Breathe.com has sparked a storm of controversy by pulling the plug on 'heavy users' of its unmetered internet access service.
James Middleton, uk.internet.com,
VNU Business Publications 27 Jul 2000Breathe.com has sparked a storm of controversy by pulling the plug on 'heavy users' of its unmetered internet access service.
Despite its promise of unmetered access seven days a week on and off-peak, Breathe has let the air out of its service for 500 customers which it claims are exploiting the service by logging on for long periods and hogging bandwidth.
The UK ISP, which targets the UK's "modern urbanists", claims that heavy bandwidth users are ruining the service for others. So from lunchtime (BST) yesterday, 500 Breathe-ers had their internet air supplies cut off.
"The continued heavy use by a small proportion of users has now resulted in the need for us to withdraw the Breathe Freely service from these customers to sustain the offer to the majority of customers who are not using the service to the same extent," Breathe said in an email to the culprits.
Unsurprisingly, users have taken the news hard. David Smart, one of the heavy Breath-ers, said: "I've just been reliably informed that my Breathe Freely account is to be terminated. I thought I could surf as much as I wanted to without a care in the world.
"When I paid my money there was no warning that if I use this service too much I would be booted off it with two days' notice. After feeling cheated by Breathe I was just wondering how many other 'high users' there are out there?"
Smart pointed us to the Breathe Freely advertisement which reads: "There will be an initial set-up fee of £50, after that you can surf to your heart's content 24 hours a day, seven days a week for life. We are sure that without the worry of an enormous telephone bill hanging over your head, you'll get much more out of the internet."
According to Breathe, some users were just not content and were obviously getting too much out of the internet. The company said: "While this is not a decision that we have taken lightly, we believe other providers would choose to undermine the service for everybody by restricting modem ratios and bandwidth until the whole service becomes unusable. This is not a measure we were willing to undertake."
First published on uk.internet.com
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