" means that you can send and receive a very large quantity of data via the Telenet network. Telenet will only ask you to adjust your consumption in the case of excessive volume consumption that may threaten the comfort of other subscribers.

We understand excessive volume consumption to mean consumption that is at least double the average volume consumption of all subscribers for your Internet product. In the case of excessive volume consumption, Telenet reserves the right to reduce the download speed to the minimum of 512 Kbps until the next charging period begins.

"Fair use" can only be used for private purposes and occur in full compliance with Telenet’s general conditions and code of conduct. Among other things, this means that the subscriber can only disseminate legal data." [Does it mean that downloading illegal data is OK?]

So how does it translate into the users' activity?

Telenet was kind enough to publish the activity of their 25 top users (here). #1 consumed, in one month,  2.7TB (that’s Tera, not Giga!) with the "Turbonet" plan (30 mbps).

All top10 are close or above 1TB. Certainly more than "double the average volume consumption of all subscribers" (#1 is almost 4 times #25 ; Telenet has close to 1.2M internet subscribers - see a "telemeter" report for a "normal" user).





A good marketing tool, for Telenet - as still, the limited "ExpressNet" plan is the most sold (here)

 

France Telecom VP on Google Voice (OTT VoIP)

Mr Georges Penalver, Senior Executive VP FRANCE TELECOM ORANGE, strategic marketing and Orange Labs was interviewed by the Israeli paper Calcalist (in Hebrew - here).

Question: “How France Telecom will handle competitive services, such as Google Voice ?"

Mr. Penalver: “ Regarding VoIP calls outside home – this is a tough question, as it is more an economic question rather than a technological issue. VoIP services are actually free to the subscribers, but they load the cellular network with internet traffic. This brings a question – who will pay for this traffic and maintaining its quality? At the end of the day, VoIP services destroy value as they do not pay for the infrastructure they use – and this is the reason we do not believe in such services. This is like getting a luxury car for free, with no roads to use it with."

This is the core of the Network Neutrality debate !