Eclipse (now owned by KC) are to launch a new product set for Home users on 12th May 2008.
Over the past several months there have been many complaints by their users as to the extent of the traffic shaping and difficulty for users downloading certain types of traffic at all times of the day.
I dont normally make too much of a fuss of product changes, but have done so in this instance due to the "reverse step" of starting to move towards a new form of traffic shaping that actually would appear to give the customer more choice over how they use their connection.
The main features of the new products are
- They will no longer be described as "Unlimited" and instead will have hard caps.
- Reduce traffic shaping and provide higher throughput speeds closer to the line speed.
- Uploads not counted towards your capped allowance
- Customers will now have a usage meter in order to monitor their usage.
- Inclusion of a Manage my Pipe which allows customers to give priority to what they use the internet for.
Details of the new prices and caps are available today on the
Eclipse website or on my
ISP Prices pageThe Marketing Gumph is rather long but I've snipped the interesting bits:-
Previous product differentiation based on traffic management has proved both difficult to explain to customers and difficult to implement operationally, with actual performance at varying price points falling far short of the desired performance.
In addition to the gap between customer’s actual and expected speed expectations, KC’s traffic management system additionally reduces the customer’s download speed further during busy periods. The very low download speeds achieved during busy periods has hugely frustrated a large number of customers.
The new Eclipse usage based products have been designed to ensure that the customers download speeds are more consistent and much closer to their achievable connection speed. Paying for usage therefore enables Eclipse to provide the customer with their expected online experience for the majority of the time.
No traffic shaping on most common forms of Internet traffic, such as browsing, emailing, streaming and downloading
~ So products will be much less subject to fluctuating speeds
~ We expect download speeds overall to be higher than they are on the Evolution Broadband.
~ We expect download speeds overall to be higher even over busier time periods when capacity is maxed.
The products are easy to choose between, with pre-set usage limits. The customer knows exactly what he’s getting by paying more.
Products that are clearly differentiated through a range of inclusive usage allowances, thus providing something to meet the varying needs of each customer.
Highly competitive prices starting from just £9.95 per month*
*is £9.95 for first three months of an 18 month contract. After month 3 monthly cost is £13.95
The new Manage My Pipe Feature may be of interest to some
Customers will have the ability to manage the prioritisation of their internet activities themselves using the Traffic Controller.
Customers will be given the chance, to choose from 6 preset traffic profiles which will dictate the priority given to each type of internet protocol they are using. For instance, they may wish to make surfing and email a priority over FTP or P2P downloads.
~ These preset profiles are: Surfer, Remote Worker, Gamer, Downloader, Office, Custom
~ The final option is a custom setting where the customer is able to change the priorities of the traffic down to a more detailed level.
~ The customer can move the slider bars to give more or less priority on the traffic types and when they save it then those settings are saved and activated immediately.
See below for a preview of the new connection manager (you will need to be logged in to this forum to see it).
Seems like a good move as far as their customers are concerned - lets hope that it pans out that way.
[attachment deleted by admin]
