A growing band of disgruntled Telstra broadband clients, who've had downloads capped to three gigabytes a month, plan to petition the telco.
The petition, which has topped 700 signatures in just one day, is a response to Telstra's move to restrict downloads on its Freedom Plan -- a service that users claim Telstra led them to believe was "unlimited".
As of October, users that surpass the three gigabytes a month mark will have to pay 18.9 cents per megabyte of additional downloading.
The individual behind the petition is Adrian Sobotta, Webmaster of www.broadband.org.au.
"I believe in the merit of the argument," he said.
"Three gigabytes a month is hardly what you'd expect from a broadband connection."
"To be fully classed as a broadband connection you need to have either speed or downloads uncapped," he added.
Telstra now restricts downloads on its Freedom Plan as well as capping speed, according to Sobotta.
Sobotta, who says Telstra is "killing the broadband culture", hopes to accrue in excess of 1500 signatures.
"The more [signatures] there are the greater the impact," he said, adding that he intended to print off and post the petition to both Telstra and the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman in about a week's time.
Whilst Sobotta's ultimate aim is to see unlimited downloading returned to Telstra's Freedom Plan, "a more realistic expectation may be [for Telstra] to bring in a system to monitor downloads," he conceded.
In this way Telstra could ration capacity rather than capping it and advise users who overstepped the mark.
The petition can be found at www.broadband.org.au/bpapetition.php
Here's a thought, Telstra.
If there is 5% of users abusing the system. Why not restrict or cancel THEIR accounts instead of limiting every normal user?
My fiancee and I share an ADSL connection and we don't download Gigs of mp3s, multimedia and the like, yet a 3Gb limit would still restrict us.
Optus have the right idea with their system. They cut off the top 5% and bottom 5% of users and average the rest. If anyone goes over the average by 10 times or more, they are cut off. It makes sense. (Optus is also uncapped...)
Could it be that Optus has better management than Telstra?
Telstra can make billions of dollars profit per annum, but cannot manage overuse by FIVE PERCENT of customers? Come on, give me a break...