iiNet to kill off AAPT 'leechers'

By Ry Crozier on Oct 6, 2010 1:49 PM
Filed under Telco/ISP

Unlimited plan users in ISP's crosshairs

IiNet will end AAPT's high-volume plan ending the heyday of bandwidth "leechers", some of whom boast of downloading more than 75 terabytes of data.

The west coast ISP that bought AAPT in July for $60 million sent letters to about 2000 customers of the former Telecom NZ provider's unlimited 24x7 plans telling them it will end the service next month.

"AAPT Limited still owned the business up until handover to iiNet on Friday 1 Oct[ober]," an ISP representative wrote on Whirlpool's broadband forum.

"The first batch of letters to 24/7 unlimited customers were in the mail that afternoon."

iiNet chief executive officer Michael Malone made plain he would cut the plan even before it halted trading pending the acquisition.

"All you end up with on unlimited are the leeches," Malone said at the time.

iiNet representative Joe Selvaggi, posting to Whirlpool yesterday, pushed the ISP's 400GB Home 3 ADSL2+ plan as a replacement for those "with relatively modest needs".

"There's our ADSL2+ Home 3 plan with 200GB + 200GB with 256Kbps shaping for $69.95 plus $29.95 for Home Phone, which comes in at the same $99.95 price point as the Livenet 24/7 Unlimited package," Selvaggi said.

Another iiNet representative, 'Joseph C' reassured customers on other AAPT plans that the ISP would not shift them to its broadband products.

"The rest of the AAPT customer base isn't going to be affected - [they] can stay on their existing plans," he said.

"Only the 24/7 unlimited plans are being removed from use."

15 comments in this discussion

"they should bring it back and ban all p2p :) then they'd probably be able to provide a sustainable service. It's not just the amounts of data being downloaded, its the amount of connections ..."

By Johnny

Tags

iinet, isp, aapt, unlimited, broadband, internet, dead, acquisition

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Comments: 15

djzort Oct 6, 2010 3:36 PM	"leechers" is such a loaded term. If you pay for something, and you make use of it as per the terms of the agreement that you have entered in to legally - why should you be slandered and labeled with derogatory terms? Retiring "unprofitable plans" is very rational and reasonable, but there is no need to slander users for using something they have paid for.
discord Oct 6, 2010 4:34 PM	Awww im famous! Leecher is indeed it such a loaded term, technically speaking im one such leecher, but compared to people in sweden etc, then my downloading habits are pretty low! People dont seem to get that the internet is getting more bandwidth intensive each and every year, have you tried IPTV or slingbox streaming? typing HD streams can exceed 500KB/s... Bluray/HDTV downloads can reach around 40-50GB EACH for example
HubertCumberdale Oct 6, 2010 4:53 PM	As far as I'm concerned the ISP is the one who should wear the leech label. They offer "unlimited" plans take consumers monies and then complain when they dare to make use of it.
discord Oct 6, 2010 5:03 PM	HubertCumberdale: well said, i say if you plan on offering an unlimited term then there should be no connotations or bad labels attached if one uses it to the full extent
mad1k5 Oct 6, 2010 8:26 PM	discord, Move to an ISP that will offer Unlimited such as TPG. Don't expect all providers remain unchanged in their plans. Especially when they are being bought out by another provider. It's a fact of life really. iiNet has a 1TB plans.
gbyrneg50 Oct 6, 2010 8:59 PM	The iinet plans are pretty good value for money if you can get ADSL2.
discord Oct 6, 2010 9:04 PM	mad1k5, way ahead of you there, TPG connected me up yesterday. Support from tech is bloody fantastic compared to AAPT! I have no grudges towards iinet, have used them in the past as well as helped people that are on their network. In fact I commend michael malone for buying out AAPT and hope he improves it
Mordd Oct 6, 2010 9:23 PM	FYI there is no 400GB plan for iiNet on ADSL2, their highest plan is 500gb + 500gb, which is misquoted in the article.
midcoast Oct 7, 2010 7:51 AM	Its leechers like Discord who ruin any unlimited plans by there deliberate actions of download anything on the internet. I pity Tpg having to put up with a leecherlike him. What makes it worse is he brags about it. We have to have caps simply to stop idiots from abusing the networks. They should have a special pool where known leechers who abuse the system are placed and charged the earth for there connections.
Daveh Oct 7, 2010 7:52 AM	One question. Why is doing a large amount of data being a leech?? What if your are hosting a large content website, Providing a testbed for a dev team, hosting an IRC server or something similar??
Sams Oct 7, 2010 9:43 AM	Daveh: exactly - in these days of cloud storage, ISPs better wisen up and smell the coffee.
realitybites Oct 7, 2010 11:56 AM	@Daveh If you are hosting a content intensive website your traffic will be mostly outbound, not inbound. I would also expect that if you are hosting servers such as you mentioned, the ISP would expect you to have a business grade connection. I assume the article is referring to home users? Lets not forget about mail servers, people these days don't even flinch about sending a 50 - 100Mb mail attachment. Just my 2 cents, for what it's worth :)
Fungyo Oct 8, 2010 5:53 PM	@midcoast. You don't think much do you, just another narrow minded troll, we so called "leechers", need to deal with. If you don't know what you're talking about, do us a favour and educate yourself. Unlike you, we know how to make the most of what has been OFFERED to us, and we shall make no apologies to any one. Australia is way behind other developed nations and yet we're still harassed by mindless idiots who can't see past their own noses. Australia's future doesn't look to bright with the likes of you.
johnpro2 Oct 10, 2010 2:26 PM	@Fungyo: "we know how to make the most of what has been OFFERED" ********** I agree that if a company markets an "all you can eat" deal as an advantage ploy, the company should not then complain when some folk actually take up the offer.
Johnny Oct 12, 2010 7:28 PM	they should bring it back and ban all p2p :) then they'd probably be able to provide a sustainable service. It's not just the amounts of data being downloaded, its the amount of connections that torrents and other p2p applications use which puts strain on network resources. Torrents suck anyway, speed fluctuates too much for my liking, no certainty, at least with rapidshare and other filehosts the speed is the maximum my connection can handle and is much more stable (of course, in my own opinion).