I signed up with Pipex about three years ago now, their service was highly recommended by friends and they were relatively good value. In April I saw that we were being billed £24.99 a month for 2MB Broadband when they offered 8MB “Unlimited” Broadband for exactly the same price! Noticing that we could get increased speeds, I switched the service over (but was made to accept a 12 month contract) and everything ran super fast……..but not for long.

Within a month of having the service, the download speeds plummeted, both for HTTP and Bittorrent transfers. I went from having 800kb/s+ to 30kb/s for my torrents and my downloads (even from Microsoft) topped out at 500kb/s.

Whilst I agree that ISP’s should engage the “Power Users” and stop them from downloading massive files, I probably average 10GB of downloads via Bittorrent per month, that wouldn’t even register on their leader board of people who abuse the service.

Enraged, I sent an email a few months back:

I received a speed upgrade about 14 days ago, I could download torrents at normal speeds. I use Bittorrent to download legal files such as Linux ISO’s, OpenOffice, these speeds never rise above 30kb/s.

When I signed up for this service, I was told it was unlimited and there were no caps, this is not what I am receiving now. I have been reading similar reports on various forums where users have been getting exactly the same treatment.

I feel forced to contact OFCOM and OTELO should my speeds not be returned, I have been a loyal customer and was happy with this service until now. Can you please tell me the period since the switch I can cancel this service? If I am still within this period, I will proceed to cancel my account.

My username is xxxxxx and my home phone number is xxxxxxxxxxx.

I hope you will be able to resolve this matter without looking for assistance Trading Standards.

Kind Regards

[Me]

I then received this in reply:

Dear [Me],

Thank you for your email.

I can confirm that torrents are traffic managed. Looking at the files you wish to download, they are usually available on websites and if you download from the websites you will get your normal speeds.

I hope this answers your query but if we can be of any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Regards,

A Random Dogsbody
Customer Support
Pipex

I didnt reply to that, it did nothing whatsoever to help me, all it did was let me know that they throttled every Bittorrent transfer, not just the accounts that abused the downloading service.

I am trying to move out my parent’s place and get my own house, when I do I shall be using either UK Free Software Network or ADSL24 as they are Entanet resellers, who use a very efficient traffic shaping system, which throttles the connection (not transfers) but only when the line is saturated. This ensures gaming and and downloads stay working well.